The Gunstringer (includes Fruit Ninja Kinect) - Kinect Required (Xbox 360)

It has to be said that, so far, there have been a lack of decent games on the Kinect and rather a glut of rubbish ones! Kinect sports and dance central aside, there has been very little for Kinect owners to get excited about. Then along come Twisted Pixel to save the day with their 1st retail game, 'The Gunstringer.' For those not familiar with Twisted Pixel, they are responsible for XBLA games The Maw, Splosion man, Comic jumper and Ms.Splosion man. All highly innovative and entertaining games. The Gunstringer is no different.

The Gunstringer sees you in control of an undead cowboy puppet bent on revenge against the posse who betrayed him and then left him for dead! The whole thing is being watched in a theatre by a crowd of real people who clap and cheer as you play. You control the Gunstringer by moving left & right with your left hand and aiming and firing your gun with your right. It all works very intuitively and you almost forget that you aren't using a control pad. It's just like when you used to pretend to fire a gun in the school playground!

Graphically the whole game oozes charm and character. It has Twisted Pixel's trademark humour stamped all over it. Trees are made of toilet rolls and corrugated card, cows are made of beer cans and rivers made of quilts. The music, too, adds to the character of the game and the whole thing is described by an hilariously tongue-in-cheek narrator who never fails to raise a smile as you play! The only criticism that could be levelled at the game is it's length. It clocks in at around 3 hours to complete, but it does pack a lot of variety into those 3 hours. Getting gold in every level (or plays & acts as they're called) will take longer though. Plus there's a hardcore mode and a stack of unlockables like green screen outtakes, BGMs, photos and concept art. It also comes bundled with the 1st bit of DLC. It's all live action and is completely different to the main game. Plus, it comes with a download code for fruit ninja. A fun little game in itself, although unfortunatley I'd already downloaded it!

I really do urge anyone who owns a Kinect to buy this game. Its just the kind of thing Kinect needs. It's funny, charming, innovative, great fun to play and it shows that Kinect is good for more than fitness, dancing and sport! If you own a Kinect, then this is an essential purchase. I just hope it sells. It really would be a crime if it didn't!

I agree with the previous reviewer in all aspects regarding this game. I'm going to try and not repeat what has been said.

The first thing I want to mention is that one of the biggest areas of criticism against Kinect is the fact that you actually need to stand up and do some work. The Gunstringer bypasses this by giving you the choice of playing the game standing up or sitting down. As I get a little carried away when playing games I found myself popping up all the time and couldn't stay seated.

The gameplay is fairly straightforwarded. You are playing as a puppet gunstringer (gunslinger) out on revenge to get those who had stabbed you in the back. Your goal...find your old posse and finish them off. That is how the game is then presented in different chapters wherein you track down one of your opponents in each and eliminate them. Each chapter has a rating system based on your performance awarding you bronze, silver or gold medals. What I liked about this is that the game gives you the opportunity to replay the specific chapter over and over again as a standalone chapter. So if you really want that gold, you can replay the chapter until you get it before moving on to the next one. Replay also has additional value in that you earn "money" which can be used to buy unlocks and special playmodes.
On the Kinect gameplay-side you'll find the "controls" (i.e. your hands) super easy and intuitive. As your protagonist is a puppet you control him with your right hand by making him jump and move left and right. With your right, you aim, shoot, and punch. The game's speed is comfortable enough to allow anyone to easily do the shooting accurately. Just relax and take it easy. By limiting your movements to these basic actions the Kinect is very responsive and I never found myself being frustrated that the game did not pick up my movements.

Usually I would list out pros and cons, but honestly, this game does not have cons in my opinion. The story is smart and funny, and the developer has really created an enjoyable ride from beginning to end. I usually play a game only once, maximum twice, but The Gunstringer has got me playing levels as many as 5 times.

I don't like when people tell me something like "you must buy this game", because that in itself is not a very objective point of view, but I do think that everyone who owns a Kinect controller should get The Gunstringer as it is the best example on the market what Kinect is capable of, and no glitches. I hope we see more titles like this in the future and I sincerely hope that all developers will start looking at games like this and fine-tune their own games before releasing their glitchy and unresponsive games giving Kinect a bad name. On this point I want to add that the developer for The Gunstringer clearly shows that bad Kinect games are NOT a Kinect problem, but purely a developer problem.

The Gunstringer is more than value for money, great story, great gameplay and awesome replay value.

Gunstringer in short has;
-A well written and narrated storyline
-Good, responsive and initiative Kinect controls
-Good setting and fun pick up and play... doesn't drag you in but still fun.

However this is not a serious full game and is a bit short. For a Kinect owner this beats the vast majority of Kinect games out there and is definitely worth trying out. Again this is not worthy of buying a Kinect for, but when you add up the little things like head-tracking in Forza 4, Library in Halo CE Anniversary, Voice Recognition in Mass Effect three, Rise of Nightmares and now this... Kinect does seem to be more of a worthwhile investment nowadays.

The game itself is well made, well thought out and nicely put together.