The Gunstringer (Xbox 360)

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Description

Story and Theme
The Gunstringer has no name other than being identified as the pivotal "Gunstringer". He is a skeleton marionette of a dead, betrayed cowboy--and he's out for revenge against his old posse who shot him dead and left him buried in the desert. The Gunstringer faces off against any number of wildly imagined "Old West" cliches as seen from the perspective of a puppet-focused stage play, complete with a live-action audience (made up of the Twisted Pixel development team, and some of their special guests). The Gunstringer must face and defeat a brothel madam, "Big Oil" tycoons, evil lumberjacks, a wavy balloon man, frontier soldiers, frontier Indians, and transplanted samurais.

Game characters run the gamut of each and every kind of puppet imaginable: Marionettes, "Muppet"-style puppets, simple paper people, and action figures. Stages and levels are all built and designed around a cardboard-and-paper aesthetic--paper towel tubes for trees, cardboard boxes for buildings, and various other craft or office supplies (like wall tacks) find a number of uses.

Ample "Classic Old West" movie-style narration runs through the game adding an element of "old tyme/Old West" storytelling to the entire package.

Gameplay
The basic gameplay runs along the lines of a rail shooter with the exception that, like an earlier Twisted Pixel title, Comic Jumper, The Gunstringer regularly mixes up the gameplay in a variety of ways. Players typically play holding their left hand to physically move their marionette left and right across the game screen dodging, jumping, and moving through various stage obstacles, and the right hand is used to "swipe" over enemies to target them, then a flick of the wrist fires up to six bullets at up to six highlighted targets.

Gameplay often switches to straight platforming, punching segments, traditional rail shooting segments (without moving the Gunstringer himself), side-scrolling segments--all of which are mixed with vehicle-based segments including a riverboat, a rocket, a stagecoach, and the Gunstringer's trusty steed.

Extras
The Gunstringer features a large number of unlockables, bonuses and extras. Players can unlock developer commentaries for the levels, alternate costumes, Hardcore mode, No Fail mode, and other gameplay-modifying tweaks. Beyond this, there are unlockable music tracks, and unlockable videos both showing behind-the-scenes making-of footage as well as humorous "interviews" with other developers in the industry, such as Epic's Cliff Bleszinski. Modern industry-standard unlockables such as concept art are also available, along with "hidden" Achievements that can be purchased.

The initial releases of The Gunstringer also included a free download code for Fruit Ninja Kinect, and the first DLC available for free, featuring Lloyd Kaufman of the infamous indie film company, Troma, which is called, Wavy Tube Man Chronicles.

Screenshots

There are no Xbox 360 screenshots for this game.

Part of the Following Groups

• 3D Engine: BEARD
• Setting: Western / Old West

User Reviews

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The Press Says

Xbox360Achievements	Sep 15, 2011	83 out of 100	83
Canadian Online Gamers Network	Sep 18, 2011	82 out of 100	82
Jeuxvideo.com	Sep 14, 2011	16 out of 20	80
Gamereactor (Sweden)	Nov 28, 2011	7 out of 10	70
PC Gameplay (Benelux)	Oct 28, 2011	70 out of 100	70
Splitkick	Sep 13, 2011	6 out of 10	60
Xboxygen	Sep 23, 2011		60

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Trivia

There is no trivia on file for this game.

Related Web Sites

• Wikipedia: The Gunstringer (article in the open encyclopedia about the game (English))