Smokin’ Guns

By: Guest Reviewer

On: January 10th, 2009

[Guest review by MisterX, originally posted on TIGForums]

As few probably know about it, I’ll just introduce it a bit: Smokin’ Guns is what became of Western Quake³. The latter was a very solid and well-liked western mod for Quake 3, and it was developed by Iron Claw Interactive. As time passed, the usual thing happened – there was less and less activity on the servers and eventually the developers moved on to other things. So when the source code of Quake 3 was released, a group of die-hard fans put it upon themselves to polish the mod, iron out bugs, create new content, and, best of all, make it a stand-alone game! They achieved no less and so now, few days ago, Smokin’ Guns was finally released into the wild!

Smokin’ Guns is not the most modern shooter, but it’s one of the few Western-themed action games there are, and it’s simply the best, in my opinion. There are the normal deathmatch and team deathmatch modes, but they have a catch, as you need money to buy weapons, ammo and items whenever, wherever you like. The money is not only gained by killing, but it’s also found lying around the maps. More interestingly, there is the Bank Robbery mode, which pits one team as defenders of a bank against another trying to break it, steal money by blowing up the safe, and then escape to the train yard. The most competitive one, though, is the Duel mode, which is self-explanatory. Two men go in, one comes out – very classy.

SG is really not an innovative game, but I like it for how well it manages to capture the Wild West feeling inspired by all the famous classic movies. In most shooters rifles are the most important weapons, and the one-handed guns are merely backups. But here it’s really well-balanced, so if you want it to be all about the revolvers, have it be that way. There are a bunch of revolvers, rifles, and shotguns, and even a fancy classic Gatling gun – in my opinion they all just feel right, especially the revolvers. You can use single ones or carry two simultaneously, and you can mix them how you like it. When using two, you can also reload them individually, and one of the revolvers is reloaded one bullet at a time, which feels very nice.

Lastly, the graphics aren’t much to look at, but they have been polished from Western Quake³, and the maps tend to look quite atmospheric. The sound is a different story, though, as the weapons sound appropriately powerful, and there’s a very, very nice soundtrack which really gets you in the mood for duking it out at high noon.

It’s been a long time coming, and I’m glad I can finally play the game again online. I hope some of you will also find it interesting. So, see you online, maybe!