I bought a used Kinect just to play this and felt entirely justified by the end.

I've always loved Twisted Pixel's games for their irreverent humor and unique mixing of FMV with gameplay. In a way, Gunstringer is like the ultimate realization of their style: A Panzer Dragoon-meets Mad Dog McCree run 'n' gun with a ton of great gags and surprisingly effective mechanics given the limitations of the Kinect.

Unfortunately the game design isn't always up to snuff with the hilarious jokes. It runs a bit long and repetitive, with each chapter feeling like 25% longer than it should be. And each boss fight is a copy/paste of the one before with little variety. By the second half, it feels like the gimmick is running a bit out of steam. There's a reason, after all, why Time Crisis and its imitators are sub-1 hour games rather than 6 hour ones. Even Panzer Dragon is about a 2 hour long title. They're in and out before the player can get tired of the flow; before they can run out of new things to do with their limited set of mechanics.

Gunstringer, however, goes so long it even runs out of jokes to make about the western genre it's lampooning. By chapter 3, it moves on to... random generalized Asian jokes? It's really bizarre, and by far the weakest segment of the game. The first half of the game lampoons lumberjacks, oil barons, brothels—all sorts of old western movie stereotypes. Then the third chapter is about a samurai. And I genuinely think this could work if it lampooned samurai films—they are, after all, inextricably tied to the western genre—but instead of hyper specific samurai film references it's... just generalized Asian gags? There's a great wall, a giant dragon boss fight, the environment is covered in bamboo shoots and lucky cats and zen gardens. And, oddly, this chapter is when the hordes of red (yes, Chief Wahoo level bright red) native american enemies encroach on the player.

It's... it's not even offensive so much as it's lazy with its humor. Just the most basic stereotypes you could imagine, with no clever spin or joke to it. It's the only part of the game where the humor made me roll my eyes rather than giggle. It's by far the weakest part of the game, and is luckily followed by a far better final chapter in which you fight the spirit of death itself.

This is, thankfully, mostly a very fun and funny game that I enjoyed quite a bit.

But I'm still not convinced you couldn't make this as good, if not better, on a controller—Panzer Dragoon manages it, after all—but I'm not exactly disappointed given that a used Kinect is now $10. RIP to anyone who shelled out $150 for a Kinect just to play this and Child of Eden a decade ago, though.

If you remove all the exercise and dance related game, you are left with about 3 games. This isn't that surprising as while the kinect was a great idea, despite Microsoft's best efforts, most of the games were frustrating to play. I'm not sure if they had a gun to their head, but somehow Microsoft convinced famed indie game developer Twisted Pixel to develop a full kinect release. Twisted Pixel's The Gunstringer then is a bit of an anomaly in that it is a rail shooter game which controls fine and is fun to play. Levels are mostly run and gun style. Your character is constantly moving forward. You use your left hand to control your characters movement, avoiding obstacles and popping out of cover to shoot enemies. Your right had is used to aim at enemies and fire. The controls work fairly well and while it can be tiring, it's way less frustrating than most kinect games that I have tried. There are some slight variations, some platforming sections and light gun style sections, plus the boss fights at the end of most levels add to the enjoyment. The wild west theme and humour that Twisted Pixel are known for really shine through and best of all you can play it sat down. It's refreshing to see a developer put effort into a kinect title so if you are looking to play one, this is one of the best.