It's an absolute crime that there hasn't been more Wild West-themed video games over the years, but
Red Dead Revolver redresses this balance almost instantly with a gloriously authentic spaghetti western feel that'll make the next clichéd fantasy or SF setting you come across even harder to bear.
Red Dead Revolver has had an unusual history, starting life as an update of Capcom's old
Gun Smoke arcade game before being canned. So confident were the developer's of the game's worth though that they convinced
Grand Theft Auto publishers Rockstar to buy up the rights and allow them to finish their work. And thank goodness they did, for not only does the game entirely legitimise the Wild West as a viable setting for a video game, but it's one of the most entertaining arcade shooters of recent years.
The controls are just complex enough to allow depth, without becoming fiddly, and allow you to use cover appropriately, and fight hand to hand and with a huge range of different weapons. The best bit though is the bullet time-esque "Dead Eye" mode which allows you to select multiple targets in slow motion and then switch back to normal time and blast everyone away instantly, just like Clint Eastwood. With sections on horseback, a number of missions (perhaps too many) where you control a side character instead of the eponymous Red, and tons of references to classic movie moments this has just about everything you could ask for from a cowboy shooter. --David Jenkins