There’s something inherently enjoyable about puppetry. It’s something that has been present in everyone’s childhood in some for or another. Muffin the Mule, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlett, The Muppets, Sesame Street and even Team America. And those are just the internationally safe references. For those of us in the UK, we also have Punch & Judy, Roland Rat, Gordon the Gopher and Ed the Duck to cuddle up to in our puppetry-based nostalgia love-ins. Will The Gunstringer join that list of characters, beloved by a generation? Well, no, probably not. That’s not to say we can’t have a little fun with it though.

[drop]The Gunstringer is a kind of on rails shooter in which you control the marionette lead, taking on a plethora of undesirables. The twist, and there’s always a twist where Twisted Pixel are involved, is that this is all staged as a live show put on in from of a studio audience – who are frequently seen in-game. It’s the next logical step on from Twisted Pixel’s previous dalliances with full motion video sequences in their games and it explains the omnipresent narrator’s comedic approach to his delivery.

That narrator is reminiscent of Bastion’s style but not quite so intelligent in its execution as this experience is decidedly more linear to that in Bastion. Still, the little nuggets of backstory and exposition offered up are frequently amusing and do allow for some relief to the needful repetition in the game’s mechanics.

The player ‘paints’ targets in a similar fashion to Child of Eden, by dragging the reticule over them. Shooting is achieved by sharply raising an arm, as if you’ve just fired your sixgun in a wild west duel. Your spare hand is given to yanking the puppet protagonist around the stage. You can drag him around obstacles and at times, when the gameplay mechanics shift, you’ll need to negotiate platform sections and boss battles with as adept a motion as Kinect allows.

The motion control is perfectly fine for the shooting actions but at times it feels a little twitchy for the puppetry controls. There are such a wide range of variables at play with Kinect’s setup that it’s impossible to predict whether this is a larger problem for some but it was never more than an occasional minor inconvenience for me, usually when trying to duck for cover or engage in one of the arm-flapping melée sequences.

[drop2]Certainly, this game would be more enjoyable if it was traditionally controlled. Kinect gives The Gunstringer a talking point but it also removes the timing and precision necessary to make a top quality shooter, or action platformer. That’s the most unfortunate thing for The Gunstringer: it is tripped up by its big talking point.

Perhaps it was Kinect functionality that gave Twisted Pixel the opportunity to make the leap from XBLA to retail release but it feels like that has driven the motion controller’s inclusion in this game. What we then have is a situation where Twisted Pixel are valiantly attempting, with varying levels of success, to come up with interesting ways to use the Kinect controls. It doesn’t quite work.

What The Gunstringer doesn’t quite get right, amid the excellent storytelling and quirky presentation, is the degree to which you might want to return to it. There is no compelling reason to keep going back to better your scores. Even with leader boards, too much is at the mercy of twitchy Kinect controls. You will die through no fault of your own from time to time and that will likely cause more frustration than the enjoyment you receive from trying to better your scores in the first place. You’re also limited to a single weapon at a time so there’s no possibility of switching out to approach situations differently.

Pros:

• Great, quirky theme.
• The shooting works well.
• Frequently amusing and has significant charm.

Cons:

• Controls can be overly sensitive at times.
• No compelling reason to return.
• Very much a guided experience with limited scope for variation in approach.

The Gunstringer, then, is enjoyable but flawed. It seems to attempt to walk a line between on-rails shooter and something more but it doesn’t quite understand what else it wants to be. In striving for variation in game mechanics, it sacrifices what would have made it a thoroughly compelling shooter and never feels entirely natural in the way it is put together. It’s worth experiencing, if only for Twisted Pixel’s quirky presentation style, but not something that will be seen as essential – even in Kinect’s already limited catalogue of core-aimed titles.

Score: 5/10