I'm trying to decide what's worse - the fact that I had to use a game save to complete GUN Showdown or the fact I couldn't get past level three. Yes, you read that correctly - level three!

GUN Showdown is possibly the most unnecessarily disappointing game released for the PSP yet. Unnecessarily? Well, the first two levels are fabulous, with awesome gameplay and the kind of graphics that would make other developers weep, but - and this is a big BUT - the game is almost completely unplayable. I thought I'd learned my lesson with Prince of Persia and Tenchu, but after this I give up on any game of this type being any good on the PSP. Ever!

A direct port of the PS2 original, GUN follows a similar story, with you playing as Colton White, a young gunslinger who has a knack for the old cold steel. Following your father, Ned, you board a steamboat to do some business, gaining possession of an important artefact. The boat is attacked, forcing you to jump ship, but Ned is caught in the blast and killed. Colton must now travel to Dodge City to discover what is so important about this artefact and to find out the hidden agenda of the mysterious preacher Reed, resulting in an epic tale of revenge, gamblin', whorin' and general all out shooting!

The first two levels (as with most games nowadays) see you getting to grips with the controls, but this really doesn't happen, as you then find yourself in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, due to the awful, awful controls this game is lumbered with. I used to turn a blind eye to this, but when playing GUN Showdown a thought struck me - the PSP has only two buttons and one analogue controller less than the PS2, so why can't they deal with it? I remember playing Killer Instinct on the old SNES and then when I played the Game Boy version thinking "Well, how are they going to convert six buttons to two?" but they did, and it was fabulous. Surely, the designers of this game could have worked around it without leaving us with this unplayable mess?

As you play, your movement and your view is controlled by either the analogue stick or the four buttons, which can be swapped depending on your preference, but rest assured that they are both useless, with the analogue stick too sensitive and the buttons jerky and awkward to control. Your shoulder buttons are used for firing (as they should be) and once you get used to the functions of the d-pad you'll be hopefully shooting everything in sight. Pressing up on the d-pad takes you into Quick Draw mode, GUN's version of bullet time, turning you into the Waco Kid. This gives you a limited amount of time to aim and kill as many people or animals as you can. This can be a mixture of beautiful violence on the scale of a classic Peckinpah film, or a useless option that never seems to work - it's 50/50 throughout the game.

Like Prince of Persia: Revelations, this has wonderful PlayStation 2 quality graphics. The almost sepia colouring is perfect at depicting the time period, while the characters, surroundings and set pieces are wonderfully created. During play we are treated to some well-drawn characters that all move fluidly, although this just goes further to emphasise the jerky controlling of your character. The cut scene graphics are so good that I could have watched them as little movies by themselves and, at points, especially the beginning, it looks like real footage and not computer generated, which is very impressive. The use of music gives that classic Sergio Leone feel and unlike some games is very well-timed with the action to create a dramatic effect as you play. The most enjoyable aspect of the audio is the voice work from actors Kris Kristofferson, Lance Henriksen and Ron Perlman, lending their distinct tones to this game, and although the dialogue and the actual plot couldn't be anymore of a cliché if it tried, it's still a lot more enjoyable to watch and play through than most games. However, all this does not make a 10/10 game!

I can't fault the developers for making it harder to increase the longevity (that being the biggest criticism of the PS2 game), but when you are in Easy mode and you still can't get past level three then you know something has gone wrong somewhere. This is all due to the devastatingly beautiful and horrifyingly difficult horse race stages that seem to litter this game like a group of ASBOs in a town centre on a Saturday night. At first I thought it must be my stupidity or uncoordinated hands and so I tested it out on six other friends, each of them hardened gamers with Mario's blood in their veins and Sonic's glint in their eye and, of the six, only one was able to do it (though I suspect he cheated) and this thankfully allowed me to continue with the game.

Now, I've played some difficult games in my time, but none that have literally made me cry and curse the creators for damning me with it (I got so close to throwing my PSP so many times that I started playing the game surrounded by cushions just in case!) The biggest problem with the game is not that these horse riding levels are difficult, but it's the utter hopelessness that they create as you feel that there is no way that you'll ever be able to overcome your opponent who (being computer operated) doesn't have to worry about getting the balance of two different controllers in order to get about. It got to the point that I didn't even bother; as soon as another level popped up the phone was already dialling for Craig to come around and complete it for me… until, he couldn't do it either! He cursed me, the game and then me again, forcing me to hunt the Internet for a cheat, a game save, something to get me through. Finding one, all I could do was cry tears of joy, though it did prompt me to email the creator: "Dear 414Steve, you completed GUN Showdown on the PSP. Surely you must be some form of higher power? I bow down in your presence, oh ruler of all games!!!" Strangely, he never replied? [Maybe he thought you were being sarcastic?! Ed].

Now having all the levels and bonuses open I could see the game for the sham that it is - I found that I needed to skip almost every other level due to the difficulty and because of this (remember I'm still on Easy mode) the enjoyment drained slowly away. Despite the plot moving the gameplay along, I found that each level seemed to consist of the same few elements - walk into area, talk to two or three people, gunman shows up with posse, they shoot at you, you kill them and then you move on. I know that this game is more or less an FPS, but I expected a little more depth to hold my interest. However, this doesn't happen and instead I found myself just randomly skipping levels and not bothering with any of it, as boredom closed in. Even on the harder difficulty levels, the game falters in that all it means is that there are more enemies to shoot and each one now requires headshots in order to down them, which is a nice touch, but again, after a while becomes monotonous and once completed it's doubtful you'll want to go through all this again.

For those who are thinking "Is the game worth the money because it has a few extras?" I'd answer with this - forget it! The extra bonuses you get are six mini-games that are just fancy and unplayable versions of Duck Hunt, which will pass a few minutes before you get bored or quite frankly irritated by the fact they don't work. The concept is that you scare some birds and then shoot them, a nice idea except for the fact you have no idea how to do this, and when the birds do fly into the air the controls are so stupid that you spend most of the time in Quick Draw aiming at a nearby tree! Also included is a very basic Texas Hold'Em Poker game that is about as much fun as the one that came with SmackDown vs Raw PSP (i.e. not a lot). Though there are no online features, there is the ability for up to six players to play locally in very weak Co-Operative, Deathmatch, or Golden Cross matches (the latter being a variation on capture the flag). These should be the highlight of the game and should be enough to sway my opinion, but they're not - not at all - rather than being the gaming equivalent of the Wild Bunch, this is more like the Munch Bunch, with you lucky to even find your opponent never mind trying to kill them.

GUN Showdown is not a terrible game, just a very disappointing one; it has perfect cinematic graphics, a clichéd but interesting story and wonderful voice acting and music. For every positive I pile on the scales, it can't take away the fact that the game is not helped by the useless controls and levels that should be easy, yet are mind numbingly difficult. I believe the criticism levelled at the PS2 version of its length scared the designers so much that they thought "Hey, if we make this game harder then they won't be able to complete it so fast!" This is a nice theory, but it also backfires, because if it's so hard that after several attempts you actually give up on ever completing it then that's the end of that. I'll face the facts - if I never had Craig or 414Steve, I would never have got through level three and when a game's that hard on Easy mode, it really is a game breaking problem. As such, if you do like the look of GUN Showdown, be very sure of your gaming prowess before you even think of unholstering your PSP.

Reviewed by David Simpson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).