You don't need to be ambidextrous to play The Gunstringer, but it sure wouldn't hurt. This quirky Kinect game requires you to use both your hands to control a marionette zombie cowboy who's out for revenge from beyond the grave, and as we found from our hands-on at this year's E3, it's a fun romp that's silly and challenging at the same time.

　　As we covered in our first look at the game, The Gunstringer tells the story of a former-head of a posse who was betrayed and killed by his former posse members and who has now risen from the grave as a one-eyed blue skeleton to mete out bullet-laden justice. The game's narrative is told as if the game were an actual stage play. The Gunstringer himself is a puppet; the "sets" are two-dimensional pieces of wood; and the audience is actually real people (fans of developer Twisted Pixel, apparently), who interject after key scenes to clap, cheer, or jeer at what's happening "on stage."

　　You control The Gunstringer with your left hand, moving him left and right across the screen to avoid bullets and obstacles, as well as quickly jerking upward to jump. Your right hand is used as your gun arm. You can "paint" up to six targets onscreen, with a quick flip up of your wrist and arm firing your shots. And, no, you won't have to make the classic two-fingers extended out as a gun pose to make the game recognize your right hand movements, but it certainly feels better to do so if only to get into the quirky feel of the game.

　　One level we saw had The Gunstringer traversing through some typical Western terrain. We had to move him left and right to avoid obstacles, such as rolling boulders and cacti. And, we shot at numerous enemies blocking our path by painting our targets before letting off a shot. These foes weren't completely helpless against our attacks, however, and would shoot back and occasionally throw sticks of dynamite our way. Luckily, projectiles could also be targeted, although you need to be quick to shoot them out of the sky.

　　After running down some hombres fleeing in a stagecoach, we entered a brief side-scrolling platforming section, where The Gunstringer had to act like Mario and jump over flaming barrels thrown at him down a series of ramps. After reaching the top, we managed to get our hands on another pistol, which triggered our favorite section of the demo: dual-wielding section where we had to use both hands to shoot at targets. This was actually tougher than it would seem. Targets would attack us from both sides at the same time, and it took a bit of brain unlatching to independently move our hands and attack separate foes.

　　The next level featured significantly less shooting and was focused purely on platforming and punching. In the first half of this new level, The Gunstringer had to run away from falling logs, and you had to time your jumps to make sure the puppet didn't get squashed all while trying to navigate him left or right through fields of cacti. Before the level ended, we spied the end boss, an odd-looking mix of what looked like an alligator and a lumberjack. The game went into flashback then, sending us back to a time when The Gunstringer was still alive and on the hunt for a fugitive. Punching was the favored method of attack here, with short jabs with our right hand sufficing for most of our opponents. At the end of this flashback sequence was our quarry--a large bearded man-- and we promptly leapt on him to deliver a series of left and right hand blows. He eventually fell--straight on top of an alligator, it seems. After a confusing cutscene, we surmised that the two weren't actually fighting but were instead...being friendly, if you get our drift. Thus was our explanation for our gator-human hybrid.

　　We didn't get to take on the hybrid in this play-through, but we were left impressed with our brief time with the game. Its use of the Kinect was easy to pick up but hard to master, and it was a lot of fun avoiding obstacles while trying to shoot down foes at the same time. We're keen to get further hands-on time with the game, with The Gunstringer due out for release on the Xbox 360 later this year.