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Review: Call of Juarez Bound in Blood

Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3 and PC. Developed by Techland. Published by Ubisoft.

I’ll keep this short and sweet. As a fan of  the original game, I’ve found this prequel to be highly disappointing.  The original filled a gap in gaming- the well done western FPS. The sequel seems half-hearted in many ways while being more assured in execution. It’s rather lacking in something that for the sake of being descriptive I shall call soul.

In BiB you play as Confederate Brothers Ray or Thomas. In the aftermath of the South’s loss, these two become a pale parody of a spaghetti western protagonist. You usually choose which of the two you’ll play as at the start of a level with the other tagging along as a computer controlled ally. Ray (who becomes Reverend Ray, star of the first game) is the stronger of the two, able to dual wield pistols and be generally Cardassian. Thomas replaces Billy and is the more agile of the two, able to jump higher and use a lasso to scale some obstacles. Both characters have concentration mode, which is a fancy bullet-time mode that works differently for each of the brothers.

There are story missions and some optional side missions in this game but to be honest they aren’t particularly compelling to play compared to the original. Seemingly, most end in a one on one duel mechanic that is painful in the extreme to beat. Even though there is a save point just before it you have to move your guy so that your opponent is in a specific point (more or less the centre of the screen) . It’s shittier than a constipated ox that has eaten curry for a week and suddenly been exposed to very cold air.

So apart from the fights, the rest of the game is put together well but it’s just missing that hunger to do stuff that was in the first game. This is too by-the-numbers to be more than a time-waster while you wait for better games to be released. You go somewhere, and basically kill everyone who attacks you. But you don’t do in it an interesting way. The first game had a mix of stealth, climbing, Ray going off his nut and quoting the bible while he killed baddies. Here you just kill everything. In between chapters you are able to go off and do some side missions but these are more of the same- go and kill everyone and often ending in another annoying duel.

The multiplayer is not too bad and with more of a community, could have been a fun diversion for a while. It’s definitely better than the MP portion of Wolfenstein (a wasted opportunity if ever there was one) with multiple modes. I played a few rounds of a mode where you played as either the outlaws or the law. I was an outlaw, sticking it to the man as I blew up various safes and vaults in a delightful western town circa 1890-ish. Of course, know where the next objectives are are just an invitation to the Law -abiding team to just camp with rifles but it was fun while it lasted. Probably the most fun part of the game since it doesn’t rely on Techland’s half-hearted design.

So while the original was a breath of fresh air, the sequel is as stale as a box of donuts left in the back seat for a month. Looks brand new but probably best left unopened

Controller1.com rating 1/3

CALL OF JUAREZ

Reviewed on Xbox 360. also on PC. Dev: Techland. Publisher: Ubisoft

Developed by polish developers Techland and released for PC in 2006, this was picked up by Ubisoft and released in 2007 on Xbox 360. It’s a Western, a setting that has not done all that well in games. Sure there were levels in the Duke Nukem games on N64 and in Timesplitters. And there was Red Dead Revolver (decent), Dead Man’s Hand (awful) and Gun (good, but not great). Call of Juarez is actually pretty good.

It didn’t score well on PC reviews but did better on Xbox 360. The demo came out on LIVE last year just as games such as Bioshock and Halo were about to hit so the timing of the Xbox 360 version was poor. But now that I’ve played my way through Bioshock (Bioshock? Bioshock!), Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Mario Galaxy, Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted and Orange Box, I picked up Call of Juarez on the cheap. I thought “for 30 bucks, if I at least get 4 hours out of it, I’m fine with that”. So anout 12-13 hours later, I finish the thing on medium and enjoyed it a lot.

It’s a first person shooter set in the wild west. You play as two different characters throughout the game. First, there’s Billy a young half-breed who’s accused of a murder he didn’t commit and goes on the run from grizzled Reverend Ray, who you play for the other half of the game.

Billy can climb, use a bow and hide from those following him by hiding in bushes and use a whip as a weapon or to climb and swing to new areas. Rev Ray can’t climb, but has “concentration mode” which is like a poor man’s bullet time and can stun some enemies by reading a passage from the bible (after which you shoot them). Throw some platforming, stealth missions, horseriding and a lot of shooting and you have a fairly varied set of gameplay dynamics.

Most of it is done very well. Except for the platforming. I must say there’s a reason why most FPS’s don’t have platforming elements in them any more and its a lesson that the Call of Juarez creators seemed to have missed because they are easily the most frustrating parts of the game. And these aren’t skippable bits of the game either so you end up jumping and hoping for the best quite often. I also found trying to negotiate a horse down a steep slope not to be all that much fun.

The presentation is excellent. The graphics are very good apart from some draw-in issues with the grass and some pop-in in the large outdoor areas. The framerate is smooth though there a degree of screen tearing. Audio is excellent with great music (that ultimately gets overused) decent voice acting (Reverend Ray is voiced by Marc Alaimo from Deep Space Nine) and nice sound effects. The story and cutscenes are pretty well done. They’re aren’t fancy but they get the job done well.

Overall – if you’ve played all the big FPSes you’ll probably enjoy Call of Juarez. It is definitely better than the Western themed games of last generation even if it’s not Bioshock great.

C1 Rating: 2/3