Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood review

Being a Western fan is tough if you’re a gamer, while there have been more WW2 FPS games than you can count there have been so few Western games that only two spring to mind, Call of Juarez and Red Dead Revolver.  It’s been an especially lean time as both games came out several years back, but Ubisoft and Techland are looking to keep the passion burning by releasing a prequel to their first Call of Juarez game with Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.

Bound in Blood is set before the events of the first game and deals with the three McCall brothers as they leave the Confederate army during the American Civil war to protect their family farm.  From here they end up escaping to Mexico to search for the fabled lost treasure of Juarez.  It’s a typical western plotline that merely serves to pad out the bits between the levels and while it might not be Hollywood material it’s done well enough to not grate on your nerves with one or two plot twists that are handled incredibly well.  In a similar style to the first Call of Juarez game you can choose to control one of two characters, in this case Ray and Thomas McCall. Each of the brothers specialises in a certain field with Ray being the tank in this case and being able to wield two revolvers at once while Thomas is better with rifles and can use his lasso to reach higher areas.  At the end of the day it’s more of a cosmetic difference with both brothers playing the same way and only the occasional split in a level.

One thing that both brothers have in common is their ability to kill hundreds of enemies with their weapons and Call of Juarez realises that this is meant to be fun so they’ve given a unique western twist to the bullet time story prevalent in so many games.  Instead of just hitting a button and killing hordes of enemies while time is slowed you have to kill several enemies in a row before activating it and performing an action to target enemies.  In the case of Ray you get a short time to target enemies with both your pistols before the bullet time runs out and you let loose with a torrent of fire from your pistols.  Thomas on the other hand requires you to hold down the right trigger and fan the right analogue stick as if it was a pistol’s hammer.  Both make you feel that bit closer to being an actual gunslinger, albeit one in a game.  The outstanding moment in the game comes though with the pistol duels which serve as boss encounters.  Here you and your opponent face off like a Western movie of old as you both circle each other and wait for a bell to sound before grabbing your pistol and shooting your opponent.  The controls work brilliantly in these mini battles with you having to control your character’s movement with the left stick to keep your opponent directly in front of you while you use the right stick to move your right hand closer to your gun before whipping it out and targeting the enemy across from you.  It’s a great atmospheric moment and never gets old throughout the game.

So all is well and good when it comes to your method of killing people, but what about the actual people you’re killing? Well the AI isn’t up to the levels of a PhD student but it manages to put up enough of a fight that the game is challenging enough for the most part.  They manage to duck and dive every so often but they do tend to enjoy soaking up your bullets as well and even though you fight Mexican bandits, rogue Confederate soldiers and Native Americans they all behave exactly the same.

Though the game sticks to the FPS formula pretty rigidly there are two sections later on that allow you a degree of freedom to ride across the Mexican plains to do some GTA style missions to earn extra cash to buy new weapons and ammo.  It sounds more exciting than it is in reality since the missions all boil down to the same thing with you fighting your way through a large horde of enemies before taking on the gang leader or Mexican bandit.  Thankfully though the actual main missions that form the majority of the game are well structured and fun to play through with some highlights being the blowing up of a dam in order to dry a lake to find a mystical amulet from a graveyard all while being chased in a canoe by angry Native Americans.  The only downside to the story mode is that it’s over way too quickly with my first playthrough lasting a mere 5 hours.  This is exacerbated when you realise that the replay value is very minimal with only collectibles and the option to play as the other brother being offered on a second playthrough.

When the odd slow moment comes you get a chance to look around and notice Techland’s Chrome Engine 4 in action.  The landscapes you travel through in the game are taken almost straight out of every Western movie with the arid plains of Arizona, Mexican deserts and Native American West being well represented.  Thankfully they all look the part and show just how good the Chrome Engine can look. The characters and buildings that populate these levels are also well done with the main characters looking particularly good.  The sound work they’ve put in Call of Juarez is of outstanding quality with a musical score that seems to have been composed by Ennio Morricone himself if you didn’t know any better, although for some reason there is a terrible rock track spliced into a Mexican shootout at one point during the game.  The voice actors are real good for a Polish made game with Ray being a stand out performance with his gruff and gravelly voice channeling a bit of the Clint Eastwood of old.

Online mutliplayer is well represented with a good choice of modes on offer with team based games dividing players into Lawmen and Outlaw groups.  Once again the local community seems to have taken to the game quite well and there are many games to be found online at any point.

So taking all the above into account is Call of Juarez the answer to a Western fan’s gaming drought?  Unfortunately not, as the game seems content to sit in the average bracket and it ever tries anything particularly noteworthy. That’s not to say it’s a bad game though, as it takes the staple elements of FPS games and adds a Western gloss to them.  That being said, this is a game that won’t win over any call of Duty or Halo players but might just scratch the gaming itch for Western fans until Red Dead Redemption arrives next year.

• Great sound design
• Solid Western FPS action

• Tries nothing new
• Way too short