Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is a western themed first person shooter, which is something that we don’t get all too often in the gaming world. Sure there are plenty of movies and books based off the wild west but there have only been a couple of video games dedicated to this concept whereas World War II and Sci-fi Aliens have been driven into the ground by developers. You play as two brothers, both bad ass desperadoes as you would expect from the genre, who desert from the confederate army in order to protect their home and get caught up in a quest for Aztec treasure. Throughout the course of the game you go around checking many things off the western checklist, such as; breaking people out of jail, showdowns, fighting Mexican bandits and escorting wagons through Indian territory.
GRAPHICS
Bound in Blood on the whole is a very nice looking game, the developers have spent a lot of time making sure the game has some very nice and interesting effects. For example the heat and smoke effects are some of the best I’ve seen in any game, this sounds like a weird thing to pick up on but seems as they are both so well done and used quite a lot I thought they were worth mentioning. The game takes place in North America around the time of the American Civil War so the environments are made up of lush forests, dusty wooden towns and high up mountains and in the valleys between, all of which are beautifully detailed and just all round gorgeous. Also, in case your wondering the game runs smoothly and consistently so there are no weird graphical problems which detract from your enjoyment of the game, all of the lighting and water and animations are all incredibly realised and all look fantastic. However, the game tries to put over a cinematic feel by flourishes such as blurring and shaking around explosions, and seems as there are a lot of explosions this happens all the time, so if you’re a fan of actually being able to see what you are doing then you may get a bit frustrated at the games eagerness to obscure your view by constant blurring and shaking of the screen, which is also not fun if you are prone to motion sickness from games.
STORY
It has a typical western story, so much so that I expect that the writers for this game went down to the local HMV and picked up several box-sets of western DVDs as well as a few notepads and by the end of the weekend Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood was written. By this is mean it is quite a generic story, this can kind of be excused when compared to other games which are also retreading heavily used storyline and in it’s defense the western storyline, whilst relying heavily upon cliches, have not been seen a great deal in video games westerns are usually the realm of movies. So you play as one of two brothers (there is also a 3rd brother named William, however the characters insist on calling him Wee’um for some unknown reason, but he’s not playable presumably because he’s useless) and whilst been western angry bad asses they learn of some hidden Aztec treasure so being the tough action types that they are decide they want a piece of that. On the way they meet up with some Mexican bandits, a lady who is rubbish at not being kidnapped and a group of Native Americans who have knowledge of the ancient mystical ways. I don’t want to give away any spoilers however if you’ve ever watched a western movie you can kind of see where the game is going, also if you’ve ever enjoyed the western storyline then you will most likely find this an enjoyable experience. It may be a bit generic and derivative but it is well held together and fairly well written.
GAMEPLAY
So Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is a first person shooter so that leaves some key questions as to how well it fares as a first person shooter. First of all how good and fun is the actual shooting in the game. So as already mentioned the game is set in the wild west and one thing to note is that old guns are not very good which can make the game really frustrating when you’ve used the six shots you get in just about every revolver and then have to spend an absolute age reloading as the enemies are happily filling you full of holes. At the beginning at each level the game gives you the choice of which character you wish to play as and this does have an effect on the gameplay, Thomas takes slightly less damage but his health regenerates incredibly fast so that doesn’t really matter, he also is a crack shot with a rifle and uses a lasso to reach areas Ray cannot. Ray, on the other hand, can dual wield hand guns so you have twice the ammo (and twice the reload time) and can take a bit more damage than Thomas and seems to move a bit slower as well as having the option to use dynamite as grenades. There is pretty much no real reason to ever use Ray if you have the option of Thomas open to you, the rifles are easily the best weapon in the game and as Ray is really inaccurate due to heavy reliance on dual handguns and the health regeneration of Thomas is so ridiculously fast you do not need the health boost of Ray. This reeks of poor game design when you find that the best way to play a game is with only one particular character using one particular gun then something has gone wrong somewhere along the line. One last thing I’m going to throw out there is the fact that movement feels really slow, compared to games such as Call of Duty where movement is nice and quick whereas in comparison Call of Juarez feels like all the characters are moving through treacle.
OVERALL
There are good things and bad things with Call of Juarez, like many games. The graphics are gorgeous and so are the many effects that help suck you into the game, the story whilst a bit cliched holds together well and conveys a coherent and entertaining story. On the other hand as a first person shooter there are some serious problems, movement is too slow the guns are terrible and take ages to reload and one of the two characters feels a bit redundant. Also, for a game which has two main characters who are almost always together throughout the game to not have co-operative play is criminal. The game is fun but has it’s issues, worth playing and worth finishing I would recommend it to people who live westerns and are looking for a really good western game, but I would not really recommend it to people who want a good first person shooter. Oh, and as a last note NEVER play the first game simply called Call of Juarez as that game is terrible.
Posted by Tofu Hero 
Tofu Hero Gaming 