Review Score:

Gamers rejoice as the Call of Duty franchise moves toward another Modern Warfare installment. Why? Because people are tired of playing through the same old wars in every game. We’ve seen D-Day more times than we care to remember. We’ve tamed Iwo Jima over and over again. We’ve crushed the Tet Offensive under several different boots. It seems that producer Activision finally got tired of waiting for new wars to pop up and decided to make up their own, and to that I say kudos.

However, in this overdone world of tanks, dogfights and gattling guns, there are some theaters of war that have been overlooked. The American Civil War, for example, has never gotten much attention in video game media, and for good reason. An exclusively American conflict is not likely to get much attention outside of the States. But, Ubisoft has managed to use that conflict to set a grander scene, that of the wild western frontier. A world of lawlessness and chaos, of heroes and vigilantes and, dare I say it, gunslingers. Cowboys and Indians, Confederates and Yankees. God, I could go on forever. This is exactly what Ubisoft has put forward in their new multi-platform release, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.

The original Call of Juarez managed to slip under the radar for most gamers, and that’s okay. It was plagued by design flaws and a very scattered storyline. However, this new prequel has outdone itself to redeem the series and to create a western game that outshines Outlaws and the Red Dead series.

Players take on the role of two brothers, Ray and Thomas McCall, who become Confederate Army deserters very early into the game. Taking their little brother William on the run with them, they flee the war scene, and after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox (remember your history, boys and girls), they find themselves fugitives on the western frontier. Life on the lam quickly becomes a search for gold and riches, which becomes riddled with betrayal and bloodlust.

The story is beautifully woven. You watch the evolution of your two main characters, mostly through William’s eyes as he narrates, making your way through the Wild West. Along the way, you confront Indians, renegade Confederates, and even banditos, all out to either get you for their own personal reasons, or to beat you to the legendary cursed treasure of Juarez. You really get to see the Wild West in a real way that many of us have not experienced since Clint Eastwood retired from the scene. …or at least not since Back to the Future Part 3.

Gameplay is fluid and fun. The game is a first person shooter, adhering to the standards of the genre, but allowing you to alternate between two different characters for different experiences and replay value. Ray, armed with duel revolvers and dynamite and the occasional gattling gun, seems to prefer brute force. Thomas is more about finesse, brandishing a rifle, a lasso and bow. Most chapters allow you to take your pick between the two brothers, catering to your individual style of play, and you can always go back and try each chapter again with the other brother. The two often behave cooperatively which is a nice touch, but it makes me wonder why Ubisoft did not include an option to play the game cooperatively with a second player. It seems almost built for that, and the lack of such an option when the game does include multiplayer just comes off as lazy.

The “concentration modes” are also a nice touch. Concentration modes are either player-executed or event-executed slow motion sequences that allow you to pick off multiple enemies very quickly and easily before you take too much damage. On paper, this sounds like a Max Payne ripoff, but it most certainly is not. This is done differently and when it is finished (and a pile of corpses is on the ground before you), you wish you had a real revolver to spin on your finger. Think of how cool you could look in your living room doing that!

Gameplay is also quite diverse, mixing up the traditional first-person experience with little mini-games as well. You’ll find yourself shooting from horseback and defending a stagecoach from the inside at different points. Most notably, there are occasional gun-duels as well. You’ll have to drop a given opponent quick-draw style before that opponent drops you. I think that this experience is the very essence of the desperado gunslinger, and its inclusion in the game scores major points on its own.

I have to talk about the graphics and sound in this game together because they are so intertwined. First of all, let’s get the bad out of the way. On the PC version, I did encounter some graphic glitches, clashes and flaws. I do not know if this holds on the console versions as well, but while these glitches were irritating, they did not detract to much from what is otherwise a piece of art. That’s really all I have to say on that.

Visually, Bound in Blood is beautiful. The PC version has a good set of graphic settings to cater to a range of machines, and the console versions adhere to current-gen standards. You do feel like you’re in the old west, from the dusty gales to the batwing doors the graphics hold true to the experience. The characters are drawn well and the animation style is very realistic. As far as the action goes, shooting someone has never felt as gratifying as it does in this game. You pull the trigger, the gun goes off with a nice, solid crash, the smoke spits out the back and your opponent crumples while your character thumbs back the hammer for another shot. You can almost smell the gunpowder.

The music also blends nicely with the scenery. Epic getaway tunes play as you’re trying to outrun the law or a gang of bandits, and the rest of the score is very subtle but fitting.

I’m just going to speak briefly about the multiplayer aspect of the game. You are not going to see anything here you have not seem before. Like I mentioned, there is no cooperative aspect of the game. You will find a number of options of team based shoot-em-ups, and several different classes and customizations you may select to play as. It’s all solidly done, more so than you might expect from a game like this, but there is nothing original. The play is very similar to Call of Duty, despite the different setting, and multiplayer is still plagued by several technical and connectivity issues that have left many fans clamoring for a quick patch.

Over all, the game is a good play. There are a lot of things it does well, it adds to a genre that is underpopulated and it is innovative. Despite slight problems with visual and multiplayer modes, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is definitely recommended to first-person shooter fans who are looking for a new angle. Try out a different conflict, and take an escape from today’s norm in war games. Yee haw, cowboy. …sorry, I couldn’t help it.

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