Any first person shooter not set in World War 2 or Vietnam wins instant bonus points; in the current climate of “franchise development” a new idea is worth its weight in Gold...
Call of Juarez (pronounced Call of ‘Waa-rez’, so you don’t look stupid when you walk into your local games emporium and ask for it) is a Wild West shooter and sneak ‘em up following the tale of Billy Candle and his disastrous homecoming. He arrives to find his parents murdered and he gets the blame. In a schizophrenia inducing twist to the game you take it in turns to play both Billy and his pursuer, the gun toting, maniacal Reverend Ray. The format works well as you first play Billy as he flees through your stereotypical Wild West environments such as mining towns, mines, and train lines with the obligatory bandit heist. Billy relies on his agility, speed, stealth and his whip to avoid as much combat as possible. Once you complete the level with Billy you get to play as Ray as he pursues Billy over the same area with parts of the level familiar as Ray is forced to take a different path due to his lack of credible jumping ability.
The stealth sections are near torturous. Anyone used to play the Splinter Cell series of games will know that remaining hidden can be very frustrating especially when being seen results in an instant fail and restart. These instant death/fail scenarios are mind boggling in number, and without the kind of lethality you enjoy in Splinter Cell you feel vulnerable and can quickly lose the will to carry on. Unskippable conversation pieces punish you every time you have to repeat a section and some of the voice acting just adds insult to injury.
The gun play sections with the Reverend are far more enjoyable and more reflective of the Western genre that the game takes its roots from. Armed mostly with dual revolvers, each can be fired independently with separate controls, this takes some getting used to as you over use the weapon in your right hand as tradition dictates. The introduction of a bullet time style “Concentration” mode makes the Reverend a near angel of death; with both pistols holstered pressing either of the fire buttons slows time to a crawl and your pistols get a crosshair each, starting at the left and right of the screen and slowly converging. When they meet time is restored and you get to watch the bodies fall in real time. Again this takes some time to get used to with over reliance on one weapon initially. Also once you have started Concentration mode there is no way to stop it so if you draw for just one bad guy you’ll be waiting around for it to finish. If you’ve played Max Payne you’ll be wondering why the first game to implement ‘Bullet Time’ has still done it best.
Call of Juarez is beautiful in the most part with vegetation that outdoes even Oblivion, and convincing Wild West locations. The sheer variety is enough to keep you playing as if you find a set piece that doesn’t satisfy you, you can be sure that the game will throw something very different your way in the next scene. Perhaps Techland should have put a little more effort into making the stealth sections more entertaining rather than spending so much time modelling hat physics...
Addendum: Call Of Juarez comes packaged with Macrovision’s safeCast copy protection software which leaves a constantly running security process on your PC. While not as intrusive as StarForce it is still something to be aware of.
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