Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood

It is hard to find a good first-person shooter that does something different these days.   A lot have come and gone, not leaving much of an impact in their wake.   Not too many have something new to bring to the table.   Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood may not be as impressive as, say, Modern Warfare, but that’s not to say it doesn’t have anything at all to offer.   It is one of the few games to take a stab at a time in history when gunfights weren’t measured by who has the better weapon, or who can use a sniper scope most effectively.   The time period is of course the old west.   Even though this title may not be the most fun you could have, it does have quite a few bright spots in an otherwise saturated market of modern day combat.

 

The most noticeable thing that Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood has going for it is a fine story.   This truly is a tale of family and vengeance.   It is very engaging and comes to a very nice conclusion.   With this epic tale, you are also frequently prompted to make a choice to play as either Ray, the twin guns blazin’ older brother, or Thomas the more accurate and strategic younger brother.   Both characters have more or less the same story, but there are several parts in the game where the action is divided and you will get a different experience on a given level depending on which you choose.  

 

Though the two brothers have different abilities, the overall game play is about the same.   Which is to say that it is rather poor.   The guns of the period aren’t that exciting to use and carry steep reloading times.   The saving grace of course is that the enemy is subject to the same problem.   As you run out of ammo and need to reload you run into the next gameplay flaw, the cover system.   In today’s era of cover mechanics, there is just no excuse for this horrible design.   Basically you run up to something and the game automatically throws you into cover mode.   While in cover the right analogue stick is your means of peeking around to try and blast your foes.   The problem is that it is really hard to aim at them because what you would normally do to aim is instead moving you aren’t you cover, many times losing the enemy you were trying to aim for.

 

After you reload that weapon and make a run for blasting fools, you come to the next hurdle in the game, the difficulty.   If you don’t mind a more realistic experience, then you won’t mind the fact that an enemy takes about 3 to 7 shots to murder you depending on how close you are to them and their weapon of choice.   Couple this with the fact that there are always a lot of enemies at one time and you have what is more a wall of bullets bearing down on you.   Even if you do survive this you also on occasion get some TNT thrown at you much like one would throw a grenade.   What is even more impressive is the foe’s inhumanly long range at which they can throw it.   There is one part where it is flung halfway across the map at you making it more a matter of running up to them then trying to dodge.  

 

For all of it’s flaws however, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood has some good points as well.   The sound quality of the weapons is simply amazing.   The music is a crazy hybrid of rock/western.   The dialogue is really well done when it isn’t repeated a million times because it occurs before a save point.   Plus the visuals are really nice, when they try to be.   All of these come together to really suck you into to feeling of being out in the wild west.   Since there’s not a lot who attempt to crack this market, that really is something to be said.   So if you can take the good with the bad Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is your game.   The fact that you can pick this game up for cheap doesn’t hurt either.   There are definitely worse games you could spend 20 bucks on.   6 out of 10 and recommended for those who like westerns and don’t mind getting frustrated a few times in the name of a good story.