Call of Juarez

The Western is one of film’s most iconic and beloved genres, but has long been overlooked in video games.  Other than a handful of Western-themed shooters from the 90s, such as Gunsmoke, Sunset Riders, and Wild Guns, we haven’t played cowboys and Indians in a virtual playground.  Then in the mid-00s the genre saw a brief revival spurred by Rockstar’s Red Dead Revolver, followed by Neversoft’s excellent Gun, and punctuated with Techland’s Call of Juarez.  With nothing more than a history of budget PC titles behind the developer, you’d expect Techland’s effort wouldn’t be worth note.  Nevertheless,  upon finishing Call of Juarez I concluded that I didn’t just play the most faithful ode to the Western, but one of the all time great first person shooters.

While Red Dead Revolver and Gun were good games with their own takes on the genre, I found that both faltered in one major area; it always seemed like the most memorable moments representative of the Western were delivered through cutscenes, in those games.  Of course such an obvious ode to a genre remembered through film rather than books will appear cinematic in delivery, but I often wanted to shut those games off and just watch The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly again.  Techland completely understand this and sought to make a decisively immersive experience.  It’s safe to say that the game build itself on the same model of Half-Life, where the attention is always on you, the player, with no breaks from the action.  None of this would matter though if the story didn’t hold up.

Call of Juarez’s story is epic in scope, complex in theory, but simple and enjoyable in execution.  In the game, you play as both Billy Candle, a young misunderstood rebel who returns to his home only to be wrongly accused of murder, and Reverend Ray, Billy’s bat shit crazy step-father who chases him in response to the murder.  You alternate between these two characters throughout the game.  Techland really took a step back from the Western and thought of ways to implement the genre into the interactive medium rather than just sandwich a story better suited for the cinema around chunks of gameplay.  Playing opposing characters who are at each other’s neck really makes for some memorable moments and an exciting story that owes as much to The Fugitive as it does to Western classics.  Saying where the game story goes after the opening 3 hours would lead to some major spoilers, but know that this is secretly the best Indian Jones game since The Fate of Atlantis.

It’s rare that we see story and gameplay come together as well as it does in Call of Juarez.  The gameplay elements by themselves aren’t anything groundbreaking, but when you are sneaking through a bandit camp with the right context given it can be a lot of fun.  And, make no mistake; you will be doing a lot of sneaking when you play as Billy Candle, the young gun.  This leads me to the biggest complaint of the game, the opening chapter.  The game opens with a handful of infuriating stealth sections that are noticeably worse than the rest of the game.  When you couple this with the steep learning curve, it can be enough to throw the controller down and never pick it up again.  If you stick with it, you’ll soon be playing as Reverend Ray and it’s a good time from that point on.  There are some familiar mechanics at play, such as a quickdraw mode similar to the one in Gun, bow-and-arrow fights, and horseback riding.  The stand-out moments of the game, however, lie in its variety.  One chapter will have you climbing a mountain that recalls Shadow of the Colossus, another will have you solving the mystery of a hidden treasure that feels like an old-school adventure title, and then you’ll have plenty of straight-forward action chapters, like one where you have to fight off a gang from within a mine shaft—and yes you’ll be able to ride in a mine cart and derail enemies just like in Temple of Doom.

Call of Juarez is rough around the edges; between the lacking intro and awkward quick draw controls, there is room for improvement, which the upcoming sequel will hopefully address.  There is no doubt that the pros strongly outweigh the cons.   Even if it is a short adventure, it is much better than most modern westerns that make it to theatres.  If you are an Indiana Jones fan or western fan or first person shooter fan or…hell, this is just a game that needs to be played and appreciated by anyone who is a fan of inventive games with a strong narrative.  Whether it was bad timing in its release or just ahead of its time in its design, Call of Juarez has been an unsung hero in the FPS genre for far too long.  It may lay low on Metacritic with a yellow rating, but the term “buried treasure” has never been more appropriate.