I just learned how the west was won by beating Call of Juarez, a FPS set in the wild west era of the U.S. CoJ is another developer’s take on this setting and while it comes closer in some parts than other recent western attempts such as Gun and Red Dead Revolver, it still doesn’t complete the whole feel of what a western game should be.
In an interesting twist, the story involves a young Mexican boy being chased by his old step uncle for a crime he did not commit. What makes this interesting is that you actually play as both of these characters. While never truly capturing the feel of playing as the hunter and the hunted, Call of Juarez does a good job of including all the elements you’d expect from western story; law, outlaws, Indians, Mexicans, train robberies, and horseback riding just to name a few. The dialogue is campy at times and the animations during the cutscenes are often stiff but CoJ still has a pretty good story behind it all.
Between the story parts is either the run and gun portions of the game as you control brutal Reverend Ray, or the more stealthy, platforming elements as the agile Billy Candle. I’m an action kind of guy so the good old reverend’s parts were much more exciting to me. Ray just felt like I was behind a hellfire and brimstone preaching bad ass able to shrug off handfuls of bullets because of his chest plate armor and dishing out a blasphemous form of justice on anyone with a gun. Not only did the reverend have more stamina, but he was also equipped with a Bible that would stop outlaws in their tracks as he read verses and he had a concentration function just like most western games do.
Billy’s levels added some variety to the game but the quality wasn’t always even. The stealth portions of the game proved to be more of a nuisance than effective thanks to the very tacked-on feeling stealth system. Also the platforming showcased the nice scenery found throughout the game, but was overall underwhelming. It’s only when Billy was getting chased or sneaking through houses did I enjoy these parts of the game.
The A.I. for the most part did the very least you’d expect A.I. to do. Running back and forth and stopping behind cover for brief moments were about as intelligent as the foes got. Most of the time however, they’d just reload where they stood and get shot. The best part of the enemies was the physics and slight destructibility of the environments: shooting people and watching them Fall through railings, tumble down cliffs or somersault over boxes was western movie quality.
For the most part the graphics were surprisingly good. While Call of Juarez may not the best that the 360 has to offer, the game did have some impressive environments and some graphical flair that I did not expect from this game. There are some drawbacks though that detract from the beauty, the textures on rocks make every rock look the same, shadows were often jaggy and the main characters were poorly animated when you could see portions of yourself. The environments sure were good looking but they often were very linear almost to the fact that some parts, while being in the great outdoors, felt like you were actually being led through corridors.
The gun fighting found throughout CoJ was very satisfying, again thanks to the physics and the fact that most of the guns felt natural. Different types of pistols of varying quality are found all over and each had separate rates of fire and amount of damage. The same could be said about the groups of shotguns, sawed off shotguns and rifles. Even the stealthy bow and arrows were enjoyable. Another way to dispatch enemies that I found very fun was from the oil lanterns. If you see one of these babies lying about, you simply pick it up, toss it at a foe, and shoot where ever you see the oil substance which would quickly engulf your enemy in flames. If a lantern was hanging, rather than sitting on the floor, simply shoot it and rain fire down on your foes. The fire would overcome most flammable objects but the environments aren’t fully destructible so no luck on setting whole houses on fire. The only bad portion of this is when foes are actually a blaze; I was hoping to see panicked human torches flailing about but was instead greeted with calm burning men that would continue shooting until they died. Oh well.
Voice acting was adequate; Reverend Ray’s excellent voice was offset by Billy Candle’s average monologues. The music is what you’d expect from a game like this and did a good job of picking up speed during the hectic moments. Also all the sound effects were spot on. Not too much too complain about here.
My main complaints stem mostly from the fact that Call of Juarez didn’t make any huge strides to push the western shooter subgenre any further. Random acts of violence were impossible to do simply because the game wouldn’t let you… no shooting horses, civilians, not even a wolf when it lay dead on the ground. The game does a good job of looking like a western game but a very poor job of feeling like one as there is little freedom to do anything outside of where the plot takes you. Having a good story, great environments and perfect period feeling weapons are what this game does good, but other games like Red Dead and Gun offer more of a true western feel.
Review by Smerlus
Nometet.com says: 74%
