A beautiful Western shooter with some really annoying parts

Author's Rating:

Pros: Reverend Ray, great sound effects and lush graphics

Cons: Billy, poor acting (Billy again), ludicrous jumping missions.

The Bottom Line: 
A good shooter that had the potential to be great except for some major foibles.

Author's Review
Call of Juarez is a Western game that suffers from one of the worst cases of good/bad schizophrenia I've seen in a game in a long time. It's been out for a few months, so I was able to get it a bit cheaper, and that definitely did up its "fun quotient" for me, as I didn't feel that I got ripped off (that's always a good thing when you're buying a game).

Call of Juarez is a first-person shooter that has you playing two roles. The first is Billy, a half-Mexican young man whose Mexican father left when he was very young (if not before he was born) and a stepfather who mercilessly beat him for doing wrong. Finally, Billy had had enough and went out to seek his fortune, looking for the fabled gold of Juarez. Unsuccessful, he's heading back to his mother's ranch, but when he gets there, he discovers that both have been brutally murdered.

The other character you play is Reverend Ray, a preacher and expert gunfighter who sees himself as the right hand of God's vengeance. He's told that his brother (Billy's stepfather) and his wife have been murdered, and he runs to the ranch to discover Billy there. Getting the wrong impression, he's determined to track Billy down and make him pay for his transgressions. The story has its share of Western stereotypes, whether it's a bunch of lost gold or cattle rustlers or train robberies, but overall it's quite well-done and intriguing. The characters are well-thought out and it has a good pace (with a couple of exceptions remarked on below).

The game's default difficulty level actually isn't too bad, as I did my fair share of dying. It wasn't too easy, but it also wasn't so complicated that I got frustrated. In so many recent games, the default difficulty level is so easy that you have to bump it up, and when you do that difficulty level is almost impossible. Call of Juarez is just right.

Once you are finished with the story mode (about 10-15 hours at most, probably less if you're better at these games than I am), there are three extra missions that don't involve any of the characters we've come to know in the game. Instead, you play a generic lawman who has been tasked with cleaning up a cattle-rustling gang that is terrorizing the local area. The story, short as it is, takes a very obvious turn, but the missions add length to a game that could be considered short otherwise. It's too bad the main story couldn't have been lengthened, but considering how at least one of the story missions is nothing more than padding anyway, maybe that's just as well.

There are also various duels that can be unlocked during the story mode. These duels can be done one after the other once you're finished with the game (that's what I did) or done as soon as you've unlocked them if you'd rather. You get an achievement for finishing all the duels (there are 8 or 9 of them in total), but that's about it.

Gameplay

Each character you play has different abilities, varying your strategies in using them. Billy can climb (fences or ledges), he can use the bow and arrow, he can sneak around, and he has a trusty whip that will let him swing across chasms and kill the occasional spider. Meanwhile, Ray mainly uses guns, and when he uses his pistols, he can enter "concentration mode." In this mode, everything slows down as two targets (one to your left and one to your right) slowly move toward the center until they join up. As this is happening, you can shift these targets to kill multiple bad guys. You're not immune in this mode, but the bad guys react so slowly that you're only likely to be hit once or twice. It's actually quite the cool effect, especially when you're hit as the blood slowly spatters in front of you. Once used, this ability takes a few seconds to replenish. Incidentally, the lawman in the extra missions also has this ability.

You also have access to other guns, be they shotguns (almost useless, or at least I never used them), rifles, and the occasional sniper rifle. There's also dynamite that you can light and throw, too. Both characters have access to these weapons, though Billy rarely uses them. Ray also has the ability to read from the Good Book, which will make your opponents stop and listen for a second or two, giving you time to cap them with the six-shooter in your other hand. I didn't find this very useful in the default difficulty level, but it may be more so in the hard one.

The controls are fairly straightforward, with the right trigger firing the gun in your right hand, the left trigger firing the gun in your left (or bringing up the aiming reticule if you're using something other than pistols). For Concentration Mode, you have to have your guns sheathed (by pressing down on the d-pad) and your pistols equipped. The X button is your action button, whether it's grabbing something (and you can grab lots of things) or opening a door. The Y button reloads your weapons.

The main problem with Call of Juarez is that Billy's missions can be incredibly dull. Many of his missions require him to sneak through a bunch of bad guys without being spotted. If he is, you have to start over. This can get monotonous, and especially annoying when you're almost finished (or at least to a save point) when you're spotted and you have to go back to the last save point. Other times, you don't automatically fail but the other guys are so well-armed compared to you that you're going to die quickly.

Also, many of Billy's missions require you to climb and jump over chasms, most of the time by using your whip to grab hold of a handy branch and swing across. The problem is that the perspective in this shooter (and most others) is so skewed that it's often hard to gauge whether you've got enough momentum to make it across. Just how far should I climb up my whip to get enough swing to make it? This resulted in many deaths as I fell to the bottom of the canyon.

Even worse is one mission in the middle of the story that is made up completely of climbing and jumping. An Indian wise man gives you the task of climbing this mountain to get an eagle's feather, just to prove your courage. Needless to say, you'll die many times here, though there are no adversaries to face (except a couple of rattlesnakes that will fall to your whip and you having to avoid an eagle that might knock you off the ledge). This mission is tedious, annoying, and just plain pointless. Even when you finally get to the top, you still have to get down again. There's not even a story reason for it, considering what happens after you return. I have an idea for a game. Let's take the most annoying feature in the game, and make an entire mission of it!

Thankfully, Ray is a lot of fun to play, making up for all of Billy's problems (the only good parts of Billy's story are the ones using the bow and arrow). His Concentration mode is fun to use, so much so that I occasionally had to die a few times before realizing that I should probably be using another weapon instead. He also has a lot more variety to his missions, which keeps you from getting bored.

The AI isn't too bad, though the bad guys don't use cover as much as they could. The duels you end up fighting at the end of many chapters (as well as the extra duel missions you unlock) alternate between very easy and very hard. Some will get you with one shot (so you'd better get a head shot quick!) and others will take 5+ seconds before doing much damage to you. At least the bad guys don't generally charge you, giving you easy targets.

Graphics
The graphics are generally stellar, and you may find yourself stopping and admiring the huge vistas that open up to you as you traverse the western countryside. Wide open canyons, mountains in the distance, trees, all are bountiful and beautiful to look at. As long as you don't get too close, where the trees and bushes start to look very grainy. Fire doesn't look that good, though, but the character models are generally decent. They're definitely not very realistic, but at least they're not blocky. The only problem is that the character animation isn't that good, so when one of the main bad guys is trying to be menacing, he looks like a marionette instead. And don't get me started on how you look if you are either looking in a mirror or if you just look down at yourself. Again, the movements are kind of choppy and don't really flow well.

Sound
The sound is excellent in this game. The music feels appropriate to the Western genre without being clichéd. The voice acting is hit or miss, though. The guy who plays Ray is excellent, getting the right mix of fire and brimstone righteousness into his voice. He gives the right amount of gravitas to the story. Unfortunately, the guy who plays Billy (none of them are credited in the manual and I didn't bother sitting through the credits when I finished) talks way too quickly and is just plain boring to listen to. The other characters you'll generally hear only once, and they're ok.

The ambient sound is also quite good, immersing you in the setting. The gunfire is excellent, with bullets pinging off the wall when they miss and the like. Fire sounds good too (though it doesn't look it), with a hearty crackle to the flames. Overall, the sound is a definitely plus in this game.

Multiplayer
I've started playing multiplayer now, but unfortunately this game doesn't seem to have lasted much. You can play ranked matches or player matches, but there doesn't seem to be enough people online for the ranked ones. One time there weren't any games available, and last night there weren't enough to make it a ranked match (we were playing, but I kept getting the message "waiting for players to join for ranked match.") Player matches are more readily available, but there still aren't too many players.

There are a bunch of modes, though, if you can find somebody. Skirmish seems to be the most popular, which is basically team-deathmatch. There's also "Wanted," where one guy is being chased by everybody else. Only the wanted guy gets points for killing people, and you also get points for how long you stay wanted before dying. The person who kills the wanted guy becomes wanted himself. Finally, there are variations of "Capture the Flag," though in this game it's gold instead.

What I've seen of it is pretty good, though it would have to be more popular before I can give more information on it.

Overall
Call of Juarez is a really fun game, but there are way too many tedious parts to give it a full recommendation. Just when I was starting to get interested in the game, I'd be playing Billy again and have to jump some small chasm. After dying four or five times, I'd be frustrated again. I'd definitely recommend the game, though I wouldn't spend anywhere near full price for it.