November 11, 2009

I don’t believe there was a single “Yeehaw.”

Various podding casts mentioned, when it came out, that Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood was actually pretty damn good. I wasn’t sure what to think. Brer liked the first one, but while I bought it for like 10 bucks, I never played it. Essner did, though, and said it was overwhelmingly mediocre. Would the sequel (which was actually a prequel) actually be any good? People said so. I rented it from Gamefly, like I now do, to check it out.

Honestly, it was pretty great. I wouldn’t say $60 great, but if you like Westerns, it’s at least $40 great. It was a fun all the way through.

A large part of that is due to the fact that this is a game that actually pays attention to the story, and gets it pretty right. The story is about these three outlaw brothers (one of which is a priest who doesn’t actually do any fighting) and their characters are set up in a very realistic way. They aren’t the most complex people in the world, but you really buy them throughout the story, and that makes it a lot of fun. Thomas and Ray, the two playable characters, banter constantly while they fight, and while it does repeat more than it should, the banter is very endearing, as they do the sibling rivalry thing during fights.
“You can’t hit shit, brother!”
“Shit ain’t what I’m trying to hit!”
They’re just cool people like that. The story itself is not… great, but it’s handled in a smart way. It is honestly just an excuse to get Ray and Thomas into classic Western setpieces and have them murder tons of cowboys and sometimes indians. It works, though.

The shooting, as well, is pretty darn good. Ray and Thomas both have different specialties in guns, and you can pick who you want to use on every level. Ray can dual-wield pistols, kick open locked doors, and throw dynamite. (Which works, kind of unrealistically, like grenades in most shooters, but eh, it’s fun.) Thomas gets extra zoom on rifles, uses a lasso to reach high places, and can use a bow and throwing knives for silent takedowns. (but what’s the fun of stealth, hm?) You can pick which brother to use on every level, but you’re actually kind of penalized for switching it up. There’s achievements for playing all the way through with one brother or the other, and it’s much harder to keep both brothers’ guns upgraded at the same time.

Which brings me, I guess, to the parts of the game that confused me. None of them particularly detracted from the experience, but I just found them odd.
The game has this entire “buy new guns” system where you collect money from dead enemies and from taking bounties and stuff and then can go to stores and buy weapons. There are maybe 10 classes of weapons in the game (Bow, Classic Rifle, Heavy Rifle, Classic Pistol, Quickshooter, Volcanic Pistol, and so on) and then on each of these classes, they have a rating, from Rusty (so it would say Rusty Quickshooter) to Superb. Enemies don’t start dropping guns rated higher than Rusty until right near the end of the game, so if you want better weapons, you need to go buy them.
However, I don’t see WHY you’d need better weapons. The upgraded versions of the guns seem barely different if at all. I couldn’t notice the difference between a “Prime” Classic Pistol and a “Rusty’ Classic Pistol, really. Granted, even some of the pistols didn’t seem all that different. Sure, it takes a little less time to reload a Quickshooter, and a Hybrid Gun holds 9 rounds, but they’re very small differences that don’t actually FEEL different. You’ll pick a class of pistol you like, certainly, but it doesn’t seem like a significant choice, and you never feel like you’re getting that much of an advantage for going out of your way to collect money and upgrade guns.
The other weird thing about this game is a lack of co-op. This is a game where 95% of the time you are playing alongside the other brother, controlled by the AI. Now, the AI does a good job, and will kill enemies and feel like a help and not a hindrance, but it just seems like a no-brainer to let someone else pick up the controller and play along. I assume it didn’t happen because that is probably a whole lot of work to make work, but man, this game has Deathmatch multiplayer stuff. I would have much, much rather seen them put the money they spent on that into giving this game co-op. I’d probably have bought it from Gamefly if it had that, because it is really fun.

Still, none of these things ruin the experience at all. This is a really fun little Western game, and completely worth your time to play. Surely it’s dropped to a reasonable price if you want to pick it up, or you can just rent it like I did. You will have a pretty damn good time. It’s certainly made me interested in whatever the little team that put this out is doing next.

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