Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood [PC]

Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: PC (PS3, Xbox360 available)
Genre: First Person Shooting (with RPG element!)

So I got Call of Juarez yesterday, now I've finished the game once. I've never played or known about the first Call of Juarez that was released quite long ago though. And I'm certainly not a big fan of the age of cowboys, gunslingers, saloon, and all those stuff.

However, I found it pretty amusing playing this game, thus, it changed my attitude towards wild west a bit.

The story takes place on three brothers who survived after the civil war between southern confederate army and the north. You will be playing two of them: Ray and Thomas McCall. The McCall brothers fled from the battlefield and decided to become outlaws, discarding all the past they were serving the army. There you will meet your forever-annoying enemy, Colonel Barnsby who will follow you to the end.

The story is very deep and touching at some part. It ultimately gave me a sense of progression and developing relationship among characters. It's also full of cheating, betrayal, love and hate: Ray who is deeply jealous of his brother getting along with Melisa(Merisa?); Thomas who seems to have everything better that his big brother except the muscle; William the priest who seems to be the only one learning and trying to prevent the brothers from getting deeper; Juarez who sets them up since the beginning; and so on.

As I said, the story here is almost perfect. Every chapter you go through has something connected with other chapters - so don't skip the cutscenes!

GRAPHIC 9/10

Very rich environment, nicely detailed textures, great special effect. Call of Juarez offers you a pleasurable graphic which you won't get bored of. It reminded me of Unreal Engine 3 though (probably Ubisoft uses it again.) Lighting and shadow are completely outstanding. Of course, this game won't beat Crysis (neither other games can) but still, it is very beautiful and requires very low spec. I ran this game on XFX GTS250, 4GB Ram, Core2Duo E4500 and guess what, I never really faced any frame rate reduction. The game was so smooth, yet so astonishing.

However, 1 point was deducted due to that it can be pretty dizzy at some part. The sun effect can get you killed eventually. They make it realistic by exposing you to a very bright light every time you turn to face the sun. It's actually nice though, but as I said, it can be annoying during an intense gunfight.

Still, the graphic is great.

GAMEPLAY 8/10

The game offers you a semi-open world. After finishing some specific mission it will allow you to roam the enormous wasteland, buy some gears, or help someone who posted their requests at a weapon store.

You can select between Ray and Thomas at the beginning of each chapter. Both of them have two different gunning styles. You can wield two pistols and be specialized in close range by playing Ray - who will be equipped with two pistols, one either regular shotgun or sawed-off, and a dynamite. And he can carry the portable Gatling gun in the last chapter.

But if you prefer sniping at longer range, play Thomas. Thomas can equip long range rifle, two pistols as well (but can wield only one at a time), and the most accurate bow this world has ever known. He can use his Lasso to get to a higher spot like buildings or trees.

The game also features "Concentration Mode" which allows you to finish your enemies very easily. By killing certain amount of your opponents, the gauge on the upper right will be charged. Once it's fully charged you will be able to activate the Concentration Mode. Again, the two brothers have different, yet similar, modes.

Ray's Concentration Mode needs you to drag your mouse over multiple enemies. When the time's up, Ray will unleash a storm of bullets - sending them to eternal depth.
Thomas' Concentration Mode will require you to hold the left mouse button and keep pulling back your mouse as if you were pulling the, I don't know the word for that trigger on the back of revolver. Anyways, Thomas' mode will automatically aim for you, so just keep on pulling.

Another interesting part is the gun duel which will be your "boss-fight." I'm not going to spoil this, but telling you that it's very interesting - so go check it out.

REPLAY? 0/10

Nahhhhhh. As I mentioned, the game is quite short. I finished the game, normal difficulty, in 5 hours. 5 hours! without finding all the secrets though. To me, I don't really feel like playing the whole thing over just to see thing from another perspective. But yeah you can play another round as another character if you want, but that's all about replaying this game.

There are some secrets as I mentioned, all of them are in-game pictures and real photographs taken from real place back in that time. The pictures contain sub-story, actually just some conversations between the brothers. They are funny though.

Anyways, the Multiplayer mode doesn't look appealing at all. In fact, is there even anyone playing?

SOUND 5/10

AGAIN, like most of my review. I have no comment on sound and music because they are just average. I like the southern accent and the native indian dialects though.