Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (PS3) - Review

Angry Southener's Head West: Prequel

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is the prequel to the original title Call of Juarez (Which I have not played, but Calix has been gracious enough to lend me to try later on). With the upcoming Western themed game Red Dead Redemption, I thought I’d give another western themed game a shot since there really have not been too many with this current generation of console hardware.

Story: You take the role as one of the two brothers Ray or Thomas, while the story is completely narrated by their irritating younger brother William. You began in the south as Ray fighting off Union forces during the Civil War. Dumping you right into the thick of the action, Ray is desperate to find Thomas, to save him and then to go on to save their family from Union Forces. Before heading to the family plantation, Ray and Thomas are ordered to help the Confederate Cornel Barnsby defend Jonesboro. Having no choice, they desert the Confederate Army and head on back home, only to find their mother dead at the hands of Union Soldiers and their younger brother William grieving. The three brothers flee to the west, in search of the means to rebuild the family farm, all the while being hunted down by a psychotic and vengeful Cornel Barnsby and his rag tag army. Amidst crossing multiple state and territorial borders, crossing and double crossing different factions and native tribes, Ray and Thomas fall for the same girl who is the wife/girlfriend of one of the factions that eventually split the brothers up and bring hell upon them. The plot has many twists, many of which you can most likely see coming from a mile away. The plot is also a mix of many spaghetti western movies, with some civil war drama mixed in to try to justify the motives of the characters. It is for all intensive purposes a flat and uninteresting story that very loosely ties the characters to the locations and situations they get themselves into.

The chase begins here.

Presentation: I think in many ways the developers, for the most part, have crafted a very believable and plausible version of the wild west. Nothing really stands out though past the initial setting however, as enemy character models are bland with very stiff animation. Explosion effects are decent when explosives come into play, but where the game excels is in the look and feel of old western themed combat. Now I know that the six shooter repeating pistol combat is not exactly historically accurate in the context used in the game, however there is something rather fascinating about the way the play characters hands interact with the six shooters in both aim, holding of the weapon, and even more importantly reloading. I loved watching the characters thumb cock the hammer of the pistol back just before firing. Thomas’s special focus shot involved holding the pistol in one hand and rapidly slamming his other hand on the hammer for a rapid fire moment just as you would see in a western movie (Which has also been proven to be historically inaccurate).One of the major problems I found while playing the game were the lack of proper indicators of who was firing at me, or enemy positions. In more than one situation I found myself being shot to death by enemy fire that I could not see for the reason of it being a large environment and character’s blending in with the surroundings. I’m talking near invisibility, and in places you may not expect fire to be coming from especially from the HUD indicator for where fire is coming from. Also, Ray has a comically bad run when playing as him while dual wielding pistol’s, it reminds me of the T1000 running after John Connor in Terminator 2, without the robotic context as an excuse. Don’t get me wrong, the game is not ugly, and has a very realistic feel for the most part which suits the content and period well. What IS inexcusable is the god-awful voice acting and Sound mixing. To narrow down the good only the two primary characters, and Barnsby have decent voice actors who don’t always phone in the dialogue, but absolutely, and I do mean ABSOLUTELY every other voiced NPC in and out of any and every cutscene do an absolutely horrible job. The voices of every Native American are the most insulting to the entire lineup. On top of the bad voice acting, channel mixing has a lot of issues, often cutting out character dialogue in odd intervals when moving, or at short distances away. Thankfully the soundtrack is not half bad, if at times slightly questionable. During combat a semi-guitar heavy track plays that doesn’t fit the theme of the game, but is still decent regardless by its own merit.

Few memorable moments

Gameplay: This is a first person shooter, and a slow one at that. Slow as the weapons perform closer to what their period counter parts would versus a Modern Warfare ultra speedy and accurate assault rifle. All weapons require that every bullet be reloaded one at a time. Even though Ray and Thomas reload all weapons at inhuman speeds, this process is still slower than most would expect. As well, most weapons are fairly weak if you do not land a headshot until later in the game when you can purchase slightly upgraded versions of the weapons you pick up off the ground. Some other notable mentions to the combat are the focus or bullet time sorts of special attacks that are basically room clearing one shot kill streaks. After so many kills you are awarded the ability to engage in one of these slow motion attacks, however if you do not use it before a timer runs out you must re earn the ability, which is not difficult at all. Ray and Thomas’s abilities do essentially the same thing, just with a different animation. Ray allows you to move your cursor on multiple enemies and their attack points, to then unleash a deadly barrage of fire from both of his pistols. Thomas does the aforementioned hand hammer trick which is a much more accurate and less bullet consuming ability.

Goddamn Woman.

It really should be said that Thomas is the better of the two brothers in every way. Ray is competent, but Thomas is geared toward sharpshooting with both pistols and rifles making him a much more flexible choice. Ray does take more damage and can dish out more as he can dual wield two pistols at all times, but is also bulkier and slower and just plain boring in comparison.

Special: Call of Juarez: Bound is Blood can now be found for thirty bucks or less used, but might as well suit you as a rental at best. There is a DLC multiplayer map pack that is completely useless as the online community is completely dead. I was unable to find a single match, but one that only had a single person who was shooting the windows out of the building’s, otherwise its a dead game from a re-playability perspective.

Conclusion: its short, it’s simple, it’s bland and it’s uninspired. There is nearly no online community to speak of for half the trophies available to obtain, and it’s all in all a renter at best. I wouldn’t pay more than twenty bucks for this game, because once you play through it the first time, I doubt you will ever do so again. This is not to say that it is bad, it is just par for the course and totally forgettable.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is a ** out of 5

By: Bobby Major