Call of Juarez: The Good, The Bad, and the Unforgiven
December 30, 2007 | Filed Under Game Reviews | No Comments
Just when you thought Westerns were dead in the desert, Call of Juarez shows up with a story line that borrows elements from the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns and more than a dash of the more recent The Unforgiven. This kind of source material compels you, as a gamer, to follow the plot turns eagerly and to anticipate some great bloody gunplay.
The characters harken back to the Man With No Name and Billy Munny from those films. Most of the time, the lead protagonist (Billy Candle, an orphaned young man, mistakenly identified as the killer of his mother and father) has only a whip to fight his accuser, Reverend Ray (a one-time gunfighter now a man of the cloth), coincidently also his uncle. Got it?
Billy also has to fend off Apaches and lawmen who wish him either dead or captured. For this, he uses a bow and arrow and some hiding techniques, standard for Westerns. With four classes (sniper, rifleman, miner, and gunfighter), you have a decent variety of weapons to deal death with. Game play is well presented with seventeen maps in a believable environment and also features slow motion for both guns and bow and arrow. The differences between Billy and Ray are enough to keep your interest as their misunderstandings bring in a conflict between two relatively sympathetic characters that heightens the battles.
Visually, Call of Juarez is a winner. In daylight scenes, the handling of backlighting is awe-inspiring. The only drawback is in the shadowy scenes where the details get obscured somewhat. Music scoring complements the action much the same as the source materials’ score augments Clint’s dramas.
For sheer fun, Call of Juarez has no equal in the Western genre. Not for the young with bloody killing and some nasty calling out.
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