Heed the Call
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is the greatest Old West game ever made. It's also a great FPS in its own right.
Published: August 12, 2009
Of course, if you'd prefer the killin' company of actual people, Techland threw in a surprisingly robust online multiplayer section too (though no co-op, unfortunately). Though the battles are fairly standard deathmatch, multi-objective strings and find-and-kill/protect-the target modes, none of them feel tacked on, and there's actually a rather neat little class-based system and progressive rank unlocks. The ranks are directly tied to a "bounty," so offing a higher-ranked player will let you pocket more cash for the kill. That cash can then be saved, or poured into a temporary upgrade to a particular class' abilities for the rest of the round. Money earned during a game goes into a general pool, which can then be used to buy permanent unlocks of more varied character classes. Each of the classes have their own unique weapons and core abilities (speed, health, etc.), and actually offer some really cool variety.
Though it's obviously not as prevalent in the multiplayer bits, the visuals kicked by the Chrome Engine 4 are impressive as hell in single-player. Ample use of normal maps and detailed textures keep all the environments looking different (the brothers, too, look fantastic up close), but more cinematic effects like depth of field blur when aiming (it really is fun to watch the camera focus on objects of varying depth while everything in the fore and background blurs out in real-time) and a great use of high dynamic range lighting beyond just blooming the hell out of everything makes transitions from low-light areas to brighter ones a blast of light that slowly pulls back to normal levels. It actually ends up having an effect on battles at certain parts of the game. Things like slick looking water and some absolutely gorgeous animated God Rays late in the game absolutely floored me.
All them purdy visuals come at a cost on the PS3, though: the framerate is usually fairly solid, but can dip pretty horrendously in certain parts. Screen tearing is absolutely horrid, and constant, and really does detract from things -- at least until you get used to it. Seeing little details like dust devils whipping through the middle of town or some of the best volumetric fog I've ever seen in a game toward the end of the single-player help balance things out, at least. The cinematics are plagued by some hilariously bad lip synching, animation and characters with weird looking eyes, not to mention a bit of level-of-detail pop-in in wider, more open areas.
Fortunately, the audio is similarly impressive, and doesn't suffer from nearly as many detractors. The voice acting, as a whole, is really quite good, though some of the Mexican/Indian accents can be a little off-putting in their amateurishness. Fortunately, Ray's drawly growl more than makes up for it, and there's a ton of banter back and forth between the brothers in any given level. A few of the lines are repeated here and there (though they're contextual, so if you kill off all the enemies as Thomas before Ray can get there, he'll complain about not having anything to shoot at, followed by a snippy retort from your character), but there's an unusually great number of mission-specific lines delivered at a near-constant pace.
Everything in the presentation pales, however, to the game's music, which is absolutely phenomenal. Pawel Blaszczak's score instantly invokes some of the more modern Western-themed soundtracks, with heavy Greg Edmonson (Firefly, Uncharted) and Reinhold Heil/Johnny Klimek (Deadwood) undertones without sounding like anything was directly cribbed. The soundtrack stands on its own and fits Bound in Blood perfectly, alternating between lazy slides on the guitar, a few whistled tracks that sound right out of Ennio Morricone's playbook to more tribal drum-driven bits when dealing with Apaches and Comanches to lilting guitars when in Mexico. It's as varied as the locales in the game yet never feels like it dips in any of them, which is a rare treat. Bound in Blood's soundtrack really is one of the best of the year, and that includes all the weapons fire, the sound of crunching boots and ringing spurs and everything else pumped out of the nicely separated 5.1 audio.
I really can't think the folks at Techland for reaching out to us and getting the game in our hands. I would have missed out on one of the most surprisingly great, wonderfully varied and genuinely authentic takes on the Old West in any medium, and hands-down the best Western game ever made. If that doesn't send you running to your nearest games store, I don't know what will.
