Customer Reviews

Call of Juarez

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ordered this game for my husband. He had one but used it until CD finally broke. He loves playing this game online and now he is back up and running with it.

A lot of games in the western genre have flirted with greatness without quite getting there. This is one of them. Call of Juarez is a fun FPS that throws a few twists into the mix but it is just shy of being great. You take the role of two characters, the Reverend Ray and Billy Candle. The reverend is chasing down Billy for a murder he thinks he committed. You get to play the cat and the mouse which is a fun twist. The cat, Reverend Ray, is a classic western gunslinger. He turns his enemies to swiss cheese with his trusty six shooters and sends them to the afterlife with quotes from his bible. Ray can enter 'concentration mode' that slows time and allows you make numerous head shots before the enemy knows what hit them. This does make things a little easy but it's a very cinematic experience and a lot of fun. The mouse, Billy Candle, is a sneaky kid who's good with a whip and a bow and arrow. His levels become rather tedious. They are mostly stealth missions that get old fast. Start at point A, sneak past an army of enemies, end at point B. If you are spotted you can't fight or run for it, you just fail the level. In order to stay hidden you must crouch by pressing and holding the Ctrl button with your pinky finger for long periods of time which becomes uncomfortable after a while. Adding stealth kills or stuns would have made those levels a lot more entertaining. He does have some interesting platforming levels that are kind of fun though. Playing both characters requires you to play through the same map more than once which may put some people off. The routes available and enemy placement are different for each so I didn't mind.
The story, music, and voice acting are top notch (except for Billy, his actor doesn't even try). You've got train robberies, saloons, horse and carriage chases, duels at high noon and the western landscapes and towns are beautiful. That was a small problem actually. The levels are very linear but the landscape is just begging for exploration. There is no opportunity or reason to though. If they had taken this story and gameplay style and put it in a huge sandbox ala GTA or Elder Scrolls this would have been the masterpiece fans of the western genre have been, and still are, waiting for. But as it is, it's worth a play through. Now that it's hit the bargain bin you shouldn't pass it up!

P.S. I've heard a rumor that some versions of this game contain the SecuROM virus. The version I have doesn't so I can't say for sure. Good luck!