Call of Juarez (XBOX 360) takes place in Texas in 1882. Billy is framed for the murder of his mother and stepfather, and his uncle Ray, a reverend (who oddly resembles the Saint of Killers from Garth Ennis' "Preacher"), takes off his collar, dusts off his six-shooters, and takes the good book out on the road in a quest to avenge his brother. How, you might ask, does a hardened man of the cloth suddenly run out with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other and go on a killing spree? We're still trying to figure that one out ourselves.Ultimately, you'll take on the roles of both Billy and Reverend Ray through fifteen levels of first-person, gun-blazing action. Each has his own different abilities; Reverend Ray can not only snap out quick-draw shots, but he can use the Holy Book to stun some of the opposition with his hellfire and brimstone sermons before he splatters their repentant feelings onto the terrain.
Billy has a whip and bow that he uses for stealthier missions. The whip also doubles as a means of traversing areas by swinging from trees, and the bow is a reusable weapon; after gory kills, he can reclaim arrows from outlaw corpses. While Reverend Ray's levels feel like straightforward FPS action (with more reloading and that weird Bible-stun, of course), it's in Billy's levels that CoJ really shows its flaws. Using the whip to traverse chasms tends to result in trial-by-death situations more often than it works; even the first episode of the game results in a great deal of frustration. Even riding a horse is unwieldy, annoying, and just not very much fun.
Eventually, as Billy fights to discover who killed his family, and Ray gets closer to hunting him down, new gameplay dynamics come into the fold. Both characters have Concentration Mode. The way it works is that you'll disarm yourself by hitting down on the D-pad, waiting for an icon in the lower-right to flash; next time your character unholsters his guns, the action will creep to a halt ala bullet time. It's a nice feature, but the issue is that Techland hasn't really hit the sweet spot with it. Were it too conservative, we'd gripe that it's not used enough. Unfortunately, the designers were a tad too liberal with it, and you really only need to disarm for a few seconds before you're shooting people in lots of ouch-worthy places via slo-mo. Billy's bow even has Concentration Mode built into it, which just feels too cheap. It's indicative of the problems that Call of Juarez faces; on one hand, gunplay is too easy, and on another, getting around certain obstacles is downright frustrating.
All's not a total wash, however. With Techland's emphasis on physics in the environment, you'll also get to do some fairly cool stuff, like shoot oil lamps to start fires. Indeed, one of CoJ's Achievements will find you setting outlaws ablaze around the midpoint of the game.
Call of Juarez
ESRB rating: M (Mature)
Publisher: Not Available
Developer: Techland (Poland)
Call of Juarez Also Available: PC
RPG