Call of Juarez Review - A former outlaw turned priest picking his guns up.... Wait this is Pale Rider.

By Sam Coles:

The western genre in the interactive form is a rarity, since Red Dead Redemption Rockstar Games scared everyone out of the genre. However Red Dead is not the only game within the genre, Call of Juarez is a first person shooter that released on PC in 2006 and the Xbox 360 in 2007 which is the version I’ll be talking about. I was first introduced to the series with Bound in Blood back in 2009, however this game is good but it certainly shows some cracks with its design which was fixed in later instalments.

Call of Juarez is about two protagonists Billy who is a half Mexican and Native American and his step uncle Ray McCall a former outlaw turned priest. Billy is framed for the murder of his mother and step father, where Ray finds him at the scene of the crime it’s not long until the small mining town falls into chaos and Ray picks up his rusted revolvers one last time but this time in the lord’s name. At first when I played through the first two chapters, something in the back of mind was poking me and I thought wait a minute this is Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider. However the story drops that moniker as you venture further through the plot, what I like about the narrative it switches perspective from Billy and Ray, with situations where Ray catches up with Billy it will switch to Billy’s point of view it’s a nice touch.

Gameplay is largely a first person shooter, but it does emphasise platforming which I will get into shortly. You can tell that the shooting in this game is a rough draft, not to say it is bad but animations for shooting can be rather anaemic with little recoil so you don’t get a sense of feedback. However this is remedied with excellent sound design from the weapons with a thunderous boom of the Winchester rifle to fast crack of the quick shooter revolver.  As Ray you have access to concentration mode where he goes into slow motion where two crosshairs scroll across the screen, this is not great because it’s hard to see if you’ve hit your targets as well knowing if they are dead or not due to the slow motion.

Let’s get into Billy’s gameplay, it is easily the worst parts of the game because it relies on platforming, which I will still champion that it does not work in a first person perspective with some exceptions and stealth. When I think about a western game I think of running around like a mad man with duel revolvers, not stealth or precise platforming. The stealth mechanics barely exist because it is hard to judge when enemies have line of sight on you, this can be a pain in the mandatory stealth sections where you are not allowed to be seen.

Visually the game doesn’t look bad for a 360 game that launched in 2007, the environments look beautiful at first they are very enclosed but as you progress through the story the areas start to open up with forests and canyons. Character models haven’t aged well, they look like something from the PS2 era especially NPC’s but this game was initially released on the PC in 2006, and games during that period were more or less PS2 games in a higher resolution. The game runs at an uncapped frame rate which can range from 30 to 60 frames per second depending what is happening on screen, it is rather jarring however it never drops below 30 frames per second.   

Despite some of weak elements such as the stealth and platforming sections Call of Juarez is a great western game before Red Dead Redemption came in and scared everyone off. It is easy to find on Xbox 360 and is super cheap so if you see it pick up it, it will keep you busy for 8 hours.