Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood

As a prequel, Bound in Blood does a good job of presenting the characters, their storylines and what eventually leads back into the franchise history. It also packs in a ton of fast action, loads of explosions and a heavy dose of duels against opponents that want to take you to Boot Hill. Unfortunately, the repetitive nature of the missions, coupled with some technical issues, really keeps this title from standing out more. What's worse, the constant freezing whenever the game saves checkpoints breaks up the action, which really breaks you out of the flow of the gameplay, and is simply inexcus...

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood doesn't make the most of its setting, but it's a solid FPS with a few twists to give it an identity of its own.

Bound in Blood has remarkable aesthetic detail at first glance but up close there are glaring technical problems. The design of the game is confounded by the decision to include open world encounters, as the majority of the game is quite linear. These open world situations reflect a vastly barren environment, and while visually stunning, offers little to interact with. The environments also hinder the gameplay when enemies become virtually impossible to spot as they are blended to the terrain, creating confusion as to where you’re being shot from. During cutscenes, the game suffers from screen...

My overall impression was a very good one. On my first playthrough I used only Ray and I couldn’t help it… I had to start again to play with Thomas . It gave me a feeling I didn’t feel since Bioshock , a game that climbed up to my favourite FPS list. Maybe it’s because there are few western games out there , maybe it’s the game itself , but I have to say , Techland did a fine job. So fine that now Bioshock has a friend on the top of my favourite FPS list. Whether you like FPS , good games , or just want to play something to kill time , this should be on top of your “To Buy” list. Now , if you’...

All in all, Bound in Blood is another solid title. Whilst there may not be anything spectacular about it, the game is an improvement over its predecessor in some respects with increased replayability, and an enhanced multiplayer system. Some of the old niggles are still there, along with the new ones, however these are easily ignored. Those of you looking for something different will find yourselves right at home with this title, and those of you who enjoyed the first game shouldn’t be disa...

As far as genres go in the shooter world, the western genre remains fairly sacred and generally untouched. The truth is, there probably isn’t that much of an audience to warrant more than one or two titles every few years. Given that caveat, 2009 will surely be a great year for western fans out there, with Red Dead Revolver expected in the fall and Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood invading consoles this week. The original Call of Juarez title, when it finally got ported to the Xbox 360, was g...