Welcome back to the Wild West.
The prequel to Call of Juarez is just around the corner and we have slipped on our boots, polished our 6-shooters and placed our big hats firmly on our heads to bring you a preview of this gun-totin’, tobacco spittin’ first person shooter that is arriving not too very long after the original made it’s way to consoles.
Check out the full preview, after the jump.
Anyone who ever played the original Call of Juarez on PC, or even more recently on consoles knows that the developers who made it set out to try and create not only a first person shooter, but also a wild west game a little differently.
While the first game was by no means perfect, it did at least make a decent attempt to blend both action and stealth, as well as try a few new tricks in terms of story telling as well.
As mentioned earlier, Bound in Blood is a prequel to the original Call of Juarez which cleverly had you playing the roles of Billy, a wrongly accused young man, and his bible (not to mention huge arsenal of guns) wielding Uncle Ray.
The clever part of the series, was that Billy’s part of the game was entirely stealth based, whilst Uncle Ray’s sections played out like a more traditional shooter. What made it so clever was that Uncle Ray was hunting Billy down, whilst Billy was actually running for the hills, which made for some really interesting story elements as you essentially hunted down, as well as ran from… well, yourself.
Being a prequel, Bound in Blood takes you back to the years of the Civil War and tells you the story of Uncle Ray and his brother Thomas, as well as their involvement in the war up until the point where they have to make a tough decision, which ultimately puts them in a whole heap of cow dung.
Like the first game, you play the role of both Thomas and Ray, but this time around it’s a little different. Certain levels will require you to play one or the other, as they both play differently, Ray being a tank of sorts that can deal a lot of damage and use dynamite and duel weapons, and Thomas being better with ranged weapons, as well as having a couple of more stealthy approaches. They also have different “focus” modes that are gained by killing off enemies, and allow them to dispatch of a couple of enemies in a very short amount of time.
You are often together but at times you will split up completely, meaning that levels can also be replayed with the other character and will definitely mix things up quite a bit.
Some areas are quite open and the visuals can be very pretty at times. The sound does it’s job and the voice acting ranges from bad to good at times.
There is one thing about this game however, that has impressed me to no end, and that is the cover system. In my opinion it is nothing short of genius and should be completely stolen by as many first person shooter developers as possible.
Look out for our review in the not too distant future to find out all the nitty gritty details the game will ride off into the sunset, or hang from the rafters in the city square.
Last Updated: May 18, 2009
