That lack of cowboy hysteria growing up didn't stop me from enjoying Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood though. Nope, what follows is an interesting story (even if a little far-fetched) that spans from the civil war onwards. The civil war parts are actually pretty cool - they show how fucked up it must have been for both sides, without taking the southern-apologetic stance that pisses everyone off. Nope, Barnsby is every bit the racist southern scumbag we all love to hate.
As a first person shooter, CoJBiB ain't terrible. It's not awesome, nor is it gorgeous for showing off the PS3's capabilities in the same way as say, CoD4... but it's solid and I had a good time playing it. The story's a bit far-fetched, but hey, what good cowboy story isn't - and it kept me up until 4am one morning playing it.
If it's starting to sound like I don't have any real complaints about it, well, think again. First of all the most aggravating thing is that the game freezes for a half second or so at every checkpoint - the way it does this doesn't make me think it's intentional.
The controls are also not very customizable, with you only having about five choices for control schemes and no ability to change anything manually. That's fine in the instance of say, MAG... who's controls closely mirror the standard used in CoD et al. But if you're going to change things up, you bloody well better have a way to change them back.
At first the weapons-select thing pissed me off, but I quickly got used to it and it actually worked out pretty well, particularly when you have an inventory full of weapons.
My final gripe - this game suffers badly from assuming you have a great new TV: the indians in the mountains of Arizona are almost impossible to see at times, so you basically wave your reticule around until it turns red. I'm not sure how badly it affects those with HDTVs, but my SD CRT turned into a nightmare on that level.
The gunslinger duel portions of the game are pretty intense, depicting really well the nervousness that must have gone into the whole thing - though I'm not entirely sure why everyone waits for a bell to draw in the game. They can get aggravating if you're not good at them, but once you start figuring out the best place on the screen to keep the enemy and the perfect spot to keep your hand you can breeze through them most of the time. Barnsby, who's supposed to be really really quick on the draw, was down for the count on my 4th try on medium difficulty - which didn't seem too terrible to me.
Online Multiplayer in Bound in Blood is there, and there are some clever additions such as bank robberies and western-twists on the whole "marked man" thing but it's not exactly a dynamite experience, and it's also a bit of a ghost town at the moment (though you can definitely find a game, unlike F.E.A.R.2).
I think I would have been upset if I'd paid full price for this game, on account of it wouldn't have kept my attention for very long at all. But now it's down under $20 used, I think it's worth a play. When it drops down below $15, without question pick it up.
