Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood

The brothers McCall aren’t exactly the happiest of siblings. Their family home has been destroyed by them gosh durn yankees, they’ve deserted a losing Confederate army, they just can’t seem to stop fighting over women, they’re after a supposedly cursed treasure, and an old commander is hot on their tails with the intent to string them up. Oh, and don’t forget their co-conspirator Mexican bandit lord and his seductress wife making their lives that much crazier.

If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is. The surprisingly deep and enjoyable storyline begins in the Civil War–ravaged South and makes its way into the Wild West and Mexico, and it’s staged on absolutely gorgeous landscapes that range from Southern plantations to sprawling deserts and uninhabited ghost towns. In every setting, you can see for miles in every direction, and the scenery’s pretty close to picture perfect. Unfortunately, subpar voice acting, mute-worthy “jokes” between the brothers, and the eye-rollingly silly ending detract from the otherwise sublime presentation.

But none of those gripes can compare to the biggest crime committed here: no co-op! In a game that focuses more than a little on the exploits of two seemingly inseparable brothers, why would we not be able to bring a friend down the dusty trail? That absence is completely inexcusable, and the addition of pointless, paint-by-numbers competitive multiplayer only adds insult to injury.

The single-player combat that is here, however, is fairly well-done but somewhat basic. We ended up using Concentration Mode, which stops time to set up multiple kills, to find enemies in busy landscapes, and thankfully that proved useful. Even though we had the choice on many levels between the two brothers, we ended up sticking with one of them because we couldn’t hand the powerful rifle we had spent our hard-earned virtual dollars over to the other brother. One notable break from the FPS routine is the Western-style duels with bosses — while they’re certainly difficult, the badassery you feel when you manage to draw before your opponent totally makes up for it.

And get used to the slightly janky cover system because you’ll be using it a lot. Rarely did we find it strategically advantageous to move out from behind whatever rock, table, or wall we were hiding behind, which gave us a feeling of moving through a series of shooting ranges. But at least the ranges are pretty.