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I enjoy a good western from time to time and I’m going to be honest, I was always under the impression that Call of Juarez was like Call of Duty but in a western setting. Now that I’ve finally played it, I can tell you that’s not accurate. I’ve always had an interest in the series but never pulled the trigger on playing the first two games. I did play Call of Juarez: Gunslinger some time ago and really enjoyed it. I also played Call of Juarez: The Cartel and remember it being not so great. So I figured I would have a go at the series again but start at the beginning this time. Developed by Techland and published by Ubisoft, Call of Juarez was released in the United States for PC and Xbox 360 in June, 2007.
There are some significant differences between the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game. From what I understand, the developer toned down some of the stealth and implemented regenerating health and new motion capture animations in the 360 version. For this review, I played the PC version. I did consult the game’s PCGamingWiki page and downloaded and applied the Call of Juarez Aspect & FOV Fix. This fix removes the black bars from the top and bottom of the screen during gameplay and comes with additional FOV options. Call of Juarez does come with a multiplayer component and I actually found a server with some players but this review will only focus on the single player.
The player assumes the role of two protagonists, Billy Candle and Ray McCall, the local preacher. The story plays out in episodes and alternates between the two. It opens with young Billy returning home after years of searching for the Lost Gold of Juarez. When he discovers his mother and stepfather have been killed, he panics and flees. Ray, brother of Billy’s stepfather and rumored to have once been a gunslinger, sets out to track Billy down. Much of the campaign follows Billy on the run and Ray in pursuit and their encounters with bandits and Apaches. Call of Juarez features some classic hallmarks of the western genre including plenty of gunslinging, duels, chases on horseback, and even a damsel in distress to rescue. When playing as one character, you’ll encounter the other at multiple points, usually at the end of an episode and then in the next episode, you’ll see how the other character got there which I thought was kind of neat.
I enjoyed the plot for the most part. The story is primarily conveyed through dialogue and the gameplay will often transition to cut scenes, most of which are viewed from your character’s perspective. Some of the writing and dialogue doesn’t always hit the mark in my opinion but the voice work is good, overall. Although, Marc Alaimo’s performance as Ray really steals the show. Fantastic performance. I do think the developer did a good job at nailing the western tone and atmosphere but I feel that their attempts at immersion don’t always land, but that has more to do with the gameplay than the narrative.
Call of Juarez is interesting to me because it feels like it may have been made on a budget and that its stuck between generations. To me, the gameplay sometimes made it feel like something from the sixth-generation era but it looks like a game from the start of the seventh-generation era. I suppose it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what I mean and maybe it’s just me and maybe if you play it, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. I said before, I was initially under the impression this game was Call of Duty in a western setting. It’s not nor does it showcase the same kind of production values. I also think the developer was ambitious because there’s a lot of things they tried to do in Call of Juarez and not all of it works and is why I feel it may have been made on a budget. But I can’t confirm that. However, it did indeed release at the start of the seventh-generation era of consoles.
Billy and Ray can perform many of the same functions but there are some differences between the two. For one thing, Ray can enter concentration mode where the gameplay enters slow motion and two reticles slowly move towards the center of the screen, allowing you to easily shoot one or multiple enemies. Ray’s missions are more action-oriented and a lot of Billy’s missions are more stealth-focused which I feel ends up negatively affecting the pacing and some of his missions are just downright boring. Both characters can find and use any weapons they come across and Billy will have access to a bow and whip that he can use to climb to reach higher elevations and swing from things like branches.
You’ll get your hands on revolvers that can be dual wielded, a sawed-off shotgun, double barreled shotgun, rifle, and even a scoped rifle. You can also pick up and throw tomahawks. Guns can misfire or break and many of the guns you come across are rusty which I’ve read means they have worse parameters than the regular guns. I’m guessing this is an attempt at immersion but it doesn’t really add anything to the gameplay as far as I’m concerned. For one thing, I didn’t even notice much of a difference in terms of feel between rusty and normal guns. I assumed some things were different in the beginning but after a while, I just kind of forgot about it because it didn’t make a difference for me. Weapons can be found in the environments and enemies drop weapons when killed so guns are basically everywhere and can easily be replaced. The game doesn’t really give you many reasons to get attached to certain weapons. There’s all kinds of revolvers which is cool but shotguns and rifles are always the same. Rusty or not, I was able to drop foes pretty easily with every gun I used.
I would say Call of Juarez works best as a straight up first-person shooter. Running and gunning is a great time and engaging enemies on horseback is also fun. The gunplay is pretty good thanks to good audiovisual feedback and the gore effects and physics. Bullets can destroy parts of the environments, gunfire is accompanied by smoke, bullet impacts on surfaces result in smoke and debris filling the air, hats can go flying off people’s heads, blood will splatter on surfaces, bodies ragdoll, arrows can be seen sticking in bodies and blood surrounds the wounds. It all contributes to good-feeling gunplay. That said, some elements can feel a little clunky but I think that’s the result of the game being a product of its time. For the most part, the action is great and was the most enjoyable aspect of the game for me.
I did go into Call of Juarez expecting a straightforward action-oriented western so I was a little surprised when I discovered there was more to it. Unfortunately, almost everything not action-oriented is lackluster, underwhelming, and/or tedious. For one thing, there’s an element of interactivity here but the game doesn’t do anything interesting with it. You can pick up and throw things, you’ll sometimes have to stack things to climb on, and you can use buckets of water to put out fires. But that’s as far as it goes. The game doesn’t really do anything interesting, exciting or clever with the physics or environments in regards to interactivity. Then there’s stealth.
There are points in the game where Billy will have to sneak into areas and if he’s spotted, you have to restart the whole sequence. Thankfully, the game supports quicksaving and quickloading. It’s not that I’m against stealth but it’s just not that fun in Call of Juarez. You need to stay quiet and out of sight and can hide in bushes or foliage and must simply wait for enemies to look away from where you need to go before moving. It’s very simple stealth stuff and trial and error. Furthermore, some of Billy’s missions are just boring. There’s one mission in the game where you have to hunt rabbits with a bow and climb a mountain to retrieve a feather. For some reason the objective locations for the rabbits are excessively far apart and climbing the mountain is tedious and boring. This mission is just mundane and feels like unnecessary padding. There’s another mission where Billy is let loose in a large open-ended area to locate something. Considering the environments up to this point are primarily linear, this mission really threw me off and took longer to beat than it probably should have. I don’t know what the developer was trying to do here with the open-ended area but I think whatever it was doesn’t work. In the end, I would say many of Billy’s missions just mess with the pacing.
Ray’s missions are far superior. He’ll blast his way through a town, assault a ranch with a group of Texas Rangers, and chase a stage-coach on horseback while fending off enemies. The game puts Ray in a lot of cool scenarios that kind of typify my idea of a good action packed western. At certain points, the protagonists will have to fist fight foes which is pretty straightforward and NPCs will sometimes challenge the protagonists to gunfights or duels. These are sequences where you wait for a timer to reach zero and then pull out your gun and try to kill the enemy before he kills you. It works well enough and I didn’t have any trouble until the final gunfight where what I’m guessing is a bug resulted in the controls not working properly. I couldn’t pull and aim the gun and it was very frustrating. My research led me to discover I’m not the only player who encountered this issue and increasing the mouse sensitivity is what resolved it.
As indicated earlier, the environments are primarily linear and the compass on your HUD almost always contains an objective marker but sometimes it wasn’t always clear where I had to go. There may be a path that can easily be missed or you have to do something specific. I won’t say there’s a lot of puzzle solving in the game although the beginning made me think it would lean more in that direction since it teaches you to move boxes and things to climb on to reach certain areas. But it’s not very often you have to do things like that. Most of the time, you simply move from objective to objective. The incentives to explore include ammo and health pickups and secrets which are wanted posters. Enemies can be found standing or walking around and they’ll sometimes appear on ledges or in windows. They exhibit average intelligence and will run around, shoot at you, throw dynamite, and you’re typically outnumbered so it’s wise to be careful during firefights and not just rush through areas. The environments are always filled with plenty of things to use as cover and moving from cover to cover during a battle is always a good strategy.
Visually, Call of Juarez does show it’s age but the presentation holds up fairly well. Some of the animations, specifically during interactions, can appear stiff and pop-in is noticeable but for the most part, I have no major complaints with the presentation. The weapon models look great, the game showcases some beautiful landscapes and backgrounds, and Call of Juarez is a first-person shooter with full body awareness and that’s something I always appreciate. When you look down, you can see your character’s chest and legs. The visual effects look good and the environments are detailed and really nail the western feel. For me, the audio was a mixed bag. The soundtrack is good and contains a lot of fitting tunes but I felt the audio mixing or levels could have been tweaked better despite the fact you can manually adjust volume levels. Weapons fire and most sound effects are fine but when characters would speak, the volume of the NPCs seemed to way too low to me and I ensured the speech volume was up. Maybe I’m the only one who encountered this because I couldn’t find any reports of the same problem. It should be noted that the game’s PCGamingWiki page does indicate it has issues with certain channels. On the technical side, the game ran mostly fine until I got to the end. It crashed once or twice and then near the end it would crash repeatedly. What finally fixed it was switching to DirectX 9. Up until then I was using DirectX 10.
I enjoyed Call of Juarez and I was having a blast in the beginning but as I went on, my enjoyment started to taper off. Or to put it another way, I went from having a great time to only a good time. The game is at its best when you’re running around shooting people. When it makes you actually feel like a gunslinger. And that’s because the gunplay and action are solid. So basically, the game is at its best when you’re playing as Ray. It seems like the developer tried to do something different with Billy’s missions, I guess as a way to mix up the traditional run and gun action. Add variety. But most of it doesn’t work well in my opinion. Some of his missions are just boring and the stealth can be tedious. Also, the game doesn’t do anything interesting with the interactivity or physics. You can pick up objects and move and throw things but you’re not required to do this often and there’s rarely a reason to do so. And I don’t know what’s going on with that one open-ended mission. It’s like they wanted to incorporate all these different ideas and only one really works well. From what I understand about the Xbox 360 version, that might actually be the better version of the game. But in the end, I did have fun.
I would recommend Call of Juarez if you’re looking for a fun western first-person shooter. As of this review, it’s going for about ten bucks on Steam and GoG and I think that’s a fair price considering the age of the game and what you’re actually getting. It’s got some issues but it’s not horrible and I have high hopes that the sequel, Bound in Blood, improves things. Ultimately, I think Call of Juarez is a good game that could have been better. It’s not my favorite game in the genre but it makes for a pretty good western. Definitely check it out.