You play as Silas Greaves who has stumbled into a local saloon where he is quickly identified as the great bounty hunter featured in dime novels digested by the town's resident dime-novel geek. Quickly, Silas is invited to have a seat and a drink provided he tell all about his crusades. And who wouldn't want to hear them? Word is, Silas was in with Billy the Kid, took on The Innocents as well as the Dalton Brothers, and crossed paths with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Its these stories, as narrated by Silas himself, that setup the playing field for the player.
The overall story of the game itself is pulpy and joyously entertaining. The characters present are voiced exceptionally well, especially from John Cygan and Paul Eiding as Silas and Bartender Ben respectively. As Silas spins his yarns, they directly impact how you play through the current level. This can not only provide a lot of surprises and large shifts in pace, but it also provides a lot of room for the development team to do what they will with the story, player paths and progression, and linear gameplay without the player feeling burnt out or disappointed that there's all of this perceivable freedom they're being locked out from by way of arbitrary invisible walls and such. It also keeps the game fresh and unpredictable. In an event you'll experience if you play through the demo, Silas recounts a time where he ran into Pat Garret. Dwight, the dime-novel enthusiast, comes in to illustrate how he'd read that Pat challenged Silas to a duel. After winning the storied duel through gameplay, Silas backs the whole thing up saying that wasn't how it went at all. Time rewinds and when you make it to the spot Dwight muscled in on, Silas explains that Pat straight-up knocked him out thinking he was Billy the Kid. The last thing Silas could recall was Pat confused, "Wait, that's not Billy..."
Such a concept could enable a team to build a paltry number of levels and have the player play through the same environments again and again with altered paths and enemy setups. If that were the case here, it'd be hard to complain about such a devised purpose being that this is a budget title. Techland used this to get the most out of what they created though, spawning unique events that are set up to take advantage of every opportunity an environment could offer. Whereas mines could offer either the shafts of the mines or the rails and systems of transportation outside them, Techland has decided to offer both. When an environment has seemingly exhausted its opportunities, only then will a new environment with new thrills be introduced. Let me tell you something, Gunslinger is sporting a huge amount of level variety with detail you wouldn't expect to see from a digital, budget title like this.
Part of why I'm giddy as hell over the story and narrative present is because its focus is always centered around gameplay first and foremost. One of my favorite moments in the game was Silas describing a battle in the swamps; one of the people in the saloon imagined it must've been quite pretty given the time of year for the location but Silas assured them he wouldn't know because the fog was so thick that he couldn't make out his hands in front of his face. Immediately, you go from the perceived situation of the listener where things are gorgeously lit up by the sun as you tear through the swamp with an army to the sky disappearing behind a ghastly, white fog and you're left with no sense of direction and naught a soul in your surroundings. The game takes away your waypoint marker explaining that Silas had no idea where he was going and had to rely on indications throughout the environment to find his way through the fog and that's how you'll go through it. It's when games reach this kind of synchronicity between story and play that I'm fully immersed in the game in front of me. If this is how we implement storytelling within the medium, through experience and play rather than scripted events and cutscenes, I'm all for more.
As for the gameplay itself, it's a quickly paced score-based FPS with a fun duel mechanic occasionally peeking it's head out to offer up a bit of variety and challenge. You can play through Story, dive into Arcade mode to shoot for the highest score on a given path or arena, and then there's Duel mode where you fight to survive through fifteen intense duels with all the scumbags you've put in the ground throughout the game's story. Playing through Gunslinger, you'll be tasked to rack up as many points and chains as you can. What it boils down to though is getting headshots and chaining them together quickly. This isn't as apparent in the story mode as much as it is in challenge but being that headshots are the fastest way to level up and fill your bar for slowing down time (Concentration mode), it's what you'll be focused on regardless. Call of Juarez brings back its signature ability to briefly slow time. Bullets will glide by while enemies and other targets like explosive barrels are highlighted in red. Depending on where you are with your skill set, you can even choose to spend your bar to lock on to every enemy's head in the vicinity and pick 'em off with 100% accuracy for as long as the bar lasts. Along with the natural ability to slow time is the mechanic to avoid a killing shot. If you're one shot away from death, the next bullet that's sure to kill you will go into a little event that slows down time to give you the opportunity to dodge it. The camera zooms in towards your would-be killer shooting off a bullet with your name on it and as it zooms out, you are tasked with reading the path of the bullet and choosing whether to dodge to the right or left. Choose wrong and you die, choose correctly and time is slowed down for a generous length of time giving you the opportunity to shoot the sumbitch and all his friends. After it's used though, you have to wait for the bar to gradually fill over time before it can be activated again.
Earlier, I mentioned leveling-up and skill sets which is in reference to Gunslinger's skill trees. There are three skill trees to compliment six-shooters (Gunslinger), rifles (Ranger), and shotguns/explosives (Trapper) and what a player might like to do alongside those weapons. Gunslinger can allow you to dual-wield revolvers and move faster in concentration mode, Ranger enables split-second slowdown when aiming down your rifle's iron-sight with additional zoom to boot, and Trapper gives shotguns and explosives more damage to deal and a larger bullet spread/explosion radius with which to deal it. The fun part of these skill trees varies depending on the game mode you're playing. In Arcade mode, you'll want to choose the tree that'll help you score the most points with a style the appeals most to your sensibilities. As you play through each level, you'll gain a new ability to flesh out what you're capable of in each run - the longer you stick with a class, the more it evolves. For story though, you'll gain any ability you've chosen to unlock regardless of what tree you got it from. What makes this fun is choosing what skills you think you need most. There are plenty of skills that tend to benefit styles of play outside their tree like Gunslinger allowing reloads while sprinting or Trapper granting a sticky crosshair in concentration. It's left up to you which paths you take and which skills you think will benefit you sooner than later.
Duels play out significantly different from everything else. Gunslinger is the first game, in my opinion, to finally give a wild west duel the intensity, skill, and fun it deserves. Duels take place from the point of view of your holster with your opponent in sight. With the left stick, you need to raise your draw speed by keeping your hand over the handle of your pistol, and you need to simultaneously keep the cursor on the screen focused on your opponent's face with the right stick as the cursor drifts in a number of directions and your target shuffles back and forth. Keeping the cursor focused will increase your aim and concentration time for when you draw on that special moment. When the time draws near, you'll hear your heart beating in your ears. You can choose to shoot the sucker on the spot and take him out dishonorably or wait for him to reach for his gun and dispatch him like the upright bounty hunter we know you are. When you draw, you need to aim the crosshair at your target (the head's worth the most) and wait for it to come together just enough to guarantee your shot. The game has a number of ways to keep duels interesting by allowing you to dodge left and right, pitting you against multiple partners at a time, and even tossing Mexican standoffs into the mix where you have to shift your focus back and forth onto the fool staring you down at that moment to gain the upperhand you need.
The pace of gameplay is where Gunslinger really shines. Throughout story mode, a number of QTE's will be tossed your way but these are the kind of QTE's you might be happy to see. In some instances, you can be ambushed by bandits and a button prompt will appear on the screen. Push the button fast enough and you'll dispatch your offenders but if you fail it, you'll go into concentration and be given the chance to dodge the killing bullet. In other instances, you might jump into a long fall which automatically activates concentration and a sticky crosshair daring you to get as many headshots as you can manage before you touch the ground. These forms of QTE's are short, easy to understand, rewarding, stylish, and, most importantly, not hugely punishing making way for you to be a full participant who can have fun and enjoy themselves in the moment rather than an observer wondering if the next "Game Over" screen is around the corner. And given the nature of how the game shapes itself depending on the narration, you'll find yourself going from sneaking to a shootout or spelunking in a mine to tracking an Indian chief through his tribe's neck of the woods.
The last thing I want to go over is the striking visual style. Personality truly is the defining trait of the art within, Gunslinger does an amazing job capturing every last detail that comes to one's mind when they envision that idealized wild west setting. The game straddles a Borderlands-esque comic style while retaining a rather realistic approach to the environment's natural beauty. Every notorious wild west icon is given a reimagined design to fit with the myth behind each man rather than going off of whatever portraits we have of them today; Billy the Kid's one of my favorites, sporting a broken noose around his neck with red clothing and scars to match his invincible, brash, cool-guy persona. Silas has animations promoting his bad-ass bounty hunter status like blowing the barrels of his guns, twirling his shotguns, even when he reloads he looks cool. And my highest point of praise goes to the visual cue of a killing shot. There are many times in games where I can't exactly tell whether I've taken down the enemy in front of me because of complex death animations or a lack of a visual tell that I've dealt significant damage. When you nail a killing headshot in Gunslinger though, a huge red streak of blood will literally stain the sky above them. It's extremely satisfying and especially helpful when making hail-mary shots from afar.
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is a massively fun and engrossing. If you weren't a fan of the ruthless wild west before, you will be after this. I'm dumbstruck by the attention to detail and all of the content packed into this budget, downloadable title. Sadly, this game is probably being ignored by many right now. I need people to know about this game, it should be receiving high praise from every corner of the gaming world and I'm putting out my review to ensure at least one more voice might be heard telling of its greatness. BUY IT NOW.
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger was developed by Techland and published by Ubisoft for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. I'd say I've put in about 15+ hours beating Story mode on Normal and True West (highest setting) difficulty, completed about half of the Arcade challenges, and almost beat duel mode (so hard!). Xbox 360 version reviewed.
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