Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood Preview

There's a lot of teaming up, but no actual co-op play.

One of the most fun elements of the first game was the shoot-outs, usually against boss-like characters. These return in Bound in Blood, although here the mechanic has been tweaked to make it a more cinematic experience. You slowly circle, making sure your opponent is always in sight, and use the right sick (or mouse) to move your hand close to your gun. When the bell rings you need to quick grab your weapon and then get a shot off at the other guy before he shoots you. It's incredibly tense and a big improvement over how these situations were handled in the original.

Whereas the original Call of Juarez saw you hopping from one character to the other (as the two were essentially enemies the story was told from two different points of view), here you often have the choice to play as either Ray or Thomas in most of the levels. During the levels we played the two men took different paths, so there's a very good chance you'll want to play through the game a second time in order to see the parts of each level you missed on the first run through.

You can't create a shooter these days without a cover system, so the one in Bound in Blood shouldn't be a surprise, albeit one we're not convinced by. The automatic cover system will kick in when you walk up to an object that can be stood or crouched behind, but the way you aim from this position differs to what you're probably used to. Peaking out and aiming are both handled using the right analogue stick (or mouse in the PC version), with the character's distance from cover determined by where you're aiming. Try to aim at a guy who's almost out of sight to the side of the screen and you'll have to really lean out, but guys directly ahead and just above the normal line of sight can be taken out from relative safety. It sounds like a good idea on paper, but in practice it feels strange and we longed for a more traditional cover mechanic. You can turn the feature off completely if you really don't like it, and we didn't find the game particularly harder when having to manually crouch down behind objects.

Developer Techland certainly knows how to create a game engine. The original Call of Juarez looked pretty smart, impressing mostly with its expansive environments, and the sequel looks to be following in its footsteps. The preview build is rough in places, but the large open environments look stunning, the lighting at times is jaw dropping and the frame rate is very solid for a game still a few months from release. The PC version will once again be the choice for those who want the best visuals, but the next-gen consoles are doing an admirable job of replicating that experience, seemingly in all but texture quality and resolution. If there's one negative at the moment it's the character animations, which jar slightly when compared to the detailed models and overall visual quality on display elsewhere in the game.

What we haven't been able to test out yet is multiplayer, but with a full suite of modes planned Bound in Blood has a chance of finding a fairly large audience – what with a severe lack of cowboy-themed shooters on the market at the moment. There's no doubt this sequel will be a good deal of fun, and certainly more action packed than the original, but we're not sure it's going to have the same mass appeal you'd usually associate with Ubisoft titles. Expect more on the game as its summer release date approaches.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is due for release on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on July 3.