Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood Hands-on Preview

As Neon said when he saw FPS Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood back in March, we were quite fond of the original game. It wasn’t perfect, with too many awkward stealth sections for our liking, but the gun-play was solid and it was more or less the best cowboy game since Red Dead Revolver. We’ve been sampling a work in progress build of the sequel (due for release on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3) to see if the lessons learnt from the original have helped create an altogether more cowboy cowboy game.

Bound in Blood casts you as brothers Ray and Thomas McCall, with the game opening as the two are helping to defend an outpost from the invading Northern troops. Serving as a tutorial of sorts, you begin as Ray, learning how to perform his special Concentration Mode shot, and eventually taking down a bridge that’s crossing a river. Then you get to play as new character Thomas, getting to grips with his quickdraw Concentration Mode ability and riding horses into battle. It’s a solid opening and one that sets up an exciting story centred on the army’s colonel, Barnsby, and his plan to destroy the McCalls. He’s not happy that the brothers effectively became deserters after disobeying a direct order, and he wants to make them pay.

As you kill enemies, as either brother, your Concentration meter fills in the corner of the screen. Once full it ticks down for 60 seconds, allowing you to trigger a special move at any point while time remains. Ray’s Concentration ability slows down time and allows him to paint the enemies he wants to shoot – exit the mode or run out of time and he’ll fire off at the enemies that have been targeted, killing them all in just a few seconds. It’s a neat move and one that certainly came in very handy during the handful of levels we’ve played through.

Thomas’ Concentration ability looks quite different, but the end result is very similar. Rather than having to target enemies manually, you perform an action that resembles cocking and firing a gun (in the PS3 version tested this was done by flicking the right analogue stick down then up), with the game switching targets automatically to the next enemy in view. Do this quickly enough and you can take down an entire room of enemies without any skill whatsoever, making it, at least from what we’ve seen so far, more deadly than Ray’s quick-fire aimed shots.

As players of the original will know, Ray isn’t a particularly nice guy and he’s also something of a brute – he apparently became a completely different person after the war, doing and taking whatever he pleased. In Bound in Blood this means he’s the one who is asked to kick down doors and generally do the tasks that need a bit of force. Thomas is more nimble and can use a lasso, something that featured heavily in the first game. This can be attached to certain objects in order to let him reach high platforms, although from what we’ve played so far it’s not nearly as essential to the gameplay as it was in the hands of Billy, the young man accused of killing his parents in the original game.

At other points the game forced the use of a slow-motion ability with two aiming reticules moving across the screen – one for each brother or one for your left hand and one for the right. During these moments you have limited control with the right thumb stick and have to try and shoot the enemies as the reticules pass over them. One moment early on sees the two enter a barn, only for an enraged cow to come charging at them from close range. The game instantly slows down time and you need to time your shots in order to prevent the rampaging animal from causing some serious damage.

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.