Product Description

Call of Juarez takes place in the Wild West and it features classic gun slinging action including duels, shootouts and barroom brawls as well as a dual gameplay.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3232 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: UBI Soft
• Released on: 2007-06-28
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Dimensions: .24 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
Call of Juarez takes place in the Wild West and it features classic gun slinging action including duels, shootouts and barroom brawls as well as a dual gameplay: players enter the world of two opposing characters equipped with contrasting weapons and styles. Billy is on the run, prime suspect in the murder of his own parents. Whilst Reverend Ray is the man who's hunting him down. Players will discover 2 radically different styles of gameplay depending on which character they play as hunter or pursued.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic Western Shooter
For some reason the Western genre has been largely overlooked in video games with just the Jesse James 'virtua Cop' style games, and the first and 3rd person shooters; Red Dead Revolver, Dead Man's Hand, and 'Gun' in the last few years. All of these games have been really good and thankfully so is Call of Juarez, it has excellent graphics, story and gameplay and I would say captures the wild west feel perfectly.

The game is different from usual action games in that you play two characters on opposing sides, Billy; a young half Mexican and Reverend Ray who it seems used to be something of a Gunslinger. Billy returns home one day to find his parents murdered and unfortunately Reverend Ray happens upon them and Billy panics and runs, this sets things in motion and the missions alternate between the two as Reverend Ray chases Billy across the levels of the game.

Is the game any good? well it has a good control system, the guns sound fantastic and you have the usual gunslinger type modes where you can draw both guns in slow mo rather like bullet time in Max Payne and blast multiple enemies in one go. Also there are the mano a mano gunfights where you and another square up quickdraw style, this too is well done. What I particularly like in the game is the fact you can hold two pistols and just like in reality the guns will overheat the more you fire them and then in time won't work and will then actually blow up if you try and fire them, this is indicated by a flashing red colour on your pistol icon, also your gun will smoke, which looks pretty cool I can tell you, (how often do you see a smolking gun barrel in a game eh?) either of these alert you it's time to swap your pistol for another an enemy has dropped, it also encourages you to fire in true western style and fire each pistol in turn, because firing the same pistol repeatedly will overheat it quicker and then you'll have a useless gun. The pistols are very accurate and you can have a close up view to help aim better if you click the right thumbstick, other weapons include shotguns, rifles and scoped rifles, dynamite, and a bow and arrow which is perfect for stealth and also gives you a slow mo advantage, ideal for when you are outnumbered.
It seems all western games have a mine level for some reason and this is no different, there is usual the train level, and horse riding that you seem to find in other western games.

I read a few of the PC reviews for this game as it came out first and a few of the people didn't like the sneaking around levels of Billy, but I have to say these are pretty good indeed, they on the whole aren't too difficult and are pretty exciting, there is a particuarly tough one at a campsite level which I have to admit I looked at the strat guide at IGN to help me. I really liked the level sneaking into the Ranch and into the house of his ex girlfriends and then the punch up with her brother, Reverend Ray is also pretty handy with his fists so you get a bit of Fight Night in this game too.

One niggle I didn't like was that you can fall in this game all too easy and with a first person view, it can be tricky to see where you are and where you will land when jumping and swinging off trees and over ledges, I wish developers would cut out the ability to fall to your death in games, it's a pain and also the game has set save points where it automatically saves the game, I much prefer to save where I want, as often if you fall, which can be often, or even die in the regular fashion, you have to go back quite a bit and repeat the same old bits time and again until you pass the troublesome part, this is a limitation in this day and age that just shouldn't exist in gaming as it's annoying.

I have to disagree with the previous reviewer, who it seems isn't really a fan of Western shooters, this game is far from boring, and you don't have to wait until the voice over is finished when the level is loading, it says 'loading' and then the button appears to press and proceed a good 30 seconds before the voice over is done, (the voiceover reads the text on the page that you'll have likely read much faster), the storyline too is great, I can't rate this game highly enough, you've got to love a good western! and if you like your shooters based on real life rather than the far fetched shooters that dominate 90% of the marketout, holster up and give this a try.

A decent enough filler
Call Of Juarez has a lot of plus points going for it. It's main strength is the story, whilst not mindblowing it's gripping enough and is told in a pretty unique way. Most levels find you playing as fugitive Billy, sneaking around trying to evade your pursuer, before switching viewpoints to Rev Ray(the afore-mentioned pursuer) and blasting your way through legions of cowboy cannon fodder in your attempt to catch Billy and avenge your brother's death. It's a great hook but the downside is that for the most part it's a hell of a lot more fun playing as Ray, as it's during the gunfights that the game takes off. The "concentration mode" that activates whenever you draw your six-shooters is similar to the bullet time used in countless other games but it never gets old as you blast hats off heads. These gunfights are genuinely pretty thrilling, and as entertaining as some of the Billy levels are you'll often find yourself struggling through them just to get to the next blammo-fest. And at times it is a struggle. There's a few great moments, a lot of good moments, and the odd frustratingly terrible moment(mainly during some pretty dodgy platform sections, and the duel system is pretty patchy), but the good points more or less outweigh the bad. Overall "Call Of Juarez" is a good game which occasionally feels like a great game, so if there's nothing else on the shelves that takes your fancy and it's going cheap it's a decent enough way to fill some time.

A rootin' tootin' game
I've had great fun this last week playing Juarez, it's very playable. The graphics overall are good, and the story line is excellent, a few times I thought 'that's it I've completed it' but no this game is longer and has more showdown's than you would think.

The only fault I can find id that some of the parts where you play Billy are annoying as it's easy to fall to your death from a great height. The star of the show is the Reverend, one of my fave characters to come out of a game in a while, you can either have 2 pistols out or a pistol and a bible which is most amusing, shooting with onehand whilst reading the scriptures aloud.

Buy it now, that's the best advise I can give!