Ubisoft was showing off the soon to be released Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, on the PAX East show floor, and I got a chance to take the reins. These days, Call of Juarez might be more freshly remembered for its terrible sequel, The Cartel, rather than the pretty-good original and excellent second, Bound in Blood. Even though Gunslinger is returning to the much preferred western setting, it might be best to let this franchise lay in the dusty western trails of pleasant memories.
The hands-on demo began with narration from voice-actor John Cygan, whom you might remember for his incredible as Canderous Ordo in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, laying it on thick with maybe the silliest southern accent I’ve ever heard. Silly’s not bad though, and it’s clear this game is taking itself much less seriously than its predecessors, so a little levity is welcomed. That’s not much of a problem, because everything he said during the demo wasn’t really worth listening to anyway. It was a lot of junk about being the baddest gun in the west, getting no help from the Pinkerton Agency and scaring Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid down to South America, all narrated as the grizzled player character Silas Greaves relates his tales to an uninteresting audience of some kid and old lady.
The plot in the demo, and as far as I can tell the game as a whole, is bounty hunter Silas Greaves’ quest for fun and profit in his pursuit of legendary Old West outlaws like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and vengeful cyborg Buffalo Bill. Maybe I made that last one up.
It doesn’t get much better once the cut-scenes end, the graphics are a scratchy mix between what’s supposed to be cel-shaded and what looks like Photoshop’s comic book pencil filter. Navigating the terrain was almost frustrating because of the almost film grain effect going on, as well as the bland similarity of most things around. Dual-wielding revolvers or long rifles are the mainstay of combat, and they’re supplemented by the addition of a Bulletstorm-esque points system, points which fuel a new XP and upgrade system. There weren’t enough points to be earned in the demo, even with bonuses from headshots, combos, and the like, to see if the upgrades make a substantial difference in playstyle.
I was, however, able to tell that just regular ol’ shooting people, even with “Concentration Mode” slow-mo, wasn’t super enjoyable on its own. That wasn’t made any better by the newly added ability to dodge a fatal bullet in slow-mo when near death on limited occasions. That system, while neato in its concept, quickly became grating as it announced itself telling me how to do it every time it popped up.
The final straw that broke this, uh, cowboy’s back was the dueling system. This time around, it involves holding your aim on the target as he paces around menacingly until you clumsily get to fire a few off on him by moving the right analogue stick. This manages to be less enjoyable than the system used in Red Dead Redemption, and less refined than its elder CoJ dueling, where you could make your character mosey around in a circle same as your opponent.
This all rattlesnakes out, (that’s an awful pun, I’m sorry) to a game that doesn’t look like it’s shaping up rebuild the trust lost from it’s immediate predecessor, and even further from being close to as good as its elder forebears. In fairness, this was a preview I played at the end of PAX, it was noisy, my legs hurt, and this is a game that’s presumably a few months from release given Q1 2013 window. That’s enough time to iron out some of the problems I had, but admittedly maybe a little too late to fix some of the more major problems.
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