Bound in Blood is undoubtedly the best western game to ever be released.
+ Beautiful visuals are just outstanding
+ Wild West
+ Great presentation
+ Light Co-op
+ Great sound quality and voice acting
+ Gun duels are satifying
Cons:
- Story is almost entirely made from cliches
- Gun duels are ridicously hard
For the record, this review is based only on the single-player experience.
I have yet not tried the multi-player long enough to be able to review it.
Story:
Bound in Blood actually serves as a prequel to Call of Juarez and tells the story of Reverend Ray before he became a preacher. Ray and his brother Thomas were both soldiers in the Confederate army during the Civil War. After saving Thomas from a Union push, the brothers and their unit are ordered to fall back to defend Atlanta. This poses a problem for the McCall brothers, as their home, mother and brother will be left defenseless when the Confederates fall back. Knowing their duty is to family first and army second, they desert and race home only to find Union soldiers have already taken over. After clearing the place out, they find their mother has died and decide to go on the run with their youngest brother William.
Some time later, the Civil War has ended and the McCall brothers have headed west on a search of the legendary gold of Juarez. Ray and Thomas have become hardened outlaws who care only for themselves, and are hunted at every turn by a vengeful Colonel who wants to see them hang for desertion. It does not take long before things get even more complicated as they team up with a bandito named Juarez (after the town he was born in) and both set their eyes on his beautiful girlfriend Marisa.
Just like the first Call of Juarez, the story is exceptional and like any good prequel it greatly expands on the background information and characters and does a very good job of setting the stage for later events. All in all, it provides a much deeper insight into Call of Juarez's plot. If there's one issue the game has, it is that the opening cinematic nearly reveals the entire story, especially for those who played Call of Juarez. And for those who didn't, it really doesn't take much to figure it out. I must admit that anyone with half a brain should be able to figure out how everything is going to play out once all the elements are introduced. That's not to mention that having a good idea of how it's all going to play out doesn't actually hurt the game as much as one might think. Instead this lends a certain weight to the story as you watch all the characters careen towards their fate, all while knowing how the cards are ultimately going to fall.
Graphics:
Like Call of Juarez, Bound in Blood is an absolutely beautiful game. Everything looks very realistic, and I daresay Techland has assembled some of the most amazing visuals you will find in the digital landscape. These sights effectively make the game feel much larger than it actually is and lend a certain epic feel to the entire game as you can stand on a mountain peak and look over a vast expanse of desert and see a tiny town on the horizon.
Character models are excellent as well, and all the main characters are animated and detailed quite well (though their facial muscles and expressions are not animated too well but it is a non-issue).
For the most part the game is free of any technical bugs or issues, such as slow down or game freezes. However, when in cover you'll often see the characters arm or gun clip through the environment.
Textures comes in a mixed bag, either they look fantastic or just awful. Most of the time though, they look fantastic. Characters have some bad textures compared to other games, but then again, Bound in Blood focuses on the environment.
When it comes to effects, Bound in Blood is close to unbeatable. Explosions and special effects are of top quality, dynamic lighning is used in very well done ways, and the postprocess effects are probably the best ever. Bound in Blood uses an extremely heavy amount of motion blur and depth of field. In fact, the entire game is covered in these blur effects which gives the game a special look found nowhere else. As an example of how much DOF it uses i can tell you i got an terrible headache after only 10 minutes that i am almost certain comes from all the DOF. I got used to it quite soon though so it is not a problem, other people probably can handle it better, but after a while you will get used to it however. These amounts of DOF makes the game, along with all of its other great viasuals, look extremely beautiful. It is truly a DOF showcase techland have created.
Gameplay:
Like Call of Juarez, Bound in Blood has two central characters, Ray and Thomas. Unlike Call of Juarez, you can choose to stick with one, or switch between them after each level. The most important difference between the two games is that neither character is a yellow bellied coward and both brothers are equally fun to play. Still, they do have some key differences that affect how a level plays out depending on who you're controlling (which effectively doubles the games length if you play both characters).
Ray is undeniably the more bad-ass of the brothers. He can dual-wield pistols which, in a time of guns that take forever to reload, gives twice the killing power. If that wasn't enough lethal force, he is also capable of using dynamite. And as the stronger brother, he can kick down doors that would otherwise block Thomas' path.
Thomas is the more athletic brother and has a greater array of abilities at his disposal. In addition to pistols, rifles and shotguns, Thomas can also carry a bow and throwing knives for silent kills. In all honestly, these are relatively useless additions as there's only a single short section in the game where a little stealth is necessary. That's not to mention ammo is so plentiful you won't ever need to fall back on these weapons as a last resort. He is capable of climbing over obstacles and using a lasso to grab onto high branches or ledges to pull himself up. Unlike Billy Candle's whip, the lasso mechanic actually works like it's supposed to and doesn't feel unnatural in the ways it is implemented into the game. When the lasso is necessary, there are red icons in the environment that show where to interact. By moving the reticule over the area and rotating the right analog stick to twirl the lasso, Thomas can easily reach places far beyond Rays ability to get to.
Both brothers have a Concentration ability which effectively stops time to let them kill many enemies at once. Concentration can't just be used willy-nilly, as it must be fully charged first. An interesting twist is that you can't just save the charge, as it expires after sixty seconds. In Ray's case, the move lets him sweep the targeting reticule over enemies to target individual parts of their bodies. The number of areas or enemies that can be targeted depends on how many rounds his guns have in them. Once the timer runs out, Ray opens fire with pinpoint accuracy. Thomas utilizes Concentration a bit differently, as he uses a single pistol and must target single enemies in succession (that is to say he kills one enemy, then another and so on until the timer has expired, he runs out of bullets or everyone is dead).
Like in Call of Juarez, duels are also present in Bound in Blood. These play out with the camera at waist height, with a perfect view of the characters hand, gun and opponent. Players must simultaneously keep their opponent in sight, as he will constantly step from side to side and keep the characters hand close to his gun. At the sound of a bell, you must grab the gun from its holster and shoot the opponent. These duels are a bit laughable in that a shot to any body part will automatically kill the other man (I actually killed a guy by shooting him in the shin). These duels are genuinely challenging as it takes a perfect combination of timing and skill to keep from getting killed, but taking an opponent down with a single shot is a very gratifying experience.
Bound in Blood does make some notable improvements and additions over the first Call of Juarez. One of the many complaints I had was with the utterly linear level design and Techland has gone a long way to remedy that. Previously, levels were so constricted they often played out by simply forcing the player through narrow paths. Now the design has been opened up quite a bit, so it rarely feels as if you're being run down a path like a rat in a maze. In truth, most of the levels still play out in a linear fashion but there's much more breathing room so it doesn't feel as claustrophobic.
In several areas, Techland even messes around with open-world design. There are a few places in the game where players are dropped into open world environments and allowed to roam around at their leisure. It is also possible to pick up missions from wanted posters, which give out tasks like hunting down a criminal or wiping out bandit gangs. While these are promising additions and a nice experiment, they aren't of the same quality as the rest of the game is. These side missions all follow the same formula of going to a location, killing a bunch of bad guys then entering into a boss fight with their much stronger leader. After whittling down his health, he'll step out and challenge you to a duel. The only real reason to bother is for the extra money these missions award, which will allow access to the higher quality weapons that can be picked up from various vendors during levels.
Not only have levels been expanded in scope, they're now much more fun to play through due to the variety of objectives and constant string of action-packed events (think Call of Duty). In the first two levels I used a cannon to destroy Yankee troop boats before they could reach the Confederate held side of the river and commandeered a Gatling gun to hold off an enemy advance across a bridge. Later, I rigged the same bridge with dynamite and sent it to the bottom of the river. Levels often have many of these frantic events and players are often tasked with using a Gatling gun to keep enemies at bay, busting down a door and entering a slow motion shoot-out or engaging in an impromptu duel. Even when the gameplay is nothing more than running through the desolate streets of a frontier town blasting bad guys, it's still lots of fun due to the tight shooting mechanics.
Though Bound in Blood is miles ahead of its predecessor in terms of quality, it is hardly without fault. The enemy AI consistently makes questionable decisions in the midst of a firefight, such as dashing from behind cover to stand in the middle of open ground or running in front of cover instead of behind it. The new cover mechanic is about as useless as anything I've ever seen, and got me killed as often as it saved me. Instead of pressing a button to enter cover, the McCall brothers automatically hunker down or slide against a wall when they get close enough. The problem is that the game often snaps you into cover at the least opportune moment which can ruin a perfect shot you had on an enemy. Once in cover, shooting is unreliable because the tiniest adjustment often makes the view jump in some wild direction.
Bound in Blood also measures up in the audio department, as the voice actors are all very talented and provide authentic, gritty voice-overs which make their characters much more believable. The voice actor for Ray reprises his role and he sounds no less menacing as an outlaw than he did as a psychopath preacher. Both brothers have a nice interplay with each other, as they tend to talk and exchange insults (in the middle of a firefight, no less). As funny as it is to hear the brothers dog each other about their shooting abilities, the pool of comments is a little sparse and the same lines are repeated over and over, often in the same fight. Sound effects are also very realistic, from the neighing of horses, stomping of hooves, gunfire and explosions.
Sound:
Bound in Blood also measures up in the audio department, as the voice actors are all very talented and provide authentic, gritty voice-overs which make their characters much more believable. The voice actor for Ray reprises his role and he sounds no less menacing as an outlaw than he did as a psychopath preacher. Both brothers have a nice interplay with each other, as they tend to talk and exchange insults (in the middle of a firefight, no less). As funny as it is to hear the brothers dog each other about their shooting abilities, the pool of comments is a little sparse and the same lines are repeated over and over, often in the same fight. Sound effects are also very realistic, from the neighing of horses, stomping of hooves, gunfire and explosions.
Soundtrack is pitch perfect for the subject matter and perfectly captures the epic sound most classic westerns are associated with.
Replay value:
I found the game to be very replayable, even if there are few reason to replay it. But it is a game that should make you want to replay it at least once.
Of course, you might want to replay the game to try both characters if you only used one, or if you used both you might want to play it with the other character chosen in levels you before used the first in. Otherwise you can check out its multi-player.
Bound in Blood accomplishes nearly everything a person could ask for from a prequel; it simultaneously maintains all that made the original unique in the first place and revises and reworks everything that held it back. While Bound in Blood most likely won't blast the western genre into the spotlight, it is undoubtedly the best western game to ever be released. If you're a fan of the genre, do not miss out on this one.