Call Of Juarez - Bound In Blood
To be honest this is one of those games where I downloaded the demo and than was pleaseantly suprised with. There are much better shooters, that have better weapons, a better array of weapons, etc, etc, and that is all well and good, but this is the wild west, and if you are looking for a shoot-em up for sheer fun I honestly do believe that this is a great game. As a few reviewers have already said if there is a cowboy cliche, it is in this game, and that adds to the fun, plus some of the banter between the main two antagonists is at times funny (if over used). The story mode is good, with a choice of the two main McCall brothers to choose from (some missions you can only use one specific brother, but they're not that frequent), and both brothers have seperate talents which define how you play the level (as a example Ray uses ropes to lasso to get to difficult places while Ray can use dynamite to blow things up). Having only completed the lowest two difficulty levels the game does seem to be well balanced, and I have to diagree that the levels are too easy, that is only really true of the simplest level.
There are aspects of this game I simply do not like (one of them being online play, although that is just personal preference, and having not played it much I can not honestly review this aspect of the either negatively or positively so will do neither). Another thing I thought could be improved was duelling, although for the most part it's really just a case of getting used to it, then making sure your quick and accurate, the controls could have been arranged differently. Also I do find sometimes the AI of the NPC's go array slightly (playing as Ray/Thomas and either Ray/Thomas or William gets stuck behind a piece of scenery) which can be annoying and also detrimental to game play, although admittedly this happened on a run through for achievements more than my first run-through). The game could and should have been longer too, although this is no Batman: Arkham Asylum in respects to extra content, there are 80+ hidden pieces of treasure to find during the game in, and some of the extra audio clips are funny there was so much more they could have added which is a shame.
I hope that people won't be put off buying this game by one star review, as I do think these reviews judge the game harshly against some of the other games available which have a more modern feel and thus have more weaponry to choose from, although some criticism is merited, I do feel 1 star is overly critical of a game which is very much, despite being the same type of game, is much different than it's more modern competitors.