Its a beautiful adventure that is mostly fun but can be disorientating, repetitive and frustrating.
The Good: ok story, great guns, the landscape looks realitic and pretty, there is a variety of fun things to do
The Bad: lemmings enemies, auto aim in close range, the bow and the cannon, horseriding, poor design disorientate, enemies alway hit you from 100 m away
The story is quite ok, its not Call of Duty 4 but it keeps you watching. You have 3 McCall brothers, two are gunslingers, the third was suppose to become a priest but went home to help his mother during the war. Ray and Thomas are doing well on the front but when their homeland is going to be left for the mercy of the enemy they desert. This decision makes them bandits and quickly they will be on the trail of some Aztec gold treasure. The story makes a good job with supplying you with locations as: trenches, a small village, a Indian village, a manor, a mine, a fort and there is a temple in the end. You get to do a cowboys get to do - shoot a gun, shoot to guns, shot from behind a barrel, blow a dam, blow a rock, run from explosion, shoot from a carriage, shoot from a horse, throw a lasso. There is even a cannon to shoot. It's all fun and though not revolutionary I would rate the game 9/10 if I had to stop here.
Unfortuantely the gameplay has mixed brilliant and dreadful.
Most of the time you shoot guns. Ray has two, Thomas one. Ray can carry a gantling gun, throw dynamite. Thomas can use the lasso to climb higher, fire a bow and in general he is more fit. All of the guns feels quite good - they are loud, innacurate and take some time to reload. There are 4 quality variations for every gun and the last one that you can buy is golden (its just a look and slightly improved stats but its fun to have). One stupid weapon is the bow since you don't really need to draw and it hits whatever is under the crosshair in straight line - really? Another one is the cannon - it auto reloads. Sure it would take more time to reload but doesn't it look cartoonish to fire 25 rounds from the same cannon in 50 seconds?
It has to be noted that pistols have autoaim in close range. This is annoying since you move the crosshair to the target and then it moves by itself. As a result you shoot next to the target.
Horseriding is another thing (after the bow) which has no realtion to the reality. Horses feel like hovercraft, pressing shift turns them into fast forward mode. Both character can use both hands when riding and turning the horse. Oh, when you jump you can turn the horse around in the air (like a snowboard)
There are tons of enemies. They spawn during the fights but not indefinately. Its just not fun when they spawn in the exactly same position. One annoying things is that they can hit you from any distance. Very often you will not be able to tell who is shooting because he hits you everytime but is nowhere to be seen. Sometimes its very annoying. You approach a farm and there is noone in site. You go in and out of blue there is 30 men. No horse, not place for them to hide. In the first mission I killed 150 men I think. Thats a tad too much, isn't it?
Another bad thing is the design of some fights. One boss runs out casualy from the same place 10 other lemmings just came. You unload both guns at him and he will not go down. After your guns are empty he will kill you and you will think that maybe you missed 12 shots. After the second death it becomes apparent that he is actually the boss (you can't really tell). Oh during that time dynamites will fall thrown by noone (yeah) and dynamite indicator is crap since it will show bfore dynamite hits the ground and therefore spin around.
There are also showdowns which look beautiful. The idea is that you have to draw your gun after you hear the bell (even though only one time it is in the city or anywhere near any bell) and shoot the opponent. You can move around and you have to because after you draw your crosshair will move up and down near the center of the screen so if the enemy moved to the side he will be clear. This is quite annoying since how hard is it to shoot slightly to the side? Also one very important thing to remember is... to have your mouse as far away from the keyboard as possible! You see to draw a gun you need to move the mouse to the left (hand to the gun) and since you want to be quicker you need to keep moving the mouse to the left (hand near the holster). Result is you keep moving the mouse left, take it up and reposition far right and repeat.
The showdowns were clearly meant for the console but even if you master them you will see that they are just annoying. It's much harder to beat other enemies than the showdown (which actually has a checkpoint just before). Also its hard to appreciate the showdown because you concentrate on moving left and right and your mouse. You can't really look at the enemie and the holster view makes it akward. The variety that comes with it is: shoot a sheriff, shoot a bandit, showdown in the cave, showdown in water, showdown in the temple. All are exactly the same as to what you have to do.
The cover system is nice at the beginning - you can shoot from behind a barrel. But in first person view you see nothing from behind the cover so you never use the cover. Also on some stages you can get hit from behind the cover so its hard to tell how covered are you.
Some other design flaws are the moments when there is nothing left to do but the game will let you move around for 5 seconds. Than it will fade out to cut scene but during this moment you will be running like an idiot thinking that you are suppose to do something. Other times the game tells you "find another way to kill the sniper" - Thomas is suppose to distract him. I though you can blow the tower up and run to the tower but I was killed. ?? wasn't Thomas suppose to distract him? The problem is that if you do something in the way the devoloper didn't mean you will die. And it is not often told what you are suppose to do. Near the end you are suppose to find three horses and put them in the barn. I have no idea why couldn't you just left them outside. Next thing that happens is that they put the barn on fire. Gee it wasn't a good idea afterall.
The graphics looks nice. The half sunlight rocks in the end of the canyon look excellent. The houses are varied and the materials are fitting. Some of the textures are blurry but overall the game makes a great impression of the wild west.
Overall I like how the game is story driven and you have the impression that what you do lead somewhere. However the adventure is not as smooth both in terms of gameplay and the storytelling as you woulod want it (read COD4). Some of the elements can really leave you confused as what is going on. Nevermind them and you will have a good game that tries to be great.