Two characters = two playing styles
Call Of Juarez sees you playing two characters, Billy Candle and Reverend Ray. The opening level of the game sees you in the role of Billy, returning to town after failing to seek your fortune elsewhere. Unfortunately for Billy, he’s not all that popular in town and, after a quick fling with a local ‘woman of negotiable affection’ Billy is chased out of town. This sets the tone for the levels where you play as Billy as much of the time you’ll be sneaking about, trying to get around with the minimum of fuss and bother from the locals.
Reverend Ray, on the other hand, isn’t so meek. With hints of Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider, Ray is ex-gunslinger turned preacher. Arriving at his brother’s house, Reverend Ray finds his brother and sister-in-law, who happens to be Billy’s mother, both dead. Seeing Billy fleeing the scene, Reverend Ray makes it his sworn duty to bring Billy to justice. Being an ex-gunman, you just know where all the best action levels are going to be and you’d be right. Playing Reverend Ray is definitely the highlight of the game.
Click for larger imageHaving two characters with differing abilities is nothing new, but playing through the same areas with the two characters does add different twist to proceedings as Ray goes in with guns blazing whist Billy has to sneak around. Billy has a whip which he can use in an Indiana Jones style to latch onto out of reach ledges and items. The emphasis in the Billy sections is firmly on stealth which would be fine except for one thing: with no way of knowing how visible you are, playing a stealth role in a first person view is stupidly hard.
Click for larger imageLet’s take two other recent stealth games for comparison. The Thief series stuck you in a first person view (with optional third person view of you wanted it) but you had a crystal to tell you how visible you were. The Splinter Cell series was all in third person, so you could see if your bum was sticking out from behind a crate or you could tell if a guy was walking up the passageway behind you. Call Of Juarez gives you none of that, so the stealth levels are very much a case of quick saving as you go. Despite being armed and having a whip to disarm opponents, Billy will often be heavily outnumbered and can take only a few hits before dying, making his levels a matter of luck just as much as skill.
Click for larger imageReverend Ray has no such problems. He exists to walk into an area and blow the opposition away and, even given the slower paced, more tense levels as Billy, Ray wins the day in the enjoyment stakes. Call Of Juarez has its own version of bullet-time, with Ray being able to draw his pistols and target enemies before letting off a volley that drops the lot. There’s even the classic ‘fanning’ mode where you cock the gun with your free hand, letting you fire even faster. But even the far better Ray sections have their problems as the slow-mo targeting mode, which at times feels like that superb final shoot-out in Unforgiven, feels a bit awkward and ‘clunky’… it’s just not as smooth as other bullet-time variations we’ve seen in the likes of F.E.A.R. and Max Payne.
There’s a few sections that see you playing as Ray as he rides along on his horse and whilst these should have been mucho fun, they fall a bit flat as getting the damn horse to do what you want, whilst trying to draw a bead on a target, is damn tricky. And I don’t mean tricky in a ‘it takes a bit a practise’ way, I mean tricky in a ‘the bloody controls are too awkward’ way. Still, I suppose it realistically simulates what riding a real horse is like with the bugger going off and doing whatever the hell it wants no matter how much you tug on the reins…
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