Call of Juarez Gunslinger – A Beauty of an Arcade Shooter

I bought this game the other day in the Steam Summer Sale and I was quite anxious to try out these new monitors. I’m not a First Person Shooter fan for the most part. Halo, Call of Duty, etc aren’t my thing. Not because there is anything wrong with the game, I just suck at that style of play. Call of Juarez is a little more "arcade" style and the Western theme had my interest.

It only took a couple of minutes to realize Juarez is utterly ridiculous and a hell of a lot of fun!

I’ve never played any of these others in the series, but that’s pretty much irrelevant. For this episode you play Silas Greaves a Bounty Hunter who tells his tales of revenge while the patrons of the bar buy him free drinks. As the story unfolds you as the player live out of the action. Just keep in mind these are some tall tales. But you will go up against the like of Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and a slew of others.

Some frowned on the idea that this isn’t an open world game, meaning you are confined to certain areas. You can’t just wander wherever you please. I never had a problem with that and there is plenty of room to work with. Plus, you’re following the story, not exploring the Wild West. And put it this way, it’s big enough that I got lost several times.

There were also some complaints because it’s not a multiplayer frag fest. Again, not a problem. This is a story driven game, a rarity these day if you asked me, and not all of us want or need multiplayer. Hey, I just want to jump into the game and shoot some stuff!

And there is plenty of that. You move from point to point and dispatch a slew of bandits that are set on shooting your head off. Speaking of headshots, Juarez encourages that wholeheartedly. You got big points for that and in some cases it’s the only way to take someone down. There are plenty of enemies to shoot, sometimes an overwhelming number. And if you take too long, they will rain down a slew of vulgarities at you to get you to work faster. There are some foul-mouthed Desperados in the Old West.

The graphics are quite nice and with these new monitors I found myself a little disoriented by the vastness of the scenery.

Other features include plenty of skills that you can learn as you advance such as wielding two guns, faster loading, better accuracy, ability to hold more ammo, better sense of Death and the ability to find the Nuggets of Truth. These are items hidden throughout the game that give more detail about the history of the West and the characters you’re trying to gun down. The game may be "limited" in it’s size, but these things are still damn hard to find.

As far as replay of the game there is Story mode with Normal and Hard difficulty, Arcade, where you try to rack up big points by stringing your kills together, and Duel mode where you to try to gun down as many figures from the Old West as you can without dying. For the $9 I paid, this is a hell of a lot of entertainment.

I just completed my first run through Story mode only to discover there are two endings to the story. I’m now going back through the story, increasing my skills and working to find all the Nuggets of Truth.

If you’re looking for an alcohol fueled, gun toting, headshot loving game with a Western theme, look no further.

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