Western. Perhaps one of the most popular areas of art in America. Cowboys, fights in salons, duels under the scorching sun, robbery of trains. And, probably, only those who live in the caves have not heard about such famous personalities of the Wild West period as Billy Kid, Pat Garrett and Jesse James (I am sure among these three names at least one you know). We all at least once dreamed of living in the period of the Wild West, riding on our faithful horse and, together with a “Colt” always ready for battle. I personally loved to watch the cartoon "Lucky Luke" in childhood, which knew how to get the revolver from the foul and shoot at the enemy faster than his shadow! So dear readers, we all one way or another dreamed of being in the role of the heroes of Westerns, but since until the time was invented, we are looking for an alternative to cinema and video games. And today we will talk about the game, which, in my opinion, has very well coped with the task of conveying the spirit and surroundings of the Wild West, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger.
Call of Juarez is a series of quite popular jokes from the Polish company Techland in narrow circles. The Call of Juarez series itself has 4 games, and today I will survey the last game of the series, namely: Gunslinger. I’ll say in advance that besides Gunslinger, I did not play other games of the series, and she herself is not a plot continuation of previous games. So I will see this game as a separate game from the series, without comparing it with the first parts. So, we figured out the entry, now we move directly to the review itself.
What is this creation? Gunslinger is a typical representative of the "corridor" shooters. In each episode, you must get from point A to point B along the way arranging a massacre. Yes, yes, I did not make a reservation, namely that when arranging a massacre, but about it later. So, then what does this game catch? It clings to the setting of the western and its specific presentation of the plot. But let’s discuss these two things in more detail and we will start with the last.
The plot of the game is the story of the life of Silas Gryvza, an experienced head hunter, the main character and part -time storyteller of the plot himself. Silas has seen a lot in his life, personally familiar with many famous personalities of that time, starting with Billy Kid, ending with the Butch Kassidi. And on one day of 1910, Silas enters the bar of the town of Abilin in order to relax from a long journey. The bar is not so crowded, only a couple of visitors and a beautiful waitress. But Silas turns out to be not only an experienced head hunter, but also a rather famous person in the Wild West. After all, as soon as we go to the bar, one of the visitors, a young guy named Dwight immediately recognizes his idol in us and offers to sit at their table. After a short conversation, the new acquaintances of Silas persuade him to tell about his adventures. And after that, the whole story of the game will be told on behalf of the protagonist.
The game will fully adapt to the words of Silas, he can first say that it was in the spring and everywhere there will be trees with many green leaves, and in the next instant he can say something on the likeness “no no, it seems to be in the fall”, and the trees are exposed right in front of the player’s eyes, remaining only with a couple of yellowed leaves. Or when the player stumbles on a dead end, from where there will be no way out, then Silas can say that in the grief that he did not notice which he did not notice before that and – oh, miracle! – Right before our eyes the mountain will obediently extend the passage. And such moments give emotions that we really listen to the story and that the game simply visualizes the words of our storyteller.
But if at first it seems to us that Silas is an excellent storyteller who sets out everything to the smallest details and gives his stories very interesting, then at the end of the game we will have very mixed feelings. With each story told by the number of enemies of which he defeated, will begin to increase. He will begin to tell that it was he who killed this or that well -known criminal, although everyone knows that they died in completely different places and at the hands of completely different people. Or Silas can say that it will completely contradict what he said 10 minutes ago. At the end of the game of his stories, they completely begin to brush off the old man’s delirium. And after such inconsistencies, not only the listeners of Silas in the bar begin to doubt the veracity of his stories, but we, the players, also involuntarily begin to doubt. And one of the listeners of Silas will even put forward the theory that this is not Silas Gryvz, but some kind of charlatan who just wanted a free drink. But the ending of the game puts everything in its place. I would even say that the game is already worth passing because of this unexpected ending.
I tried to describe the interesting presentation of the plot of the game as much as possible, because this part of the game deserves praise. And now let’s talk a little about the setting of the western and how this creation coped to convey the spirit of the Wild West.
And she coped well! https://44acescasino.uk/ The game from the first frames shows desert landscapes, a windmill is visible from afar-a weather vane, cows are serenely grazed and all this is complemented. Here, the villagers are more likely than a minus, because the developers managed to skillfully adapt this, seemingly non-standard type of graphics for the harsh Wild West, so that it was perceived by something natural for this surroundings, and not something stranger. But the game very quickly reminds us that this part of the States is not in vain called wild, because it will calmly enjoy the views for only a couple of minutes until the first people we met right away without formalities will not want to shoot our heads. Here, almost every second person, instead of working in a sweat and feeding his family honestly earned money, prefers to buy a revolver and become “knights from a big road”. Silas has one quote that perfectly converts the essence of the time: “I knew some in the nearest towns – they were ordinary people, led by greed and thirst for easy profit … ordinary residents who led a double life. Screwing, robbing and killing their neighbors … ".
What about cities? Unfortunately, except for one or two missions, the game does not provide us with the opportunity to run around the cities, and in the missions where we will still be given such an opportunity, then we simply will not have time to see the city, because we will either run away from someone, or pursue someone, in this case or another, dodging the hail of bullets. But based on what we will see, we can say that the cities are the most stereotypical as possible. There is a building with a “saloon” sign, you can see a butcher’s shop with a sign, where a pig is depicted, somewhere nearby there is a bank, otherwise the building has proudly cut the American flag on the roof, it should be a city center. And a few more static decorations like water towers, carts and other things characteristic of that era.
The whole game of the company "Peter and Sons" will kindly provide weapons and explosives of the inhabitants of the Wild West
And since we talked about cities, let’s go smoothly to the very big minus of this game. She is absolutely "dead". What I mean, saying that she is "dead"? Let’s explain. The game undoubtedly very well conveys the spirit of that era. But the cities here are absolutely empty. Neither stray dogs, nor in the panic of running residents, even in one mission where we have to get into the saloon, there is not even a bartender. Everything that moves in this game is your enemy. And from this I got the feeling that only robbers and robbers live in the Wild West. Because of this, by the end of the game, the atmosphere begins to suffer a lot. You perceive the environment not as a world, but simply as some kind of shooting range for Silas. I understand that this criticism is from the category of nit -picking, but this fact upset me.
After a note of criticism, back to praise the game again. One of the best features of this game is the so -called “nuggets of truth”. “Nuggets of truth” are collectible objects that are a text telling the story or biography of famous personalities or events of that era. In some games, collectible items are simply unnecessary items for which many players simply score, and it makes sense to collect them only to pass the game 100%. But here, after the first two nuggets and reading them, I was directly eager to find as much as possible, because it was very interesting to read about famous criminals of that time. Who are the gang of “cowboys”, who is the “old man” Clanton, like Billy Kid escaped from prison and much more, you can read the nuggets about all this, and if you liked the story of one personality, you can replenish your knowledge about this person with the help of Wikipedia (which I actually did after each mission).
We have already talked about the plot and setting of the game, where there were many more than minuses, and the game is clearly claiming high marks – but! – Among all this honey there is a large, even a huge spoon of tar. This is a gameplay component of the game.
The gameplay of this game as I already mentioned this "corridor" shooter. The game is divided into a mission where each of them is a location in which we will have to clear the way to our goal, arranging a massacre along the way. Otherwise, you can’t call it a massacre, because in each mission we have to kill too many opponents, and in one mission in the city we kill so many people that you begin to think that after the visit of Silas this city became a “ghost”. But the game makes us quickly understand that these numbers are “a little” distorted by our main character and far from reality.
And what we have in the arsenal to arrange a massacre? Arsenal of weapons here is not quite large. There are 4 types of weapons: revolvers, rifles, shotguns and explosives. And each type of weapon has several versions, for example, there is a revolver that is slowly recharge, but can shoot more tently and further, but there is its direct opposite, which shoots and reloads with lightning speed, but is limited in the range of defeat and with low damage. Rifles are great if you are an amateur to deal with your enemies from afar, plus rifles there is a feature of impressing two enemies of one after another. And for real men who love to feel the fear of their enemy near, there are shotgun. The further the opponent, the less damage the shotguns apply, but they can kill several opponents at the expense of the scatter. There is only one explosives here, dynamites. Just an indispensable thing in a game that can be killed by a crowd of enemies at once, you can smoke them from shelters, the usations of dynamite a bunch. As you can see, the variety of weapons in the game is very meager, but in general after the second mission, you, having tested all the types of weapons, choose
those that you liked and you will walk with them until the end of the game.
There are already alarming calls about gameplay, is it not so? Now we will talk about its weakest part. These are enemies and dumb artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence here is so weak that sometimes it just infuriates. Enemies here only serve in order to only have to shoot, they do not actually represent a real threat or test (I played at an average level of complexity, and the highest level of complexity, wild West, I did not check). After a couple of missions, you will study the rule of behavior of each of the types of enemies and you can quickly navigate in every situation. Well, the monotony of the behavior of enemies would be the biggest problem. No, the biggest problem is the complete absence of a sense of self -preservation among enemies. You throw dynamite into the enemy who took refuge behind a very large cart in order to smoke it from there. You probably are already waiting with a rifle ready to shoot the enemy as soon as he comes out of the shelter away from dynamite. And in reality, the enemy has zero reaction to this, absolute indifference to this dynamite. The result, the enemy simply dies from the explosion. Such cases completely kill your faith on at least some test. In addition to this, the enemies are still very poorly hiding, showing half of their body so that it is more convenient for us to shoot at them. Artificial intelligence unfortunately receives the best assessment from me.
Now briefly about other features of the game. At the end of almost every mission, we will have a duel with one famous personality of that time. The duels are an exciting mini game where we must keep the enemy inside the “sight” increasing our focus and at the same time we must arrange our hand so that we can pull out the revolver from the hollow as soon as possible. Duels can be won in an honest and dishonest way. A dishonest way, as you can guess, is to simply pull out the weapon early and shoot, but this method is not for us. And in order to get an honest victory, you’ll have to sweat, you need to listen directly to the beating of the heart of the opponent (literally) and have a good reaction.
Our main character has 2 skills, concentration and "feeling of death". The first ability is the typical effect of the Slow MO where we can slow down time in a short period of time and mark all enemies, which allows us to better aim and kill opponents. A very effective ability that can help out with a large number of enemies.
The second ability is a kind of analogue "Spider Sense" from a person spider. She gives us a chance to avoid fatal bullets. When the enemy releases a fatal bullet from his weapon, which can kill us, our ability to “feel death” is triggered. During this time slows down, and the camera shows us this bullet and we need to evade it either left or right. With the right choice, we survive and completely restore our health, and with the wrong thing, as it is easy to guess, we die. Both abilities have their own readiness scale and both when used devastate their scale in other words, go to reload. The scales are filled with every successful hit on the enemy and at every murder.
Also in the game there is an increase in the level and tree of skills. Tree of skills are divided into three development branches. "Shooter". The skills of this branch allow us to study the skill of “two weapons”, which allows us to use two revolvers or cuts at the same time and the skills corresponding to this style. The “Ranger” branch is mainly focused on skills that allow us to more effectively use rifles and fight at a long distance. And finally, the "hunter" branch, the skills of which mainly help us to survive better, increasing our survival and much more efficiently conducting close battles using shotgun.
Judging in general, the gameplay is the weakest part, it is monotonous and boring and after several missions begins to bother. But the benefit is very short, it passes in 4-5 hours, and maybe even faster if you play at a slight level of complexity. And due to the fact that the game is a short, excellent and funny presentation of the plot simply covers the shortcomings of the gameplay before it has time to finally get bored.
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is certainly a good game, but no more. Interesting plot presentation, charismatic main character, pleasant game setting. I would also like to note the excellent work of the composer of the game Pavel Blashchak. As always, Pavel showed the highest class, the music in the game is worthy of a separate praise (if that, he still created the soundtracks for the first “witcher”). But these advantages unfortunately do not completely cover the shortcomings in the person of a monotonous gameplay, stupid enemies and firing over time. The game after the first three missions can no longer offer anything new. The same enemies, and the same goal is to shoot and kill. Of course there are some diverse missions like a train mission or duel with two opponents at once, but this is not enough. Gunslinger is not a game like "to compulsory passage". This is a game for one evening, which needs to be played on a light difficulty and which is worth passing only for the sake of the stories of Silas. As a result, I can say that Gunslinger is just a good game, because after all the shortcomings and features of this game I have voiced, she left a pleasant impression of herself.
