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Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
PC (Steam)
Holes in My Holster
4/5 stars
“Call of Juarez: Gunslinger” (“Gunslinger”) is the fourth game in Ubisoft’s series of Western-themed FPSes. It is also a return to the classic Wild West setting after an unwarranted departure in 2011’s “Call of Juarez: The Cartel.” As a detractor of FPSes in general, I never really paid attention to the ‘Call of Juarez’ games (and as a detractor of Ubisoft, even less so). But with my Razer Hydra at hand, I have recently been looking for some non-zombie, non-war, non-space marine FPSes to put it through its paces. As a fan of the Western genre in general, I figured a $15 FPS about a gunslinger would be right up my alley (of course, I didn’t actually pay $15… I paid $5). What I found was a remarkably high-quality game for such a bargain retail price, brought low by a few dumb design decisions.
Presentation
“Gunslinger,” unlike most modern FPSes, runs not on the Unreal Engine, but on the proprietary Chrome Engine. This Chrome Engine has nothing to do with Google, but is instead the work of Polish developer, Techland, who made the game for Ubisoft. The Chrome Engine produces 3D polygons that look quite good. Character and environmental models are beautiful and detailed. Characters are well-animated, if not a bit on the stiff side, but are notably lacking in any kind of lip-sync (instead, every character’s face is frozen in a super-grumpy scowl that borders on comical). The environments also have a few clipping issues, such as grass growing through the wall of a house, but are otherwise pretty solid. However, I must also point out that “Gunslinger” doesn’t run as smoothly on my system (GTX 560 Ti) as other, far more complex FPSes (like “RAGE” and “Borderlands 2”).
The game’s cutscenes don’t actually use the Chrome Engine or 3D at all, but instead use 2D comic book-style imagery that looks great and complements the 3D assets used during actual gameplay. “Gunslinger” also features a few incredibly stylish bits of fluff that help cement the entire visual experience together. The entire screen always has a smudgy, black outline around it, like an old photograph, and as the main character takes damage, instead of the screen reddening as in most other modern shooters, it takes on the appearance of a faded tintype photograph with cracks and bullet holes in it.
The sound in “Gunslinger” more than makes up for the less-than-buttery-smooth 3D graphics. The soundtrack features plenty of great-sounding Wild West music, occasionally remixed with a slight hint of modern rock, giving the action a sense of driving urgency. The voiceacting is likewise spectacular and re-uses a novel idea from the Indie game “Bastion.” The entirety of “Gunslinger” is narrated by the main character telling his life story. The narrator’s comments occasionally slow-down the gameplay and turn everything sepia-toned while he gathers his thoughts, sometimes the environment morphs as the narrator fills in forgotten (or perhaps made-up) details, and progress through a stage sometimes abruptly rewinds as the narrator discards part of his story as a hypothetical and re-tells what ‘really’ happened.
Outside of the slight lack of smoothness in the 3D engine, the only real presentation issues in “Gunslinger” are all due to the game’s crashiness. I had it freeze on me several times for no reason, and crash to the desktop once. I also experienced a glitch that caused the game to freeze upon exiting it, as Windows would, for unknown reasons, change the game’s executable from a program to a service (and would always run the game at ‘below normal’ priority). Inexplicably, the glitches became less and less the more I played the game, and no patches came down the pipe during this time, so it just seems to be a case of PC gaming being somewhat persnickety at random times for random reasons.
Story
I love a good Western. With the genre on the outs in Hollywood, good Westerns are hard to come by nowadays. And after being sitting through some truly ABOMINABLE modern Westerns with my mother on Netflix night, I feel like I have experienced the entire breadth of quality the genre has to offer. That said, “Gunslinger” is one of the best Western’s I have ever seen… AND I got to play it!
“Gunslinger” is the story of the fictional gunslinger, Silas Greaves. Silas is an old man in the introduction, drifting into a Kansas bar around the turn of the 20th century. In exchange for free drinks, Silas regales the small group gathered in the saloon with the story of his life and how his quest for vengeance turned him into the man he was.
Silas’ story comes somewhat out-of-order, at first revealing only that he was a bounty hunter on the trail of three criminals. Before long, however, Silas reveals his motivation for pursing these outlaws. Where “Gunslinger” excels and truly becomes great is in the way Silas’ fictional account is woven into actual American history, as Silas encounters – and frequently defeats – numerous legendary historical figures over the course of his long life. To further bolster the narrative’s pseudo-historicity, numerous ‘Nuggets of Truth’ can be found hidden throughout the game’s stages, which unlock short history lessons on key figures and technologies of the time period.
The weaving of truth and fiction in “Gunslinger” is truly masterful, and an example of the best kind of historical story telling. It’s not 100% accurate, but the inaccurate parts are close enough to something that could have happened that they remain credible. There’s even a twist ending (and, amazingly, I didn’t see it coming) that allows the player to choose Silas’ final fate. I thoroughly enjoyed the ~10 hours I spent with Silas Greaves.
Gameplay
“Gunslinger” is divided into two main types of gameplay. While the Story Mode incorporates both forms of gameplay in a smooth progression, there are two other modes that separate them and let them stand on their own – for better or worse.
Arcade Mode dumps the player into one of 10 stages with the goal of getting a high score by stringing kills together one after another and beating a par time. I found Arcade Mode frustrating because I’m a methodical, deliberate FPS player. I was never able to score more than 1 out of a possible 3 stars (The corruption of smartphone games is everywhere!) because I took too long.
Duel Mode takes the game’s most ill-conceived mechanic and turns it into a stand-alone string of one-on-one fights. The problem with duels in “Gunslinger” is that the gameplay mechanics change completely and are poorly explained. Instead of normal FPS action, duels have two (or sometimes three) characters standing still and staring each other down. The aiming reticule changes into a focus reticule, while character movement changes to hand movement. By keeping Silas’ hand over his holster (it tends to drift) and keeping his focus on his enemy, the player can fill two percentage-based meters to improve Silas’ draw speed and aim. Unfortunately, the rock-solid aiming of the normal gameplay turns into some kind of drunken pig ballet when Silas tries to focus on an enemy, with massive drift and lack of responsiveness rendering the reticule nearly impossible to control (of course, the trick – which is not documented ANYWHERE in the game – is to move the focus reticule in tiny circles to keep it steady… WTF?). I also found that I was far too quick on the trigger in duels, frequently unloading several shots into my holster or the ground before the excruciatingly slow aiming cursor moved onto the target’s body. I started off REALLY hating duels, but by the time I was through the entire story, I only moderately hated them. Regardless of player skill in lining up the focus reticule and Silas’ hand, I always felt like duels were a function of luck.
The main draw of “Gunslinger,” however, is the Story Mode, which takes place over 14 stages. This mode of gameplay features the same basic modern FPS mechanics as Arcade Mode, but with some fun RPG elements tacked-on and duel-based boss battles thrown into the mix. While there are 14 stages, many of the individual area maps are reused multiple times with different entry points and paths to keep things fresh. “Gunslinger” is not an open-world game, and will reset the player’s location if they deviate too far from the story’s linear path through a stage. However, the stages are all incredibly well designed and quite big, with plenty of cover.
The shooting in “Gunslinger” is almost exactly how I like it. There are only a handful of different guns, with three types of pistol, two types of rifle, and two types of shotgun, of which Silas can carry one pair of pistols and one long gun at a time. Different types can be found scattered through the stages or dropped by enemies. Most pistols work well for shooting from the hip (and can be dual-wielded), while rifles offer more stopping power and accuracy at the cost of aiming down the sights. Due to the time period, none of these weapons have scopes, but they are so accurate that additional help aiming isn’t really necessary. I found it perfectly do-able to shoot enemies through tiny gaps and holes, sometimes even killing foes by shooting them through flimsy wooden crates. Of course, sometimes the hit detection would randomly decide to be stupid and create bullet holes in mid-air next to a piece of cover or allow bullets to fly harmlessly through an enemy at point-blank range.
“Gunslinger” uses regenerating health as a mechanic, with the caveat that both Silas and his enemies have it. Only shots to the head or torso really matter on both sides, with enemies shrugging off grazing shots with impunity. When Silas gets shot-up enough that the screen has gone all sepia, he can dodge a killing bullet using a bullet-time skill that works on a cooldown timer, both avoiding death and removing all current damage. I found it quite difficult to dodge bullets for quite some time, as I tended to dodge the wrong way and jump INTO the bullet. Of course, the dodging mechanic is never properly explained in-game, but I eventually learned to read it better, and it actually works quite well. Of course, there are numerous checkpoints and unlimited continues in Story Mode, so death is only a minor inconvenience anyway.
In addition to his death dodging trick, Silas can also enter a state of concentration after filling up a meter. The concentration meter fills as Silas kills enemies, and when activated temporarily slows down time, turns the screen sepia-tone, and highlights enemies in red. It’s possible to upgrade the concentration skill so that it burns through the meter faster but also auto-targets enemies’ heads.
While most of the action is story mode is a spectacular example of FPS gameplay the way it was meant to be done, there are a couple of quasi-mini-boss situations that smack of old-school FPS gameplay, and really irritated me. Specifically, these are situations in which Silas is surrounded on all sides by enemies with little to no cover. There is a particularly bad specimen of this kind of design in the final stage right before the boss duel in which, not only do enemies come from all sides with no cover, but the lighting effects and ridiculous amount of bloom make them impossible to see. Of course, it seems that in these horrible ‘you’re surrounded’ situations, the game wants the player to take advantage of Silas’ concentration skill to spin around rapidly with auto-targeted headshots, but I never found the meter lasted long enough.
Finally, Story Mode features the ability to earn experience points (essentially the same as score points in Arcade Mode, but cumulative through the entire game) by killing enemies. Fancy shooting (longshots, headshots, piercing shots, etc.) provides more experience than standard kills. Finding the hidden Nuggets of Truth also provide a big chunk of experience. Upon gaining a level, Silas can choose to unlock a single skill from one of three skill trees (focusing on pistols, rifles, and shotguns, respectively). These skills provide a range of useful bonuses and remind me a lot of the skill trees in the ‘Borderlands’ series… minus all the grinding.
Overall
“Call of Juarez: Gunslinger” comes close to being one of the best FPSes I’ve ever played. Unfortunately, the near-perfect shooting, well-integrated RPG elements, and useful skills are laid-low by the horrendous dueling and a few ill-conceived firefights. Gameplay aside, “Gunslinger” is still a fantastic Western and worth playing for the story alone.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 5/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5 FPS, 1.5/5 Duels
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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