Far from always successful series acquire quality sequels. You can recall many examples in which, it would seem, the legendary series received a rather mediocre, if not disgusting continuation. The same thing happened with the Call of Juarez series - this western-style first-person shooter game caused quite a stir. The first part was extremely interesting with all its features - up to cowboy shootings and Indian control. Then followed the background in the form of a sequel, which became simply incredibly successful. Apparently, the glory overshadowed the minds of developers who released the third part, furnished already in modern times, trying to combine Western with a modern shooter. This part turned out to be a complete failure - it not only did not offer anything sensible to gamers, it managed to trample all the previous achievements and advantages of the project into the mud, having pulled all its minuses carefully hidden before it by the ears. In general, it was just a disgusting game, after the release of which even the most faithful fans buried the series. As it turned out, in vain. The developers did not give up and did the fourth part, called Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, an overview of which you are reading. But the announcement of the release of the new episode did not inspire the fans - they decided in advance that the project would be as disastrous as the last part. Well, they were wrong. Of course, the new episode is not as good as the second, and not as innovative as the first, but still you should pay attention to the game Call of Juarez: Gunslinger - the review will try to convince you of this, showing you both its strengths and weaknesses side.
Introduction
So, where does the game Call of Juarez: Gunslinger begin? The review should definitely note that the project from the very beginning looks much more promising than the previous episode. The fact is that the developers realized their mistake and returned the atmosphere of the nineteenth century, abandoning police sirens, cops, Mexican drug dealers and so on. So, you again find yourself in the Wild West, where your main character named Silas Greaves enters the saloon. As it turns out, he is a famous bounty hunter, everyone knows him and immediately begins to offer him a drink. Naturally, not just like that, but in exchange for stories about bygone days. It is from this moment that the narrative begins, which will be a set of flashbacks telling the story of Greaves. This is a rather interesting move, but its implementation let us down a bit - this will be discussed in more detail later. Now it’s worth taking a look at various aspects of the game Call of Juarez: Gunslinger - the review should cover all aspects of the project so that readers can make the most objective opinion about it.
Plot
In the game Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, walkthrough is a set of levels, each of which is one of the stories told by the main character. There are actually many levels, so you can only guess how much your protagonist has seen in his life. What will you do during the passage? First of all, it is worth saying that the main theme of this game is precisely “head hunting”, that is, Greaves will talk about how he decided to grab or eliminate one or another person, hunted for him, but this person herself will appear as final boss level. And he will need to be defeated, naturally, in a cowboy duel. One of the most remarkable moments of the game is the fact that most of the names will be familiar to you if you are fond of the history of those times, because the game is literally full of references to real personalities, as well as to fictional characters from books and films. This can not but rejoice, because such a turn significantly adorns the passage of the game Call of Juarez: Gunslinger.
History development
Of course, there are codes for Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, and you can use them, but you can’t say that the game is complicated, so you will most likely handle the process yourself. If it seems to you that such a plot development will make you bored, then you are mistaken. Of course, a set of unrelated levels is not an attractive prospect for fans of plot twists and turns, however, there is a highlight here, which you should definitely pay attention to. This highlight is the main character himself, who is the narrator of the story. He is constantly jokingly joking, and absolutely everyone becomes objects of jokes - and he himself during adventures, and his current listeners, and previous parts of games, and much more. But as soon as it seems to you that the jokes are beginning to bother, the tone of the story will change, and you will begin to find out what lies behind Greaves, as well as how it is connected with the very town of Juarez, which united all the previous episodes of the series. As you can see, you will not need codes in the game Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, since the time behind it will fly by.
A little embellished story
The single-player game allows developers to play very interestingly with the scope of what is happening. Everyone remembers a wonderful game called Bastion - there the narrator accompanied all the actions that the protagonist performed. It created an incredible atmosphere. In this game, the developers decided to do the opposite, and you have to cope with everything that the narrator will do. And the catch here is that old Greaves is still a liar. In every story, that is, in every mission that you will go through, there is at least a little lie, deception and embellishment. And this is only in a few missions - in most cases there are much more lies than truths. Sometimes everything comes to the point of absurdity, and the narrator can lie until you are surrounded by twenty Apaches. But then one of the listeners will correct it, since the story was about cowboys - and the Indians will immediately dissolve in the air, and cowboys will appear in their place. In general, this is a rather unusual and interesting move, but at the same time, the game still has a feeling of understatement, a certain excess influence of the narrator on what is happening. However, it should be understood that this is a single-player game with a set of levels that are not interconnected by the plot - the developers needed a technique with which they could captivate the gamer, and they invented this approach.
A spoon of tar
As mentioned earlier, this plot approach added some extra points to Call of Juarez: Gunslinger. The Russian voice acting of the main character and all the other characters is good enough, so you can enjoy playing any version. But at the same time, you should pay attention to the fact that the developers themselves spoiled their invention. At first glance, it might seem that this is an incredibly fascinating way to develop the plot, and it really is - until some time. And then unpleasant moments begin, where the narrator does not allow you to enjoy the gameplay more widely, but pushes it into tight frames. Want to give battle to the Indians? And the narrator is already reporting that you have run out of ammo, and you need to run. Want to leave the location? You must first kill one person to continue the journey. In general, in some places this is a little unnerving, since such a chic move was used to create the next “corridor” - and this is rather annoying. But, in principle, it does not spoil the game of Call of Juarez: Gunslinger itself - the Russian voice acting in places tries to complete the job, but in most cases it is up to par.
Role element
In the Call of Juarez: Gunslinger project, there are practically no game mechanics from past episodes - you now play exclusively for one character, which, however, can now be pumped. Yes, and this series got the fashion for the role-playing element in first-person shooters. Of course, there are no such abilities as in Bioshock or Borderlands - the Wild West is still not a place for levitation, telekinesis and pyromania - but still you can make your character more specialized. Skills are divided into three trees - the first allows you to make a fighter who faster and more accurately shoots revolvers directly in battle, the second gives you the opportunity to learn how to master shotguns, melee weapons and hand-to-hand combat, and the third is responsible for dueling, which will occur more than often . Experience points you get for killing opponents, and the more effectively you shoot your enemy, the more points you get. The game Call of Juarez: Gunslinger gives you a large number of development opportunities, but you can not say that they were extremely diverse.
Special abilities
In Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, cheats can be used to make passing easier, but remember that your character is already a bit of a cheater thanks to his special abilities. If you played the second part of the series, you must remember that there were two characters - one of them was more rigid, straightforward, good in melee, but bad in stealth. Each of the two characters had their own special abilities, and you could switch between them to get the most out of the duo. Now you have one hero, but he is not a mixture of the two previous ones - he is more likely to be more like Ray, the very first mentioned character who took brutal force. From him you have the ability to concentrate - this is the brand name of the series. You can slow down the time for a while, and during this period you can shoot enemies more accurately - extremely effectively if you attack a large number of enemies. But this is not all - Greaves also has his own skill, which is called a hunch of death. When you have already been hit several times, and the next shot will be fatal, time again slows down, and you get the opportunity to dodge the bullet that would bury you. This skill is also incredibly useful in difficult situations, and it will save you more than once. In Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, the crack can be different, and this skill can get different names, but when you see it in action, you will not confuse it with anything.
Weapon
If you turned out to be the unfortunate person who played in the third part of the series, then you most likely noticed that they paid almost no attention to the weapons there - the developers decided to make a huge number of types of weapons, as in most standard shooters, without endowing them with any qualities or differences. The result was extremely faceless. But the trunks in Call of Juarez: Gunslinger are nuggets. Each of them is unique, has its own characteristics and outstanding appearance, so that the whole game you will admire what exactly you are armed with, and this will give you genuine pleasure.
Campaign brevity
It would seem that the stories that the main character tells are simply countless. But they can not be called short. However, the result is no more than ten hours of gameplay. This would not be a problem if the game had something else, but it no longer offers the gamer absolutely nothing. Neither the rumored multiplayer mode, nor the open world, nor bonus characters or weapons. This, of course, is disappointing, especially considering the fact that the integrity and effect produced by the campaign are not the project’s strengths.
Levels and Bosses
We cannot but mention how exactly the levels in the game are built - the fact is that they are actually beautiful and interesting, but somewhere in the middle. And then the saddest thing begins - the repetition of the same thing, just within the framework of different stories. You will find yourself in the same situations, you will have a boring environment, and all this will be diluted only with the sarcastic voice of the narrator behind the scenes. But it will seem like a miracle to you when you get to the boss. Not to the first - the first can still captivate you, but to the second or the third. And then you will realize that they are all the same. The process of passing the boss at each level almost never differs: first you run through shelters and conduct heavy fire at him, taking cover from his shots (most often from a machine gun), and when you bring his health to the right point, a duel will begin. That's all, you got a recipe for passing 90 percent of the bosses in this project.
pros
What can be attributed to the advantages of this game? Why is she good? Firstly, it is worth noting the return to the Wild West and the traditions of the masterpiece of the second part of the series. This is exactly what gamers wanted, and it is unfortunate that the developers decided to give it only after the complete failure of the third episode. Secondly, in the game you can find a huge cultural layer dating back to that time - real characters, heroes of books and westerns known throughout the world. All this should please you if you are a lover of such creativity and that era. It is also impossible to forget about the main character, who plays the role of a storyteller, and does it in a very interesting way - you can even say that this method is unique.
Minuses
But, as you already understood, there were some shortcomings. The first and largest of them is the plane. The levels are repeated, the bosses are the same, the locations practically do not change, and all this begins to be depressing, even despite the painstaking sores from the narrator. The narrator himself also saddens that instead of using the enormous potential of the idea, he, on the contrary, pushes the player into the framework, not allowing him to enjoy the gameplay enough.
System requirements
To start with, the release date of the game Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is 2013, that is, a relatively long time ago. Naturally, you should not expect that it will go on computers ten years ago, but it will obviously not require too much. Speaking specifically about the release date, it appeared on all platforms in the central markets, that is, in Europe, the USA, Japan and so on, on May 22, but there was a delay with the release in Russia, and Russian gamers were only able to test the project on June 14 , that is, almost a month later. But it's time to see what specific Call of Juarez: Gunslinger requirements are. Fortunately for many gamers, this project turned out to be universal in the issue of the operating system - it even runs on Windows XP. However, it is recommended that you use the seventh version and higher to launch it. You will need a dual-core processor with a frequency of at least 2 GHz, and even better if the frequency of both cores is more than 3 GHz. Two gigabytes of RAM is enough for minimal settings, but it is recommended to increase the volume at least twice for a comfortable game. Well, an advanced video card is not particularly needed - you can play already at 512 megabytes of video memory, but, as in other cases, you better provide a little more video memory, at least one gigabyte.