Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood - First Look Preview

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood's setting of the American Civil War isn't particularly common for videogames. Perhaps the odd RTS game has focused on the period previously, but FPS titles set in the time of Abe Lincoln aren't exactly two-a-penny. There are a few other Spaghetti Western mimicking shooters (e.g. Red Dead Revolver and Gun, which are set a couple of decades after Bound in Blood) but they represent a niche gaming genre at best, which is perhaps a touch surprising when you consider how perfectly the gun-slinging action of a Western should fit the shooter game mould.

Or at least it should, but it hasn't in practice - neither Red Dead, Gun, nor the original Call of Juarez managed to pop their heads above the 70s on Metacritic, which is something that developer Techland will no doubt want to change with this prequel to its 2006 original. Bound in Blood takes one of the main characters from the first game, the Reverend Ray, and exposes the protagonist's prior events to reveal exactly how this gun-wielding badass became a man of the cloth.

No-op

Similarly to the first game, Bound in Blood's main campaign is told through the eyes of two separate protagonists. While the first game saw you playing as either Ray or Billy Candle, this prequel's second character is Ray's brother Thomas McCall, with players this time being able to choose which character they want to play as at the beginning of each level. Thomas plays the agile, stealthy sharpshooter to balance Ray's perks of brute-strength, durability, and his shooting from the hip style, forming a very familiar trade-off dynamic between the two characters to what we saw with Billy and Ray in 2006.

We'd have thought that having these two main characters in the game's campaign would provide the perfect opportunity for co-op play but, as with the original, there will be no such functionality. It seems the reason for this is that the various Concentration Modes that the game features (more on those later) don't sit well in a co-op environment, while the fact that Ray and Thomas don't necessarily fight side-by-side throughout the whole campaign kind of scuppers the co-operative notion. Both excuses have their merits but providing co-op play for an FPS like Bound in Blood does seem to make more sense than either. On the other hand, if Techland can nail the single-player campaign then all is forgiven. After all, tacking on co-op play as an afterthought can be worse than no co-op at all.

Betrayal is a recurring theme for Bound in Blood's story, and not just between the two brothers. After a brief excursion in Atlanta, Georgia during the game's first level, the plot then reverts back two years when Ray and Thomas were fighting alongside each other against the Yankees during the Civil War. The two of them soon defect though, seemingly having been betrayed by a guy called Barnsby, and travel west (predictably) to avoid the Confederate army. Here they befriend some native Indians, but also end up fighting against some tribes further along in the game as well. As a general rule, then, if there are people around, then Thomas and Ray have a tendency to end up betraying/being betrayed/shooting them. 

Utilising Techland's Chrome engine (which, we are told, is now in its fourth iteration), Bound in Blood's environments put an emphasis on the vast expanses of America's Wild West. Draw distances of a scale that's rarely seen in videogames are used to depict the open landscapes of bone-dry deserts and canyons, while next-gen effects such as heat-hazing, HDR lighting, and depth of field have been applied to bring the scenery to life. However, while the backdrops do apply the illusion of vast distance and scale, the immediate environments that we saw during our first look had something of a corridor feel to them (seemingly open, but obviously constrained). This, in turn, made the longer draw distances appear like backgrounds on a film set. It could be intentional - Techland is drawing influence from Westerns after all - but we doubt it.

There were a few visual effects that we spotted which bring some gumption to the gun-slinging. The animations of Ray's magnum, in particular, are a joy to behold. Whether it's the detailed reloading animation, impressive recoil actions, or blurring of surroundings when Ray stares down the barrel of his gun, focusing on one enemy with the magnum held at a slight angle, Techland has clearly put a lot of love into that particular weapon and we're eager to see more of the same come the game's release. It's this gun, in fact, that will be particularly useful in some of Ray and Thomas Concentration Modes, which promise to add layers of depth to Bound in Blood's gameplay.

There will be at least four different types of Concentration Mode in the final game, with each one acting as a kind of mini-game that's prompted in certain game conditions. They remind us a bit of the Jutsu mini-games found in Naruto games, with features such as the ability to paint numerous targets in slow-mo before the computer takes them out automatically in a flurry of gunfire, or having to train a targeting reticule on bad guys with the left thumbstick while simultaneously pulling back and then quickly forward on the right stick to fire at them gun-slinging style. Ubisoft also mentioned a quick-draw Concentration Mode, where players will face enemies at high noon to separate the quick and the dead.

Duck And Cover

Getting back to some of Bound in Blood's more conventional gameplay, Techland has incorporated a covering system into the FPS action that has the effect of magnetising Ray or Thomas to adjacent objects, which they can then duck out of to fire. There's no panning out of the first-person view and into a third-person perspective while you do this (as with games like Rainbow Six: Vegas), so it'll be interesting to see whether Techland can succeed where others have failed and construct a first-person covering system that helps more than it hinders. Whatever the case, it's good to see more FPS developers going beyond a simple crouch command these days.

Other standout features that were mentioned include Techland's plans to provide multiple routes through certain level sections, which should help boost the illusion of an expansive game world and do the game's impressive panoramic backdrops justice. Vehicles are also set to play a significant role, with Ubisoft mentioning that players will be able to ride stage coaches, canoes, and horses in the final game. We only saw the horses in action during our first look and, while there was regrettably something a bit Oblivion about the visual horse-riding effects, it's definitely a feature we want to see more of when Bound in Blood is released this summer.

Techland isn't skimping on the multiplayer features either, with five game modes being touted at this stage in development. Ubisoft spoke to us about an Advance Mode, where Sheriffs try to run you out of town from multiple spawn points, and a Wanted Mode that's an all against one affair (as you'd expect). On top of this, a bounty system will pervade all of the multiplayer modes, placing a higher bounty on each player's head as their number of kills increase, which other players can then be rewarded with if they manage to take them out. It sounds a bit like Kane & Lynch's Fragile Alliance mode, which was probably the standout feature of Eidos' 2007 shooter, so we certainly have high hopes for Techland's bounty system.

We do have reservations about Bound in Blood at this stage, such as the lack of co-op play and whether or not the gameplay can advance beyond that of its predecessor. What we're really hoping, though, is that Techland can open up Call of Juarez's gunplay to provide something veritably Western - the power and brutal feel of a Smith & Wesson translated faithfully onto a gamepad.