Call of Juarez review

If the 100th anniversary of the Duke brought a tear to your eye, there’s a good chance Call of Juarez has a crusty wanted poster with your mug on it. It wonderfully captures the pristine and burgeoning frontier that provided the backdrop for many a brutal Western endeavor. A first person shooter that’s equal parts Deadwood and The Searchers; stagecoaches, saloons and saltier-than-thou dialogue really help Juarez nail its intended time and motif.

Bullets audibly ricochet and the ten gallon hats fly as you as you battle through America’s late 1800’s adolescence stealing, fighting, and exerting deadly prejudice against the Apache in a manner that would make the Man from Laramie proud. And for the majority of you who can’t tell a woodpecker from a Peckinpah, we’ll try to keep the fifty-year old movie references to a minimum.

Blasting across the testosterone soaked stage, you’ll play as two characters: the pious Reverend Ray and the man with no last name, Billy Candle (Yeah, that looked like a last name to us, but since The Man with no Name is frequently referred to as Joe, we’ll let it slide.) The story of revenge, greed and misunderstanding unfolds with one playable character in hot pursuit of another, allowing you to re-explore the vast and uncut Leone-esque levels via branching pathways and without the repetitive backtracking.