Call of Juarez: Gunslinger PS3 Review

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is a western themed first-person action shooter available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS3. Call of Juarez has returned to its roots of the first two games that made the series popular and successful for the authenticity of the wild western environments with Call of Juarez in 2007 and Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood in 2009 before Call of Juarez: The Cartel put a modern spin on the series. Can Call of Juarez: Gunslinger recapture the magic of the two original games in the Call of Juarez franchise?

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger’s availability is in flux at the moment due to Techland acquiring Gunslinger from publisher Ubisoft in spring 2018, although Techland since re-released it on PC and it may still be available as a voucher in limited quantities for home consoles. Techland has teased a possible remaster as a brief video was released in which Silas Grieves can be heard saying, “The Old West is full of legends. And you, Arthur Morgan (Red Dead Redemption 2’s lead character), will soon be one of the greatest, I’m sure, because legends, you know, they never die. They change to come back stronger than ever.” Techland responded to Eurogamer’s Robert Purchese by proclmaiming, “The Call of Juarez series means a lot to us and we’re not ruling anything out for the future. Legends never die, after all.” Make of that what you will as for the chances of a remaster or sequel to Gunslinger, but why would Techland buy the game specifically without having big plans for it and there is also that, “They change to come back stronger than ever” comment directly from the mouth of the lead protagonist.

The story of Call of Juarez: Gunslinger explores a number of legendary tales from the wild western era as the story is told from the perspective of a former bounty hunter who is also Gunslinger’s main protagonist called Silas Grieves, while blurring the lines between myth and legend with such legendary names as Billy the Kid.

There are three varied game modes including: story mode, arcade mode and duel challenge. Story mode consists of 14 levels with an intriguing story that can be revisited at any given moment from the recollections menu; providing you have completed that particular level in the sequence of the story mode. The recollections feature informs you of how many nuggets of truth you have collected and how many have currently eluded you which makes the recollections feature a great design choice as it retains the information regarding the nuggets of truth that you have collected and teases you with a reason to immediately replay levels.

Arcade mode consists of ten levels that are unique in comparison to the other game modes and is all about achieving the highest score possible by earning points from kills and awards with even more points earned for chaining kills together to create combos; therefore triggering a combo multiplier with the combo being increased if you kill an enemy within a spell of four seconds following on from the previous kill. The challenging gameplay mechanics of arcade mode are increased even further by having to remain alive to keep your score with a bonus added to your overall score for each level if you complete the level as quickly as possible. Speed runs are possible by sprinting from shoot out to shoot out and location to location, being precise with your aiming to reduce the lengths of shoot outs and using concentration mode as much as you can, although it must really be as flawless as possible to earn the extra time bonus. To gauge how well you have performed across every level; there is a maximum of three stars to earn for each level which coincides with how many points you have earned, how quickly you have completed the level and generally how well you have performed.

Duel challenges mode consists of 15 duels in which you attempt to prove that you have what it takes to takedown the best of the Wild West and collect the bounties on their heads. The fifteen duels are against various characters from the story mode and as there are so many duels; there is a lives system in which you have five lives to progress as far as you can, although you will lose a life for every time your opponent beats you in a duel. A real sense of tension builds as you edge nearer to drawing your weapon as you have to position your reticule over your duelling opponent in order to confirm the precision of your aiming, while a heart beat can be heard growing faster and louder within seconds of when you will have to draw and shoot for survival. You can cheat to win the duel dishonourably, but you will not be rewarded with any points for doing so, although you can use one of your five lives to retry the duel in an attempt to win honourably and earn points for playing fairly by the rules.

Combat and shoot outs are excellent as they are actually quite varied when you consider that there are long range and short range shoot outs, close quarters combat and duelling with the long range shoot outs and duelling being the two forms of shoot outs that you have to be rather accurate at, otherwise you will quickly find your character taking far too much damage.

There are a total of 54 collectibles spread throughout the game that is referred to as nuggets of truth. There are usually around three nuggets of truth positioned across each level that can be found sometimes in open sight simply placed on top of a barrel, while they can also be found in more obscure areas that require more significant exploration in areas of the level that will have you treading off the path of the current objective. However, even for the harder to find nuggets of truth; they will prove to be worth the hunt as you unlock a scroll for each nugget of truth regarding an event that helps to complete the picture of the story.

You earn XP from killing enemies which is important as XP will help you to level up and gain new abilities as each time you level up; you receive a skill point to be redeemed for a new or improved skill. There are three categories of skills including Gunslinger for dual wielding shoot outs; Ranger for long distance precision sharp shooting; and Trapper for close quarters combat. Each of the three skill trees begins with a single skill that is available for purchase providing that you have the skill point to purchase it, while the rest of the skills remain locked until you have purchased a skill that leads towards levelling up to that particular skill. The Gunslinger skill tree provides the abilities to dual wield revolvers when you have collected a second revolver, while also possessing such abilities as increased ammo capacity and increasing the longevity of the combo meter; the Ranger skill tree provides the abilities to slow down time with an iron sight, while also increasing the rifle ammo capacity and providing hints about the locations of the nuggets of truth collectibles; and the Trapper skill tree provides increased armour, increased ammo capacity for shells and dynamite and higher combos during concentration, amongst many more for all three of the skills trees. Each of the three skill trees possess 14 skills resulting in you having to earn a combined total of 42 skill points, which will require you to play through the story mode twice to be able to reach level 37 in order to unlock all of the skills and improvements to maximise the performance of Silas Grieves during duelling to long range shoot outs and even close quarters combat.

The controls are well mapped to the DualShock 3 controller with plenty of alternative control schemes to suit your preferences. The default control scheme consists of pressing R1 to shoot; pressing L1 to aim; pressing R2 to enter concentration mode; pressing L2 to throw sticks of dynamite; pressing X to jump; pressing square to reload your weapon or holding square to climb up or down a ladder, to open a door or to use an object; pressing O to crouch; pressing triangle to switch between weapons; pressing select to view your current objectives or holding select to view the skill trees and use the skill points you have earned to purchase new or improved abilities; pressing left, right, up or down on the d-pad to navigate through your inventory to switch between your weapons and to choose between a single gun or dual wielding guns as you figure out which is more preferable based upon your character’s current situation; pressing L3 to sprint; pressing R3 to melee an enemy during close quarters combat; changing the direction of the left analogue stick to move forwards and backwards or strafe left and right in an attempt to avoid enemy gunfire; changing the direction of the right analogue stick to look left or right and up or down; and pressing start to display the pause menu. The default control scheme for duels consists of pressing L2 to switch to the first enemy; pressing R2 to switch to the second enemy; pressing R1 to grab your weapon and fire; changing the direction of the left analogue stick to steady the hand you are aiming with or dodging a bullet; and changing the direction of the right analogue stick to aim left or right and up or down. The differences in the alternative controller configurations are subtle, but are important as they swap the purposes of the analogue sticks and shoulder buttons from left to right and vice versa which is guaranteed to provide a preferred control scheme for all players and is therefore a great design choice to make everyone feel comfortable. Vibration particularly occurs during duels in which vibration will start shortly before you are anticipating the moment of when you will have to draw your weapon and shoot your duelling opponent which certainly increases the atmosphere and tension in those seconds leading up to the draw. However, there is definitely untapped potential due to the lack of compatibility with PlayStation Move, especially during duelling challenges.

Graphically, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is excellent as it is reminiscent to the graphical art style of the Borderlands series in regards to their cel shaded graphics which perform flawlessly in 720p HD. Enemies have great animations as they will move out from cover to shoot at your character and move back into cover with plenty of realistic explosions and fire effects across varied authentic Wild West environments. There is plenty of gore and violence with the bodies of enemies remaining after Silas Grieves has defeated them during shoot outs.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger’s presentation is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main menu, leaderboards, help and options menu, nuggets of truth menu and various gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left and right analogue sticks, directional pad and face buttons on the DualShock 3 controller. Menu backgrounds revolve around an authentic wild western saloon setting.

The audio consists of voice-overs, sound effects and music that work well together to build authentic layers of the Wild West setting and the stories of legendary tales that unfold throughout the story. Voice-overs are performed to a high level and really do their part of telling the story with some voice-over artists that you would have most likely heard in various videogames before or since Call of Juarez: Gunslinger. For instance, John Cygan who voices the lead character of Silas Grieves is a veteran actor and voice-over artist with credits as far back as 1990 having also voiced Michael Duke in Call of Juarez: The Cartel, alongside Leo in The Darkness II, Dr. West in Dead Island, Tariq in Medal of Honor, Pepe in Mafia II and Agarth in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, amongst numerous other videogames and films such as Monsters University, Toy Story 3 and Despicable Me 2. Another experienced voice-over artist is Sam Riegel who voices Dwight with credits as far back as 1989 including videogames such as voicing Peter Parker and Spider-Man in the first and second The Amazing Spider-Man, Teddie in Persona 4 Golden, Tennessee ‘Kid’ Cooper and Red-Eye Robles in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time and Riley Mark Carter in The Evil Within, among many more videogames and TV such as Persona 4: The Animation, TRON: Uprising and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. John Cygan and Sam Riegel are two voice-over artists that are part of a collective group of talented voice-over artists that also deserve credit for their enthusiastic contributions to telling the story of Call of Juarez: Gunslinger. Sound effects are realistic as you hear the pinging of bullets as they are shot and hit against a barricade you are taking cover behind or a nearby object, the explosion of explosive barrels when shot at and the cries of defeated enemies, while the music is purely authentic to the wild western period.

The trophy list includes 17 trophies with 13 bronze trophies and 4 silver trophies, although as it is a downloadable game; Gunslinger does unfortunately not contain a platinum trophy. Easier trophies will still require skill to earn them, but will be earned naturally through the course of the game with the Keep At It bronze trophy being the easiest for unlocking your first skill which is possible to achieve during the first level, while the Perseverance bronze trophy for unlocking both exclusive weapons to a particular skills tier in story mode is also a guaranteed trophy fairly early into your first playthrough of story mode. The story related trophies will naturally be earned too with three story related bronze trophies, although two of them are for experiencing the two separate endings, while the other trophy will be earned immediately after the end of the first level. Three of the hardest trophies are certainly the Grows In The Telling silver trophy for completing story mode on hard difficulty as there will be particular areas of levels where you need to use the concentration mode to greater effect to continue progressing; the For a Few Skills More silver trophy for unlocking every skill in story mode sees the player needing to reach the maximum level of 37 across two complete playthroughs of story mode; and the Unvarnished Truth silver trophy for collecting all 54 nuggets of truth as some of them requires a greater amount of exploration before they are found. It is estimated that depending upon skill, a good aim and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take around 20 hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are three difficulty levels including normal, hard and true west with the true west difficulty level being provided as a reward for completing the game. The major difference from one difficulty level to the next is that each difficulty level will have even more responsive enemies that are not only harder to kill due to increased health, but also possess a greater amount of artificial intelligence resulting in more movement and a better chance of your enemies hitting the target when they attempt to shoot your character.

There is no local or online multiplayer, although local and online competitive duels with both players attempting to draw their weapon first and kill the opposing player to win the duel in a best of three series or an unlimited number of duels with time restrictions applying to achieve the most successful duels within any given set period of time would have been an amazing feature. Meanwhile, local and online co-operative multiplayer could have been quite effective as an alternative method to sharing the story of the single player game modes with a friend.

Online leaderboards focuses on friends’ scores, your own score and top global scores across the scores for arcade mode, each of the ten arcade mode levels and duel challenge mode with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); the maximum combo; overall score; and the amount of stars awarded in all of the eleven arcade leaderboards, while the duel challenge leaderboard replaces the maximum combo and stars with the amount of honour you have earned from duelling fairly and the furthest stage you have reached with the positioning of each player amongst every leaderboard based upon their overall scores. While it is a good idea to have the positioning of each player within each of the leaderboards determined by their overall scores; some more alternatives such as determining the positioning of the leaderboards by the amount of stars awarded or even the maximum combo would have appropriately changed up the formula a bit.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger’s replayability stems from the authentic wild western atmosphere and environments, alongside three varied game modes with their own unique levels totalling to 39 levels, three skill trees that require you to complete the story mode twice in order to level-up enough to reach level 37 to be able to purchase all 42 skills, 54 nuggets of truth collectibles, two separate endings, three varying difficulty levels and competitive online leaderboards. The features collectively form the content of a retail game, albeit without multiplayer; despite the lack of local and online multiplayer there is more than enough single player content for players to return for many hours worth of multiple playthroughs.

Analysis