Call Of Juarez

I bought Call Of Juarez months ago and it has been just waiting to be played. So I had some spare time and thought I'd pop the game in. First of all the volume in the game is really low compared to any other game I've played on the Xbox 360. So at first I thought the dialogue was just some random mumbling that I wasn't really even supposed to hear. But yeah I was. Usually when I play a game the volume on my TV is at 10. For this game I had to put it up to 25. What the fuck is with that?

So at first you walk around at some forest and you do these tutorial parts. The second you get to a "gun tutorial" the game confuses me. You're at a farm and there are two buildings. A small house and a big decrepit building made of planks. You're supposed to find a box with a gun in it on the roof of the barn. Well guess which one is the barn? The fucking house of course!!!! I mean does Ubisoft have a different meaning for the word "barn" because I sure as fuck would have never called that shack a barn.

Then I advance to some town. I get a bunch of objectives that change just because I walk forward on a street and watch some short cutscenes. Is this really necessary? Don't give me objectives if I don't have to do them. They go something like this: "Find a gun", "Hooker has a gun, get to the hooker", "Can't get to hooker by using stairs, find another way", "Search the hooker's drawers for a gun". I mean just FUCK!!!

Another thing when I dropped a chair on some guy at the saloon the game gives me a message saying something like "You're not supposed to hurt innocents". Okay.. so this is the fucking wild west (you know the WILD is there for a reason) and I can't even choose who I punch or shoot. Not a very good start.

During the first hour of playing the game I get these idiotic time limits at least 6 times. DON'T PUT TIME LIMITS IN GAMES!!! They are not fun and they're not challenging. They are just fucking annoying. "You have 60 seconds to go through some hookers drawers to find a gun". I mean are you kidding me? How does this enhance the experience? The hooker comes in anyway the second you find the gun so what the fuck does it matter if i want to go through the drawers for 30 fucking minutes if I feel like it.

I also really expected the Reverend's voice to be much more ballsy. But I guess it will suffice. I also discussed the whip mechanics in an earlier post. But to sum up: it sucks. Then there are loading screens and auto-saving parts that constantly interrupt the flow of the game (if there is one).

So this really isn't a very good game. The things I described earlier aren't really major issues but when everything feels kind of half-assed and poorly executed the immersion falls apart. Once again a game with great potential but that just doesn't deliver any of it. Only reason I kept playing is the theme because the wild west is an interesting era but it's still not handled very well in video games. I'll keep my fingers crossed for future efforts though.