Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

Genre: First-Person Shooter

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Dying Light: Definitive Edition & Call of Juarez: Gunslinger bundle, which also contains Dying Light: Definitive Edition.)

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is a First-Person Shooter originally released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC back in 2013, and mostly ported straight to the Switch, featuring gameplay that puts players in the romanticized version of the Wild West told in the dime novels of its heyday.

Visually, this game looks fine, and it one of the better-looking first-person shooters on the Switch more or less by default, which is kinda’ sad, actually – this game was not particularly impressive back in its day, and the graphics don’t seem to have improved much, if at all – the game on Switch runs at 1080p in docked mode and 720p in portable mode, with a 30FPS framerate that’s mostly pretty stable but can dip a bit in places. In addition, the way the game is presented uses subtle cel shading in a way that can make the visuals look unclear at times, which can be a bit off-putting. In the end, all of this is largely fine – the game looks and plays fine, and is about on par with earlier versions… but when we’re talking about a game that’s over a half a decade old, one would hope that it might have been improved at least a little in the time since its original release.

Okay, that’s not to say there are no improvements in the Switch release – in addition to being able to take this game on the go, the Switch version of the game now sports HD rumble and gyro aiming, putting it ahead of the other console versions of the game, but only just.

As for the gameplay, this is a solid first-person shooter with a good amount of personality and variety afforded to it by its unique presentation of an old-timer in the Wild West relaying stories of his exploits, which had him crossing paths with numerous well-known figures of the day… although we’re repeatedly led to believe the man’s accounts may not be perfectly accurate, especially when the story occasionally rewinds to have us play a different version of events as he “corrects the record”. It’s a clever narrative trick that helps to keep things fresh and interesting.

The gameplay itself is also pretty good, with progression in the form of a skill upgrade system as well as a decent story campaign. There’s nothing especially novel or out of the ordinary in the gun mechanics here, but they work well all the same.

Well, that’s true for the most part, but there is one caveat – the game has occasional “duels” where you face off against an enemy in a minigame designed to represent those famous standoffs from spaghetti Westerns. These minigames have you controlling your focus with the right stick to keep your target on the enemy, while controlling you gun hand with the left stick to better prepare for the draw. It’s an interesting idea, but unfortunately it works out to be frustrating as both your hand and focus wander without your input, and the moment you touch either one of them, the progress they’re making freezes.

The other problem here is one dictated more by the setting than the game – as much as the game tries to shake up the narrative to keep things interesting, the core gameplay itself can get pretty repetitive, because most enemies you’ll fight are more or less the same, and you don’t have a huge variety in the weapons you use. In one early level, for example, you’re teased with the possibility of sneaking out of a town full of men who want to kill you, but “sneaking” is an absurd prospect when there’s no such thing as silencers and the game’s linear level design and AI means that you’re sure to be spotted by the first person whose path you cross, automatically notifying everyone in the level of your position.

The game does have occasional moments where time slows down and you take out multiple enemies at once, but it’s inconsistent in how it does this – sometimes you’ll simply be firing off shots as fast as you can and letting the automatic aiming do the work, and sometimes you’ll be firing off shots by pressing random button inputs as they appear on-screen. With this sort of inconsistency, it makes me feel like I’d rather just go to the predictable monotony of the rest of the game.

There is one other issue with this game that I should note, specifically for those who buy the physical release of the game – that physical release does not include a cartridge, just a download code for the game. So no matter which version of the game you get, you’ll still be using up 2.7GB of space on your MicroSDXC card or your Nintendo Switch’s internal memory.

However, as much as I can complain about the ways that this game could be improved, at its core Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is still a solid First-Person Shooter on a console that is, let’s be honest, starved for good First-Person Shooters. This game isn’t anything big or ground-breaking, but if you’re a Switch owner who absolutely needs to shoot things on Nintendo’s hardware, this is going to be one of your better bets right now.

tl;dr – Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is more or less a straight port of the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 wild West First-Person Shooter with added HD rumble and gyro aiming and nothing else changed or added. It’s a solid entry in the genre with a lot of personality, but it doesn’t do anything to push the genre forward in any way.

Grade: B

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