“If you’re going to shoot, shoot, don’t talk”
Wild West… The scorching sun illuminating the vast desert lands, on which various kinds of settlements appeared here and there. Towns with saloons, banks, train stations, churches, brothels and prisons were quite rare. It was there that a lonely traveler could find accommodation, food, drink, and income. Or trouble, it all depended on luck and the character of the hero. Cowboys driving herds of cows, fatal beauties, priests, Indians, lawyers and bandits – you won’t meet anyone in the Wild West.
This is exactly what the most romanticized image of the above setting looks like. Cinema in general and the famous “dollar trilogy” authored by Sergio Leone in particular contributed to this. Subsequently, the Wild West was embodied in games, and the Call of Juarez series perfectly conveyed the feeling of a real western. In total it has three games and one misunderstanding called The Cartel. Just after it came Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, which, on the one hand, returned to its roots, and on the other, was significantly different from its predecessors.
Often, the plots of Westerns are not particularly original. So Gunslinger tells us the story of the development of Silas Greaves as a bounty hunter. Our hero is driven not by the thirst for profit, but by a simple desire for revenge. It seemed that the story was so simple that it could not surprise, but..
1910, Abilene, Kansas. A battered old man enters the saloon and introduces himself to those present, introducing himself as Silas Greaves. A guy named Dwight recognizes him because he’s America’s most famous bounty hunter! The young man asks Silas to tell a few stories, and he agrees, since there is alcohol and an audience. Regarding the latter, in addition to the naive Dwight, the old bartender Ben, the incredulous Jack, the polite waitress Molly and the inattentive Steve are in the saloon. And only when the glasses are filled with whiskey, and all the listeners have taken their seats, we go thirty years back in time, to the time of the gold rush.
Telling one story inside another is not a particularly sophisticated technique, but how the game does it is important. The flow of truth from Silas’ lips will be repeatedly diluted with a dose of embellishment and outright lies. And the listeners don’t just sit there: they will try to bring the old man to clean water if he completely lies. Moreover, the phrases “It wasn’t like that”!» are fraught with replaying an already completed scene under other circumstances. Words spoken by minor characters off-screen can directly affect the gameplay, which looks very fresh and interesting.
The narrative itself contains many filler episodes. On his long journey of thirty years, he encountered many famous personalities: Jesse James, John Hardin, Johnny Ringo, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett and others. By the way, each of them is represented using a comic insert.
But the main thing remains our hero’s desire for revenge. And even here the narrative is constructed in a non-standard way, because we learn about the reasons that pushed Silas Greaves onto such a dangerous path only closer to the middle of the game. Until this moment, the old man will diligently remain silent and take the conversation in a different direction. Yes, the story in Gunslinger is simple, but perfectly executed using the above techniques, which makes it catchy.
Visual and audio components are most often used to convey atmosphere. The developers of Gunslinger understood this very well, so they paid a lot of attention to them. Let’s start with appearance, because even in the Wild West people are greeted by their clothes.
It’s clear that the Poles from Techland didn’t have big budgets, which means you can forget about the schedule of AAA projects. Therefore, the developers made a simple and elegant decision – to stylize the game as a comic book, in other words, to use cel-shading technology. This approach worked with a bang, it was possible to hide graphical flaws and create a recognizable appearance for the project.
Further – more: almost everything was stylized. The above-mentioned comic inserts for introducing the characters look stylish and briefly characterize the next hero of this bloody story. It turns out succinctly, beautifully and effectively, in a word – candy.
Loading videos are stylized in https://spellwincasino.uk a similar way: first we are shown Silas Greaves’ listeners and himself sitting in a saloon, then – a book whose pages turn themselves. But instead of text, we are again shown almost completely static pictures, replacing each other.
What can we say about all sorts of little things like liters of blood flying out of a killed enemy?. Or you can remember what the protagonist’s wounds look like: the image turns black and white, and the screen is gradually filled with bullet holes, as if made in paper.
The musical accompaniment also deserves praise. Most compositions are based on keyboards and strings, but there are practically no drums. Thanks to this approach, these melodies turned out to be slow, measured, unhurried. Everything is as it should be in a classic Western.
However, during firefights, slightly different music plays, more intense. The drums sound louder and clearer, bass lines are added and overall the tempo noticeably speeds up. Moderately pathetic and dynamic, punctuated by the whistling of bullets and the roar of explosions, the music is a delight for the heart of any shooter.
If the visual style of the game seemed to be borrowed from Borderlands, then the gameplay of Gunslinger was prepared according to the formula: “Max Payne and Bulletstorm. Mix, but do not shake". It’s hard to imagine such a cocktail, so let’s take it in order.
A distinctive feature of the adventures of detective Max, in addition to noir, were cinematic shootouts. Time slowdown, bullets whistling around and the main character in the epicenter of a deadly hurricane. Developers from Techland took this concept as an idea, abandoning only acrobatic studies – they would look strange in a first-person game.
There are a lot of slow-mo effects in Gunslinger. Like Max, Silas has a focus bar that causes time around him to slow down, the world to turn black and white, and enemies to turn bright red. And after the ability ends, you can only blow on the smoking barrel of a revolver, watching as the bodies of your enemies slowly settle to the ground, abundantly sprinkling it with blood.
Concentration is found in two other types. The first is QTE, tied to the WASD keys: press the desired button, Silas pulls the trigger and immediately aims at the next enemy. The second is standard concentration, but the hero himself aims at the heads of enemies, you just have to hit the left mouse button. Such moments happen at the behest of the script and look extremely impressive.
However, the Poles did not stop there and added a passive ability to the protagonist called “Sense of Death”. When Silas is one bullet away from death, time slows down and you need to choose a direction to avoid the flying six grams of lead. If you make the right decision, your health will be restored and the ability will begin to slowly recharge; if not, you will go to the checkpoint. Fortunately, this mini-game is not a lottery; the flight path of a bullet is clearly visible almost always.
From Bulletstorm the game got a system of rewards for stylish kills. Shot a bandit in the body – that’s your fifty points, in the head – a hundred, and if you were on the verge of death – another hundred and twenty-five. The game does not have such a crazy number of stylish kills as in Bulletstorm. But there is a combo system – shooting several enemies in a row will increase the score multiplier.
Of course, points are awarded for a reason. These are experience points that you can spend on upgrades. There are three leveling trees in the game, each tied to certain types of weapons. Well, just passive skills like increasing damage during a combo, hints about enemies behind you, increasing the duration of concentration, etc. There are about thirty perks in total, plus there are skills that give access to improved versions of basic barrels.
Since we’re talking about the arsenal, let’s move on to it. It’s not particularly rich: three types of revolvers, a rifle, a shotgun and cut-off versions of the last two barrels. Yes, it’s not enough, but each type of weapon is individual, and the tactile sensations from shooting will be radically different. The main thing that pleases us is that it will be fun to fill opponents with lead from any barrel, which is extremely important in shooters. Silas can also use sticks of dynamite as grenades and fire a Gatling gun.
There are also not many types of enemies: ordinary bandits, shield warriors and protected criminals with shotguns. You will have to exchange fire with the Indians a couple of times, some of whom prefer close combat, but this is a drop in the ocean. To smooth out the impression, the developers added three types of showdowns with famous bandits (aka bosses).
The first is a classic duel with revolvers. We focus our gaze on the enemy, direct our hand and wait for the bandit to grab a weapon, after which we take out ours and shoot. Or we can initiate a shootout ourselves, but the game will consider this a dishonest act and give out less experience.
Second – villains with Gatling guns. During the battle with them, we spend most of the time running between covers and trying to throw dynamite at them. You can try and shoot the criminals, but this risks sending you by stagecoach to the nearest checkpoint if you are not agile enough.
The third type is perhaps the most boring. These are bosses that look like ordinary enemies, only with a huge health bar. Battles with each of them are extremely simple: hide in cover and shoot back until he comes close, after which you run away; repeat until victory. Long and boring, fortunately there are only a couple of such episodes.
Not everything is clear with locations either. Most of them are memorable and cool: a sawmill flooded with rain, a mine with branching tunnels, a narrow canyon littered with stones, a mountain railway, a huge swamp shrouded in fog. All of them perfectly convey the atmosphere of the Wild West. But with the cities it didn’t work out: you will find yourself in them quite often, but in fact they are the same settlement. The starting and ending points and a couple of streets change, no more. An unpleasant little thing, which nevertheless does not spoil the overall impression.
It will take about six hours to complete the game, and at the end of the story the “Arcade”, “Duel” and “New Game+” modes will open. The first is a set of already familiar locations with a horde of opponents, the goal is to score as many points as possible. The second one proposes to take turns defeating all the famous opponents you meet in a fair duel. The third, as the name implies, will provide the opportunity to replay the story, retaining all the skills.
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger has only one problem – the amount of content. Few enemies and weapons, repeating city locations and a short story campaign. But the pleasant shooter mechanics, cinematic shooting, the atmosphere of the Wild West and the unusual presentation of a simple story outweigh the existing shortcomings. Yes, this is not an AAA project with a huge open world and dozens of hours of content, but a small, in some ways even intimate, story. In any case, what to choose is up to you, but I have to hurry. After all, somewhere now it’s exactly noon..
Thank you very much sir Shanti for help in editing the text!