PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood players might want to give online multiplayer another go today, as the latest patch brings a handful of important class balance changes to the Western shooter. Along with a fix to lower checkpoint loading times on the PS3, the Spy, Gunslinger, Hombre, Veteran and Sniper classes have all received tweaks in order to “offer the best experiences possible”.

The Spy class gets a damage and health increase, while the Gunslinger scores reduced recoil and improved accuracy. The other three classes receive nerfs. The Hombre loses long range damage and gains extra recoil and reload time; the Veteran loses health, accuracy, and addition pistols; and the Sniper loses no-scope accuracy, damage and health.

Seems like some significant changes there. Has anyone out there played Bound in Blood long enough to notice the difference?

The world builder will be available in two modes: a “simple” mode for basic level creation that’s full of tutorials, and an advanced mode, which “boasts full capabilities of the professional tools used in the development of CoJ: Bound in Blood”.

Which means you can cut out the rubbish parts of the game, concentrate on the parts it got right, and build entire levels around those good bits. Which is always a welcome move from hit-and-miss games like this.

Word of this passed in an “ALL MEMBERS MUST READ” message on the Ubisoft forums. VE3D, which noticed the message, advises “backing up your save files, uninstalling, then reinstalling in preparation for the ‘official patch.’ ”

ALL MEMBERS MUST READ – Important Patch Information [forums.ubi.com via VE3D]

General Custer sure is getting a lot of play lately. The famous Battle of Little Bighorn is not only the starting point for the upcoming time-travelling shooter Darkest of Days, it’s also one of the four new multiplayer maps available on August 6th for Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. Help General Custer escape his fate at the hands of the Indians on the Little Bighorn map, steal gold from the Vulture Mine, break out of jail in Fort Worth, or escape the Union’s Elmira Prison Camp. All four maps are playable in any multiplayer mode.

There’s no mention of a price in the press release, so we’re going to assume the map pack cost $US320, just so we can be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t.

Developer Techland revisits the Spaghetti Western in Bound in Blood, the sequel to 2007’s Call of Juarez. This time around the game focuses on Thomas and Ray McCall, the original protagonist’s step-father and uncle respectively, as they make their way from the front lines of the American Civil War to Mexico on a quest for the mythical Lost Treasure of Cortez. Gunfights, chases, and other Western-themed occurrences ensue.

As Crecente pointed out in his review, Western shooters generally fail to achieve the same level of acclaim as more modern day tales of bullet-fueled valor. Can Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood rise about the rest? Let’s gather us up a game review posse!

Offical Xbox Magazine UK
This prequel starts out on a promising note. It’s the height of the American Civil War, and the Yankees are murdering and pillaging their way through the state of Georgia. As cannons tear Thomas and Ray McCall’s land asunder, there’s hope this game can build on its fiery beginning. Sadly, it goes from the gritty thrills of an episode of Deadwood, to the easy-going cliché of the Milky Bar Kid adverts.

Eurogamer
Bound in Blood canters unapologetically through every western cliché in the book, and does so with enough vigour and sense of style that you’ll enjoy the ride. The first chapter tips the nod to Call of Duty with its depiction of a battle in the Civil War, but then the brothers promptly become deserters and outlaws; they burst into saloons both guns blazing, pull bars off a jail window with a horse, steal a stagecoach, fall in love with a Mexican bandita, recognise the honour and pride of the Native American, and shoot lots of other Native Americans – as well as lots of Mexicans, lawmen, outlaws, Yankees, rebels and prospectors. They shoot lots of everybody.

1UP
…the single-player’s strong focus on the McCall brothers makes the omission of co-op seem bizarre. With very few exceptions, you have an A.I.-controlled brother with you. The A.I. is actually decent, killing fools and navigating to objective points just fine — the amount of mistaken navigations or A.I. glitches is smaller than I imagined. Even the banter between the two — the way they simultaneously bicker/one-up/compliment each other — is surprisingly good…Perhaps there is some developmental reason I don’t understand, but it’s still odd to me that for every time I do a cooperative shoot-out with Ray and Thomas quipping about how ornery and badass they are, that I can never do that with a friend.

TeamXbox
Ubisoft even decided to go all out and put a robust little multiplayer experience in there. The game types definitely bring a few new fun components to old school FPS online multiplayer. But the classes seem a bit unbalanced to me, though I admit I’ve only played with the first six or so characters. Too many games I played were almost all Riflemen. Even so, the game types provide enough fun team-based experiences that don’t mess too much with the source material in terms of power-ups and such. Ain’t got no quad damage round these here parts, pardner. But we do gots a levelin’ system and such, consarnit!

GamePro
Bound in Blood doesn’t have any major flaws but I did notice that dynamite is way too effective in the hands of the enemy. They throw it like grenades and the heads-up display does a poor job of telling you where it lands; the only saving grace is that only a handful of enemies use them as thrown weapons. Engaging enemies at long-distance can also be tricky as it’s sometimes hard to pick them out against the horizon.

Kotaku
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood doesn’t redefine the genre, nor, I fear, will it win over the mainstream audience that these games so richly deserve. What it does do is offer gamers a chance to step into the boots of lawless men in lawless times, to slap leather, to avenge wrongs and to peek into the motives of single-minded men.

There’s only one way to settle this fight. I just don’t know what that is.

In Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Ubisoft adds an interesting twist to the genre, having gamers play as either of two brothers with distinctly different play styles. The game also promises to deliver a wild west tale that taps into the best of the history and fiction of the America’s early, lawless days.

But will that be enough?

Loved
Authentic Look and Feel: Almost more than anything, the touchstone for a western shooter is its ability to deliver a convincing milieu. To not just provide a first-person shooter dressed up with cowboy hats, but to put gamers in experiences steeped in the tradition of the classic Western. It’s here that Bound in Blood hits its highest notes. The story is a cleverly crafted homage to western traditions. The weapons and their behaviour are mostly detailed and realistic. The settings seem pulled from a diverse selection of great spaghetti, classic and modern westerns.

Engaging Story: Westerns are, or at least were, modern day morality plays. Sure, they entertained, but they also taught us something about the fibre of heroes, the face of villainy and how easy it is to sometimes confuse the two. Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood does a heroic job of delivering a story in this tradition, tapping into the classic themes of lawless honour and family first, while neatly tying together the elements of the original Call of Jaurez’s sometimes wanting back story.

Brothers and Arms: Rather than playing through the entire game as a single protagonist, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood tells its story through the eyes of three brothers, two of whom you control in turns. The game uses the ability to switch between brothers at chapter endings to develop two distinctly different modes of play. While controlling Ray McCall, gamers wield two six-shooters, firing them simultaneously. Ray can also throw lit dynamite, wears armour on his chest which protects him from bullets, and can kick in doors. He can’t climb well or run very fast. Thomas McCall, on the other hand, is more agile, allowing him to better traverse obstacles, even using a lasso to climb up buildings and trees. While he can’t fire two guns at the same time, he is better with the rifle and can eventually use a knife or bow to kill silently.

Strong Voice Dialog: Maybe it’s because I’m a younger brother, but I found the back and forth between the brothers, mostly the two you can play as, engaging and, at times, hilarious. Their constant foul-mouthed jibes at one another helped set the tone for the relationship they shared, and in some strange way also helped me build a closer rapport with them.

Horseplay: The horses aren’t as plentiful a I’d like them to be in the game, but once you find one and mount up they’re a blast to ride. It’s fun to pick people off as you barrel through a town on horseback, but just riding around is a satisfying experience.

Six Shooter Bullet Time: They may call it “concentration mode”, but Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood has bullet time. There are moments in the game, usually following a cinematic, where you kick open a door and you and your brother get to blast away bad guys moving in slow mode but controlling the two crosshairs separately with the thumbsticks and pulling the triggers to fire. Each of the brothers also have their own concentration mode that can be activated during play. Kill off enough bad guys and you can press a button to drop into the mode. For Ray that means painting the slow-mo bad guys with the crosshairs until time runs out and Ray automatically empties his gun into them. For Thomas you just hold the trigger and flick the thumbstick as if it were a gun’s hammer, blasting away the enemies. All three modes are extremely satisfying.

Wide Open Maps: The game takes place in a broad expanse of post Civil War America, with settings in southern plantations, high deserts, ruins, dusty towns and plenty of old towns and forts. All of the levels are packed with hidey holes, second floors and accessible rooftops, making gun play exciting and fast-paced.

Multiplayer Cowboys and Outlaws: Bound in Blood is everything you could want from a western shooter. Besides the traditional and team deathmatch, the game includes two other interesting modes. In Manhunt there are two teams, each taking turns either hunting down or protecting a wanted player. In Wild West Legends, one team has to complete a series of objectives, while the other tries to stop them. The objectives are all heavily themed to classic western story lines. Online play also includes more than a dozen classes, most of which have to be unlocked.

Hated
Buried Extras: A neat addition to the single-player campaign are a set of side missions you stumble across in some of the towns you visit. The side missions show up as wanted and help signs posted on the side of a building and playing through one just means reading the sign and going off after the objective. It’s great, but unfortunately, they’re tied directly to the games campaign and can’t be reached separately, it seems, after you’ve beaten the game. It would have been nice if they allowed players, after they’re done the game, to revisit the towns and finish this side missions, which aren’t required but certainly add a bit of play to the title.

Sweet, But Short: There wasn’t a dull moment, a bad mission, a poorly designed map in the entire game, but it only took me six and a half hours to play through it on the average setting. A quick fix would be, again, to let me go back into the side missions later on.

I love the western shooter, from Gun to Red Dead Revolver to Outlaws, and fortunately, developers don’t stop trying to try to turn what is essentially a niche shooter into a mainstream hit.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood doesn’t redefine the genre, nor, I fear, will it win over the mainstream audience that these games so richly deserve. What it does do is offer gamers a chance to step into the boots of lawless men in lawless times, to slap leather, to avenge wrongs and to peek into the motives of single-minded men.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood was developed by Techland and published by Ubisoft for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 30 in North America and July 2 in Australia. Retails for US$59.99/AU$109.95 on consoles and US$49.99/AU$89.95 on PC. Played through the single-player campaign on the PS3, including several side-missions, and multiple matches of online multiplayer.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

No price points or release dates just yet. But the content will be available for all versions – PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Techland Announces DLC for Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood [VG247. Original article, in Polish, from Polygamia.]

The Pitch is where a developer has to answer five quick-fire questions about their game in just 25 words or less. It’s all about their ability to hone down their game to its bare essentials and tell us precisely why we should be interested.

And hopefully, it’s a bit of fun for you guys.

So, lets hand it over to Techland’s Pawel Kopinsky. Pawel, your time starts now!

Give me the Call of Juarez elevator pitch.
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is an action-packed ride through the Wildest West ever created. Join the McCall brothers in their epic quest for the legendary gold of Juarez.

What sort of gamer is gonna dig Call of Juarez?
Obviously fans of awesome First Person Shooters and Western, players looking for an immersive and mature story in a game full of epic action.

What’s the first awesome thing I’ll do in Call of Juarez?
You’ll almost single-handedly stop an invasion force in its tracks in your own Wild West style D-Day.

What can I do in Call of Juarez that I can’t do in any other game?
Using explosives, a stagecoach and guns you can demolish half of a town so quickly it will make your inner outlaw blink in amazement and delight.

Describe Call of Juarez in just one word.
Yeehaw!

How do you think Pawel fared? Are you sold on his pitch for Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood?

I was going to introduce this clip with something about the game. But then, at 0:35 – “Don’t you move, bitch.” Followed by, “Yeahhhh! I’m comin’!” Please. There is no way that wasn’t deliberate.

Call of Juarez:: Bound in Blood is cummin’ to you June 30.

[via Gametrailers]

The new classes are trapper, gunsmith, spy, officer, duelist, veteran, scout, native and hombre. The spy, officer, duelist and veteran are all locked initially, but the four original classes – gunslinger, sniper, rifleman or miner – are still around and keep things interesting.

What Is It?
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is a prequel to the 2007 PC/360 shooter-adventure, Call of Juarez. Players alternate between playing one of the two McCall brothers throughout the singleplayer game and choose a generic character to play for online multiplayer which supports up to 12 players.

What We Saw
I played the Wild West Legends mode and the Manhunt Mode. I believe there’s only one other mode, a standard deathmatch. In Wild West, the players were divided into red and blue teams. One team would be Lawmen and the other Outlaws; the Outlaws’ goal was to rob a bank and steal horses to escape and the Lawmen’s goal was to stop them. At the end of the first round, the red and blue teams traded roles to replay the map. In Manhunt Mode, the same division of teams apply, but the goal is for the Lawmen to take control of points on a map and eventually capture the Outlaws’ hideout.

How Far Along Is It?
Bound in Blood is due out June 30.

What Should Change?
I Don’t Like The Cover System: This is a matter of preference more than a design issue – rather than tapping a button or making a conscious choice to go into cover, a character will stick to cover if he’s close enough to the cover object and it’s an object that actually counts as cover. This made cover confusing for me because I’d run to something that looked like it could be cover while being shot at, only I wouldn’t stick to it and then I’d get shot and die. Or, I’d be trying to go around back en route to the stables and somehow I’d stick to the side of a building just as I was trying to fling dynamite, causing me to blow myself up.

Leveling Up Is A Risk: Multiplayer matches move fast, but it’s imperative to level up your character. This creates a conflict when you know you’ve earned enough cash to level up, but you’re in a firefight that doesn’t leave any time to tap the menu button, select your class, press A, then press A again to confirm before exiting the menu. It’s almost easier just to wait until you’re killed before leveling up – but that’s kind of counter intuitive.

What Should Stay The Same?
The Bounty System: The bounty system applies to all multiplayer modes and adds a VIP gameplay element to each of them. Every time you kill someone (even if it’s by well-timed dynamite going off after you’ve already been killed), the bounty on your head rises by a dollar amount. Whoever kills you gets all of that money to spend on class levels. The VIP part comes from the sad fact that the guy who does the best is going to wind up the victim of everyone else’s financial needs.

The Wild West Legends Mode: I enjoyed Manhunt mode and deathmatch is a requisite for multiplayer – but I truly appreciate a game that works with its theme to create a multiplayer mode that feels unique. The bank robbery match in Wild West Legends played up Bound in Blood’s uniqueness as a Western-themed shooter and evoked my Texan childhood memories of playing cops and robbers.

Leveling Up Actually Matters: There’s nothing more frustrating than pouring points into a character only to find it makes little to no difference in gameplay. This not the case with Bound in Blood; just one level in the miner class made me the most powerful player on my team because I suddenly had more ammo and more health than them. Then the other games journalists found time to pause and level up and that was the end of my short-lived superiority trip.

The Ethnic Classes: The native American can kill people in one hit (the downside being that his bow takes forever to draw) and the Mexican hombre has not one but two sawed-off shotguns. But the bigger part of it is that I’m glad to see Call of Juarez sticking to its Spaghetti Western guns. If only they’d add top-heavy, Derringer-sporting saloon girls. Then they’d really be representing every Western archetype I learned about during Go Texan day in school.

Final Thoughts
I’m looking forward to this game for a lot of reasons – and I confess most of those are part of the singleplayer game (dueling? Sign me up!). But it definitely sweetens the deal to have a solid multiplayer mode, especially if it honors the Western theme as thoroughly as the singleplayer. The only thing I can’t weigh in on is the balancing: it’d take a lot more time than I had on hand to get a feel for all 12 character classes. But given that I never got bored playing multiplayer, I’m going to have lots of time to figure it out and I will probably enjoy every minute of it.