Call of juarez gunslinger gambling addiction. What about Red dead redemption? The quick and the dead

1910 Bounty hunter Silas Greaves walks into a saloon in Kansas, where he is immediately recognized by the patrons. Surrounding the legendary hero, whose adventures formed the basis of pulp novels, they ask him to tell about his exploits. He agrees - luckily the onlookers treat him to a drink.

Supercowboy

Almost from the very first minutes, Silas's stories mislead us - it is impossible to understand where the hero is telling the truth, where he is embellishing a little, and where he is outright lying, and only towards the end you will understand that he is doing this for a reason.

Such a presentation of the plot allowed Techland introduce into the game a whole series of famous thugs of the Wild West - on his way, Silas meets Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and other famous gunslingers. Moreover, the hero even treats some of them to lead - the game sends historical accuracy to hell, which only adds to its fun.

Gunslinger moved away from the visual style of the previous parts, and due to cel-shading now resembles . Between missions, the plot is presented in the form of animated comics, and the game presents the key characters with bright strips of three frames (“Billy the Kid: 21 corpses by the age of 21!”). This decision adds a second meaning to the game’s story: Gunslinger not only changes some historical facts, but also turns all the characters into superheroes. Silas turns out to be an almost exact copy of The Punisher - with the only difference that the Marvel hero did not know how to slow down time and dodge bullets flying at him. Yes, yes, characters Gunslinger live in a kind of “Matrix” with Western scenery.

Bullet in the head

But in terms of game mechanics Techland She was clearly looking away. Gunslinger painstakingly counts all our successes and rejoices at every spectacular shot - combo series are especially valued here: the one who manages to quickly shoot in the head, kill enemies on the move and get into barrels of gunpowder gets the most points. The game doesn't even try to equip its enemies with intelligence or require the player to be creative - it simply throws one wave of enemies at the hero after another and seems to pat him on the shoulder, giving out 100 points for each headshot. From time to time, Silas encounters bosses who can take several dozen bullets and not die - with such guys you have to play tag, running away from their attacks and returning back with dynamite in your hands.

However, Silas kills the bulk of the villains in a fair duel. The developers have revised the mechanics of duels from, making it clearer: by moving the mouse (or using a gamepad stick), we focus our gaze on the opponent (this allows us to more easily aim at the enemy), and using the A and D buttons (or the second stick) we place our hand above the holster to grab a revolver as fast as possible. As soon as the enemy starts reaching for the gun, time slows down and we have a couple of moments to take aim and pull the trigger. You can pull out your weapon first, but in this case Gunslinger will consider Silas a coward.

Points received for killing enemies are converted into experience. Silas gradually gains levels and learns new skills - he picks up a second revolver, learns to quickly reload, increases the duration of the slo-mo, and so on. If at the beginning of the game the hero looks like just a cool cowboy, then towards the end he turns into a walking death machine, killing enemies without even aiming at them (there is also such a skill). By the way, you won’t be able to learn all the skills in one playthrough, so Gunslinger offers to go through yourself again with all the skills you have already learned.

This is not the only reason to stay in the game after the end credits. The single-player campaign is reinvented in True West mode, where there is no interface and enemies are no longer harmless boys. Another fun: collect all the “evidence of authenticity” - secret documents scattered throughout the levels with historical references that reveal where Silas was right and where he was lying.

But the most fun mode Gunslinger turns out to be “Arcade”: 10 short, storyless missions that must be completed with maximum points. A huge number of enemies, a frantic rhythm, long combos - here the game reveals itself at its best.

***

Gunslinger difficult to criticize. Simply because this is the first game in the series where the developers have abandoned unnecessary ambitions. If you tried to play

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Developer: Techland
Publisher: Ubisoft Entertainment
Publisher in Russia: 1C-SoftClub
Website: Open
Genres: FPS/3D
Similar games: Uncharted: Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Bulletstorm, Call of Juarez, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Dead Man's Hand, Outlaws
Multiplayer: Absent
Out: retail/digital, 05/22/2013 (worldwide, PC/PS3/360), 06/14/2013 (Russia, RS)

If you are a gang leader (or simply move in criminal circles) and answer to the name Jesse James, Sundance Kid or Newman Clanton - beware. The legendary bounty hunter Silas Greaves is rushing towards you with questions and a loaded revolver, and it would be better if your underwear were clean.

There is no more dubious story in the world

Greaves is not a servant of the law at all - on the contrary, the meaning of his life has become bloody revenge. The killers of his brothers are lost in the vast expanses of America, and when at the beginning of the game the already elderly Silas arrives in the town of Abilene, Kansas, he is still one step away from his goal.

Shoot the runner

It cannot be said that such inserts significantly enliven the game - it is cheerful even without them. The pace is noticeably faster than any of the Call of Juarez and plays in the same league with. You almost never sit behind cover, but usually just fly out towards slow-moving enemies, firing with all your guns, which is why the battles resemble a shooting gallery. The more often and more spectacular the kills, the more points are added to the account (there are cool multipliers for the non-stop meat grinder) and the faster the level increases. It is unlikely that you will be able to reach the ceiling in one playthrough, and it is advisable to decide in advance which of the three branches of development appeals to you. Some people like to hit at point-blank range with a shotgun and a sawn-off shotgun, others take down bandits with revolvers from a medium distance, a third one opens fire a mile away with a rifle - each behavior model can be polished. Neutral skills are also scattered throughout the branches, such as homing for flying dynamite, sniffing for secrets, and improving “concentration” (the usual slo-mo with highlighting of opponents).

It’s not difficult to become a “Terminator” even without “pumping up” - a good reaction decides a lot. The AI ​​is predictably primitive and can only dart between adjacent piles of boxes, but it shoots accurately. Therefore, killing your opponents before they start firing back in unison is a sure way to eliminate the problem. And even if things are really bad, Death is ready to give another chance. Just dodge the fatal bullet.

Such tricks rarely work in duels - it’s hit or miss. Their mechanics are not far from . We concentrate our attention, keep our hand close to the holster, and when the hypothetical Johnny Ringo reaches for a weapon, we get ahead of him and send him to the next world. It sounds easier in words than it is in reality - you are unlikely to win at least half of the fights on the first try. Of course, Techland has provided a workaround (attack without ceremony), but you have to pay for it with points and honor.

The quick and the dead

For those who liked duels, the Poles have prepared an appropriate regime. Fifteen one-on-one meetings with famous criminals and sheriffs in a row and six “lives” - do you think it’s no big deal? No matter how it is. Halfway through the path, opponents begin to play trump cards (for example, Plummer snatches the “gun” much earlier than the previous shooters), and it is difficult to adapt to them. But every second of delay is fraught with death.

You shouldn’t “slow down” in “Arcade” either, the goal of which is to score maximum points in a minimum of time. Perhaps this is the best entertainment in, freed from most of the shortcomings of “History” and focusing on the merits. The object-rich, beautifully drawn campaign maps - ranches, mines, canyon, city, etc. - are teeming with enemies more than ever, so that twenty skillshot combos become the norm. The levels are extremely short and devoid of annoying moments (like repeated battles against bandits with machine guns), so it’s pleasant and convenient to go through them several times, updating your own and online records. No one distracts with chatter, with all due respect to the voice acting, no plot surprises. Pure, challenging action with atmospheric music.

However, don't delude yourself too much about the whole thing. It is surprisingly monotonous - six hours of running and shooting at live targets. There is not even traditional horse riding here, although it would seem that what a Western would be without it. In general, if it doesn’t catch your attention right away, it’s a lost cause. A meager arsenal, monotonous enemies, lack of multiplayer, neat but sometimes outdated graphics also do not add whist to the game.

On the other hand, Techland has done a serious job bringing Call of Juarez feeling after the failure. And it’s not so important what awaits us next - a return to the origins of the series or another semblance of a shooting gallery. If only the West were Wild.

P.S. A real cowboy manages to finish off both the chicken and his opponent in a duel.

The theme of the “Wild West”, with proper skill, can make rich those who decide to tackle it with intelligence and the proper talent. The frontier environment is an unplowed field for all kinds of experiments. On the one hand - cowboys, Indians, marksmen, femme fatales and treasure hunts. On the other hand, the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries were wonderfully good for creating bold projects without bothering too much with authenticity.

However, computer game developers are somehow not very successful in exploiting the Wild West. Of the more or less successful projects, one can only remember the old one, a series of tactical strategies Desperados, “GTA in a cowboy setting” and the series, which seems to have lost ground by the third part.

The studio, which, why not, went wrong with its attempt to transfer the cowboy setting into the modern world in its recent craft, has decided, it seems, to atone for its guilt, and to return everything “back” to the dusty prairies of the USA.

Once upon a time in the Wild West.

Having dodged a speeding car, the legendary shooter Silas Greaves, pretty beaten by life, entered a rickety, unremarkable saloon. But if you are a legend of the West, about whom tabloid books are written, it is not so easy to remain unnoticed. Regulars of the entertainment establishment recognize the legendary “black sheriff” and ask him to tell a couple of tales from his difficult but eventful life. Glass after glass - and the most incredible pictures of the Wild West begin to unfold before the slackers, and Silas himself turns out to be the same man who prescribed wooden macs for a good half of the other legendary cowboys. And somewhere on the horizon loom the famous treasures of Juarez...

In the meantime, grateful listeners buy the cowboy, whose stories are becoming more fantastic every minute, another glass of whiskey, and the player is invited to plunge into real bloody turmoil. The developers have chosen a very successful manner of storytelling - Silas tells the story of his life and sometimes lies shamelessly. He is caught in a lie by his listeners, and the story on the screen changes dramatically. For example, thanks to the “narrative style” of the old scam, we will shoot a gang of loser robbers three times.

Login Note:
“Black sheriffs” are a completely historical phenomenon. Bounty hunters operated in the western United States until the early 1920s. They were regularly hired by authorities to solve the most “sensitive” problems without getting their hands dirty.

So let's be clear right away - despite everything, it turned out to be a real ode to lead, horses, dusty prairies and men in ponchos covered in two-week stubble. A kind of movie with Clint Eastwood in terms of content.

If you want to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.

The gameplay is pure, unadulterated action. Silas loves and knows how to shoot, so we send the lion's share of the screen time to the forefathers of a variety of enemies, among whom there was a place for bandits, sheriff's deputies, and even Indians. Know, aim, and shoot. Each kill adds some points to the “reaction” counter, and adds some experience to the hero himself. The reaction meter is spent on slowing down time - after pressing the corresponding button, time slows down and enemies are highlighted in red. During this short period, we can effectively shoot down the heels of our opponents.

Experience points must be spent on the “role-playing element”. As Silas gains levels, he becomes a more experienced and tough cowboy, acquiring useful skills. They are divided into three skill trees, which are designed for different types of weapons. Revolver connoisseurs will be able to pick up two barrels and carry more cartridges with them. Fans of ranged combat will improve the performance of rifles, and fans of shotguns, accordingly, will get the hang of faster reloading double-barreled guns, sawn-off shotguns and other nice machines for inflicting grievous bodily harm. In addition, leveling up gives you access to legendary weapons, decorated with intricate engravings and endowed with increased lethality. Moreover, in each group of skills there are skills that can be useful to you regardless of your preferences in weapons, which, according to the developers, should develop in players a desire to pass Gunslinger again.

Among other features of the game, there is the ability to evade bandit bullets with the accumulated reaction sensor, and periodic duels, well known to everyone who played the same Red Dead Redemption.

Polish shooter syndrome.

The problem is that the gameplay, while desperately trying to seem fun, turns out to be quite boring. It’s common to compare it with , but the latter gives hundreds of points to the dull Polish shooter about cowboys. The next part of the series about the treasures of Juarez looks more like an imperishable time killer Moorhuhn Wanted. It makes about the same amount of sense and the gameplay looks about the same. Know, shoot yourself quickly and accurately - points are awarded for kills and damage to scenery. Sometimes we upgrade skills that have virtually no effect on anything. The situation cannot be saved even by duels, which at first lead to delight, and after the third time cause fierce hatred. In them, we are asked to hold the enemy in sight for a long time and tediously with a poorly listening mouse, and constantly move our hand closer to the holster. After the final credits, one gets the impression that Techlands specifically developed an easy-to-use shooter so that a visiting child could sit down with it while the adults were talking in the kitchen.

is a stupid, but cute and sometimes even exciting modern shooting gallery. About halfway through the game you realize that this is all similar to a video game from an arcade machine, where the hero moves himself, and the player only needs to shoot quickly and accurately. The Polish shooter about cowboys also asks us to press the “forward” button and sometimes duck down.

When you get tired of delving into an uninteresting plot filled with cliches, there is an “arcade” mode at your service, in which you just need to shoot the crowds, and “duels”, if suddenly you don’t get tired of fighting with the mouse during the game.

The graphic style deserves special mention. It’s really quite good - in keeping with the spirit of the series, it doesn’t pretend to be realistic, but it doesn’t hurt the eyes with its clumsy textures. Landscapes on the horizon make me want to put them on my desktop. If you start meticulously studying every twig, or, God forbid, look into the local cellophane river, you will be very upset.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that it is not a bad or disastrous game. This is a real find for all those who expect absolutely nothing from the next shooter except the opportunity to shoot at targets for half an hour, and are already tired of the same Moorhuhn. If you expect originality, new ideas, or a fascinating plot from the game, look for more interesting options.

Here you have no right to open your mouth, and every word you say may be your last. There is only one way to prove that you are right - a duel. One moment, one shot, one death. The one who turned out to be more accurate and faster is right. Are you ready to go to the Wild West with a game from Techland called Call of Juarez: Gunslinger ? Then load your Colt and get ready to shoot!

Let's start with the simplest and most uncomplicated thing that this game presents to us - the plot. It is based on the fact that the famous bounty hunter Silas Greaves drops into one of the saloons and, omitting boring details, begins to “poison” bar visitors with stories from his life. Actually, all these stories boil down to long shootouts with a lot of enemies and a boss fight at the end of the story. Only the time and place of action change, but the essence remains the same - kill everyone.

But behind the mass extermination of enemies there is a hidden meaning - a thirst for revenge. The main character, over the course of a not so long plot, chases after the most dangerous criminals of that time in search of those through whose fault his brothers died and he almost died. Basically, that's the whole plot.

Between missions, we can see game screensavers in the form of quite colorful images, which are accompanied by dialogues between the game characters. And only sometimes we are given the opportunity to watch small game scenes that essentially mean nothing.

The graphics in the game are comparable to Borderlands or The Walking Dead from Telltale Games and give it a unique atmosphere and style. The gameplay in the game couldn't be simpler. We kill enemies, for this we receive experience points, which in turn we spend on pumping up the hero’s combat skills. The more accurate the kill, the more points you will be awarded. Accordingly, it is better to kill enemies with one shot to the head, rather than planting the entire drum or clip in his torso.

The game has the ability to slow down time, such as in Max Payne. At this moment, we can dodge enemy bullets, and at the same time shoot several impudent cowboys. In general the project Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is in some places very similar to a game about a retired New York detective, only from the first person and in the Wild West.

The game has three modes: "Story", "Arcade" and "Duel". The story mode does not need explanation, but the arcade mode will offer us crowds of enemies that we can destroy without pursuing any global goals. The duel will provide an opportunity to have a fair fight with the most notorious bandits of that time.

By the way, as we progress through the story, we will also have to take part in duels. And this is almost the best thing in the game. During a duel, we must monitor the position of the protagonist's hand, while keeping focus on the enemy and being ready to shoot in time. If you kill an enemy ahead of time, this will affect the game points received for the level.

Another interesting feature of the game is that as the main character tells the story, listeners add their own versions of the development of events to these stories, which are reflected in the gameplay and the plot as a whole. The developers should be praised for the good implementation of this idea.

Call of Juarez is a completely unique series. It is absolutely incomprehensible why at one time a Polish studio suddenly decided to make a game in the Western genre, and even more surprising is why they suddenly succeeded. The first part of Call of Juarez, released in 2006, was not without its shortcomings, but all of them were more than made up for by an excellent Hollywood-level plot and a real atmosphere of the Wild West.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

Genre shooter
Platforms Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Developer Techland
Publisher Ubisoft
Website Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

Grade

A simple but fascinating plot; great shooter component

The game is too short

The Call of Juarez cycle has been completely rehabilitated

The prequel Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, released a couple of years later, came out at least as good as the original and seemed to finally close this storyline - the duology turned out to be solid and complete, nothing could be added to it. However, the developer decided otherwise, and we got Call of Juarez: The Cartel. No one fully understood what it was - either an attempt to reboot the series, or simply a desire to “make money” on an already promoted name, but transferring the action of the cycle to modern times clearly did not benefit it. The game turned out to be a banal corridor shooter with primitive gameplay, and only the plot vaguely reminded us that this developer once delighted us with real Westerns.

In general, the rather unexpected announcement of the fourth part, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, was received coolly - they had already put an end to this cycle. However, when it became known that the series was returning to its roots - the action was again moving to the Wild West, hope arose that Call of Juarez still had a small chance of resuscitation.

So, Gunslinger. If anyone doesn’t know, this was the name given to people in the Wild West who couldn’t resist, with or without reason, snatching a couple of revolvers from their holsters and starting shooting at everyone around them. The term, however, appeared already in the 20th century, and refers more specifically to the culture of the Western, and not to real people who lived during the era of the conquest of America. In Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, the main character is precisely this “gunslinger”, the most typical character of any western, both cinematic and book. At the beginning of the game, Silas Greaves, a famous bounty hunter, enters a certain saloon, where the local public recognizes him and asks him to tell several stories from his life. As it turned out, Silas actually has a lot to tell - in gratitude for the drinks that the saloon regulars immediately offer him, he willingly feeds them stories, one after the other, more incredible about how he personally dealt with the most famous criminals of the 19th century like Butch Cassidy, Billy the Kid or Jesse James. As usual, the further into the forest, the more firewood, Silas’s tongue begins to get tangled, and his memory begins to fail, so local drunks increasingly begin to catch him in inaccuracies and with each new story they suspect more and more that an ordinary impostor is sitting in front of them, just fooling their heads for the sake of free booze...

The presentation of the plot in Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is a genius find from Techland. All stories are presented in the form of Silas’ memories, and everything that happens on the screen is commented on by his voice-over, and he doesn’t just read out a banal text, but rather “tells stories” - sometimes forgetting himself and immediately correcting himself, or, being caught in an obvious inconsistency, quickly pretends that in reality everything was different, but he just didn’t put it that way - and at the same time, the environment in front of the player is urgently reconstructed, the Apaches who jumped out from an ambush turn into cowboys, day turns into night, etc. Sometimes, instead of Silas, another piece of the story, known from some recent pulp novel (dime novel), is told by one of the local regulars, after which Silas objects, “it wasn’t like that at all,” and the player replays the section just passed, but already according to the new rules, and over his head there is an ever-increasing debate on whether this could really happen, or whether Silas is simply openly mocking the local gullible public...

If we talk about gameplay, then there is clearly one trend that Techland has not changed throughout the seven years of the cycle’s existence. If the first part was, in fact, an interactive “cinema” western, where shooting was needed only to connect the plot, then with each new part Call of Juarez moved more and more towards a pure shooter, and in Call of Juarez: Gunslinger this reached its apogee . There was not just a lot of shooting - in fact, besides it, there was practically nothing left in the game, a little more, and it would have been just a shooting gallery like some Mad Dog McCree. Fortunately, the developer took into account the mistakes he made in The Cartel, and now the shooter mechanics are not only flawless - on the contrary, they are so well implemented that the player does not even notice the “corridor” nature of the gameplay. Even the ubiquitous QTEs, which have already made their way here, are not as annoying as in some Tomb Raider - after all, in Gunslinger, if you fail, nothing terrible will happen - game over will not occur, you will just find yourself having to “manually” deal with the pop-up from an ambush by a horde, instead of effectively killing everyone, by pressing the buttons that pop up in the middle of the screen in time.

The passage is also diversified by a good implementation of Slo-Mo, and the ability to dodge bullets, and, of course, classic duels - although you will probably have to go through the latter more than once, because your opponents’ reactions are all right, and you will have time to grab a revolver, and even hitting the enemy before he does the same is not so easy.

A new feature in the series is character leveling, reminiscent of the system from Dead Island (by the same developer, by the way). Gunslinger has a “tree” of three talent branches, each of which is responsible for its own fighting style, or rather, for the weapons used - a pair of revolvers, shotguns and long-range rifles. Here you can speed up reloading, increase the number of cartridges in the clip, etc. – the improvements are, frankly speaking, cosmetic, but you can get unique inlaid “trunks”, and the very fact of hunting for caches and new character levels, although it does not provide any cardinal advantages, still diversifies the passage of the game quite well.

In general, it must be admitted that the developer completely unexpectedly managed to completely rehabilitate himself for the disastrous The Cartel - Gunslinger turned out to be a dynamic, fast shooter with exciting gameplay and excellent humor, and although it now resembles some kind of funny Bulletstorm rather than the dramatic first parts of Call of Juarez, I can't even call it a drawback. And if the story campaign (which can be completed in 4-5 hours without any problems) is not enough, you can start a new game in Game+ mode, have fun by quickly gaining points in arcade mode, or try your luck in duels.