Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Almost, but not quite"

I enjoyed playing this game, but it's got a lot of problems..It certainly isn't no Red Dead Redemption...

The Good:

-Gunfights can be exciting and the gameplay nails what a shoot out in the old west might be like. Gun fights can get pretty hairy at times.

-The story of the 3 McCall brothers is quite good through out the game. however the ending feels a bit rushed and the conclusion of the story is very predictable. It feels like Ubisoft ran out of money production wise to complete the ending of the game.

-A nice variety of weapons to use. Each brother can use different kinds of guns. Ray is more of a gunslinger while Tom is more of a cowboy.

- Nice graphics (the environments anyway...) The environments are well done and there is lots of variety put into them.

- Great music and sound effects.

The Bad:

- The overall look of the game looks too grey and murky. They used this greyish haze to hide some really poor graphics. It doesn't work, it just looks cheap and sloppy. I bought the first Call of Juarez, and it just looks so much brighter and sharper looking compared to Bound in Blood.

- The controls can be very frustrating at times. It's very hard to turn your character around and shoot other foes. It can be completely frustrating to pull your gun out of your holster during a shootout. You can adjust the control settings which will help, but overall the controls do not feel fluid. The controls feel too sticky. At times this game feels like you are playing a "on the rails shooter" because if feels you don't have complete control of your character. You end up dying and then you ask yourself, "How did I die?" This game also has some of the slowest running I have ever seen in a video game. Running looks and feels like your walking. It's a complete joke.

- The A.I. is pretty dumb. They do the same actions over and over again. After playing the game for a few hours, you can almost predict where your enemies are going to pop up from. Sometimes they just stand there waiting for you to shoot them.

- Some bad graphics. You can really see that the graphics in this game were rushed. The two brothers look pretty good, but most of the other characters in the game look weird looking. Overall in terms of graphics, everything in the game doesn't look as good as the background environments.

-Multiplayer is kind of lame. It works fine, and you get a variety of characters to choose from but it's just not fun to play.

-The voice acting is cheesy. Uncharted 2 quality voice acting is not what you find here. You just don't l believe in the characters, after a while you just don't care what they have to say.

The worst thing about Call of Juarez: Brothers in Blood is the loading time between checkpoints. This completely ruins the game. Everytime you reach a checkpoint the game freezes for five seconds while it saves your checkpoint. It really takes you out of the experience and slows the action down. It gets annoying fast.

Call of Juarez: Brothers in Blood has it's moments, but the problems that the game has may leave you feeling pistol whipped. The game is too darn short. Within 10 hours you can finish it. It's worth renting or buying at a low price if you're in the mood for a little Wild West action, but you may find yourself wanting to play Red Dead Redemption instead.