Nabs, Addnan, CheesecakeRecipe, and Miker got it. For everyone else, consider the game videos etc. It's pretty sweet.
As per our agreement:
Fuck what you heard about Call of Juarez.
The Cartel didn't happen. Scratch it from the record, your honor. BiB is cool, and the original is too but those guys are of a completely different breed than Gunslinger. Silas Greaves, a bounty hunter with a flair for the dramatic and the best (or worst) luck in all of the west comes sauntering on into a saloon one day and upon being recognized by patrons he offers to tell them the real deal about many of the stories that had been fabricated about him and put into print. CoJ: Gunslinger allows us to walk through the frames of his tall tales and act out his campfire pulp.
You see, Silas' mouth runs about as fast as his trigger finger shoots 'n sometimes it gets away from him. In a move that puts Dragon Age 2's "Storyteller" mechanic to shame, Gunslinger goes off the rails on occasion and messes with non-linearity in entertaining ways. In a few instances it may feel like a cheap extension of a stage's lifespan but the dialog and added humor of these moments more than make up for having to backtrack. At one point, he excuses himself and the game sticks the player in a loop until he returns. It may seem invasive, but only if you're a soulless husk of a human being.
In between bouts of Silas flapping his gums with the bar patrons is a meaty and extremely fun arcade shooter that made me fill up with glee. The western genre is just not represented enough and Gunslinger's mechanics play out very smoothly. Guns have genuine oomf to them and getting a string of headshots on moving targets in rapid succession to build up a chain for higher XP is goddamn satisfying. Silas can employ shotguns, revolvers and long rifles as well as sticks of TNT to win the wild west and they all kill stuff dead with noticeable power. Occasionally he'll get into a quick-draw shootout which has its own set of mechanics that require you to be paying full attention.
Did I mention this game is gorgeous?
Because yeah, it's gorgeous. Whoever nailed it as "Borderlands in Source 2" really said it. If you look closely you can see the seams in a level and there are noticeable shortcuts the devs took for performance but the style puts it visually on the level with higher budget titles.
It wasn't that I felt that I
had to, it's more that I
wanted to. CoJ: Gunslinger is all about having fun. The whole XP thing takes a backseat to the madness and all it ever lets you do is earn more bonuses to kill faster than you could 2 seconds ago. After the campaign (Which I haven't finished yet, at about 5 hours in) there are arcade modes you can turn to for more fun and seem like they could be great for a burst of senseless violence. I felt compelled to keep going forward and it wasn't until my stomach was punching itself to get me to grab food that I really stopped and I think that's pretty telling on just how engaging Gunslinger is without needing some heady plotline and faux religious outrage mumbo jumbo.
Take this Spanish Coin and hand it to The Newell for a copy of Call of Juarez: Gunslinger. I won't have it said I left you with nothin', boy.
(Big thanks to Blizzard for his giveaway. He should know I love writin about games just as much as I like playing them.)
