"I was going to shoot – shoot, not chat"
Wild West … The scorching sun illuminates the huge deserted lands, on which various kinds of settlements appeared here and there. Cities with salons, banks, railway stations, churches, brothels and prisons were a rather rare phenomenon. It was there that a lonely traveler could find an overnight stay, food, drink, earnings. Or troubles, everything depended on the luck and character of the hero. Cowboys, distilling herds of cows, fatal beauties, priests, Indians, lawyers and bandits – whom you just can not meet in the Wild West.
This is what the maximum romantic image of the above setting looks like as much as possible. This was especially contributed by cinema as a whole and the famous "dollar trilogy" for the authorship of Sergio Leon in particular. Subsequently, the Wild West embodied both the 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, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, who returned to the origins on the one hand, came out, and on the other, he was significantly different from his predecessors.
Often, the plots of westerns do not shine with special originality. So Gunslinger tells us the story of the formation of Silas Hryvz as a head hunter. Drives our hero not a thirst for profit, but a simple desire to take revenge. It seemed that the story seemed so simple that it could not surprise, but ..
1910, the city of Abilin, Kansas. The old man, beaten by life, enters the saloon and meets those present, introducing himself as Cayilas Gryvz. A guy named Dwight recognizes him, because this is the most famous hail hunter in America! The young man asks Silas to tell a few stories, and he agrees, the benefit of alcohol and the public in stock. Regarding the latter, in addition to a naive dwyt in the saloon, there are an old bartender Ben, an incredulous Jack, a polite waitress Molly and an inattentive Steve. And only when the glasses are filled with whiskey, and all the listeners took their places, we go thirty years ago in the past, during the golden fever.
Telling one story inside another is not a particularly sophisticated technique, but it is important how exactly this is the game. The stream of truth from the lips of Silas will repeatedly be diluted with shall embellishment and outright lies. Yes, and the listeners do not sit just like that: they will try to take the old man to clean water if he really intervals. Moreover, the phrase "Yes, everything was wrong!»Fraught up by replaying the already passed scene under other circumstances. The words said by secondary characters behind the scenes 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 faced many famous personalities: Jesse James, John Hardin, Johnny Ringo, Billy Kid, Patt Garrett and others. By the way, each of them is represented using an insert-comic.
But the main thing is the desire of our hero to take revenge. And even here the narrative was built non -standard, because about the reasons that pushed Silas Gryvz on such a dangerous path, we will only learn closer to the middle of the game. Until this moment, the old man will carefully be silent and translate the conversation into a different direction. Yes, the story in Gunslinger is simple, but perfectly beaten with the help of the above techniques, so it catches.
For the transmission of the atmosphere, the visual and sound components are most often used. Gunslinger developers perfectly understood this, so they paid them a lot of attention. Let’s start with the appearance, because even in the Wild West they meet on the clothes.
Of course, the Poles from Techland did not have large budgets, which means that the schedule of the level of AAA projects can be forgotten. Therefore, the developers made a simple and elegant decision-to stylize the game under the comic book, in other words, to use the technology of the Selo-Sheading technology. This approach to a bang worked, it was possible to hide graphic shortcomings, and to create a recognizable appearance to create.
Further – more: almost everything was subjected to stylization. The aforementioned comic inserts for the performance of the characters look stylish and briefly characterize the next hero of this bloody history. It turns out capaciously, beautiful and spectacular, in a word – candy.
Loading videos are similarly stylized: first, they show us those https://theredlioncasino.co.uk/ sitting in the saloon of the listeners of Silas Gryvz and himself, then – a book whose pages turn over themselves. But instead of the text, we are again shown almost completely static pictures that replace each other.
What can we say about all sorts of trifles like liters of blood flying out of the murdered enemy. Or you can recall how the wounds of the protagonist look like: the image becomes black and white, and the screen gradually fill the holes from the bullets, as if made in paper.
Musical accompaniment also deserves praise. Most compositions are the basis of key and string tools, but there are practically no shock. Thanks to this approach, these melodies turned out to be slow, measured, leisurely. Everything, as it should be in the classic western.
However, during the shootout, a slightly different music plays, more tense. The drums sound louder and clearer, bass parties are added and, on the whole, the pace is noticeably accelerated. Moderately pathos and dynamic, interspersed with whistle of bullets and roar of explosions, music – delight for the heart of any shooter.
If the Visual style of the game seemed to borrow from Borderlands, then the Gunslinger gameplay was prepared by the formula: “Max Payne and BulletStorm. Mix, but do not shake ". Such a cocktail is hard to imagine, so let’s in order.
There were a distinctive feature of Detective Max Detective, in addition to Nuar, there were cinematic shootings. Slow down of the time whistling around the bullets and the main character in the epicenter of the deadly hurricane. Techland developers took this concept for the idea, abandoning only acrobatic sketches – they would look strange in the first -person game.
Slow-Mo effects in Gunslinger a lot. Like Max, Seelas has a concentration strip, after the activation of which the time around the hero slows down, the world becomes black and white, and the enemies become bright red. And after the end of the ability, you just have to blow on the steaming trunk of a revolver, watching the bodies of your enemies slowly settled on the ground, abundantly orxing it with blood.
Concentration is found in two more types. The first is QTE, tied to the WASD key: press the desired button, Saylas pulls the trigger and immediately aims in the next enemy. The second is a standard concentration, but the hero himself is led to the heads of enemies, you just have to beat the left mouse button. Such moments happen by the will of the script and look extremely impressive.
However, the Poles did not stop there and added a passive ability called "Feeling of Death" to the protagonist. When one bullet separates one bullet from the death of Silas, the effect of slowing the time is turned on and you need to choose a direction to evade flying six grams of lead. Make the right solution – health will be restored, and the ability will begin to slow down slowly, no – go to the control point. Fortunately, this mini-game is not a lottery, a pool flight trajectory is clearly visible almost always.
From BulletStorm, the game got a system of awards for stylish murders. They shot the bandit in the corps – here are your fifty points, one hundred in the head, and if we were on the verge of death – another one hundred and twenty -five. Such a frantic number of stylish killings as in BulletStorm, there is no game. But in stock Combo system – shot in a row, several opponents will increase the multiple of the glasses.
Of course, points are knocked out for a reason. These are experience points that you can spend on improvements. In total there are three troops in the game, each tied on certain types of weapons. Well, just passive skills like increasing damage during combo, hints of enemies behind your back, increasing the duration of concentration, etc. There are about thirty perks in total, plus there are skills that open access to improved versions of basic trunks.
Since it came to the arsenal, let’s go to it. He is not particularly rich: three types of revolvers, rifle, shotgun and cropped versions of the last two trunks. Yes, not enough, but each type of weapon is individual, and tactile sensations from shooting will be radically different. The main thing that pleases is to fill opponents with lead from any trunk, which in shooters is extremely important. Silas can also use dynamite checkers as grenades and shoot from a gatling machine gun.
There are not many types of opponents either: ordinary bandits, thyroidists and protected criminals with shotgun. A couple of times you have to shoot up with the Indians, some of which prefer a close battle, but this is a drop in the sea. To smooth out the impression, the developers added three types of showdowns with the famous bandits (they are bosses).
The first is a classic duel on revolvers. We focus on the enemy, guide the hand and wait for the bandit to grab the weapon, after which we take out his own and shoot. Either we can initiate a shootout on our own, but the game will consider it a dishonest act and give out less experience.
The second – villains with Gatling machine guns. During the battle with them, most of the time we run between shelters and try to throw them dynamite. You can try and shoot criminals, but this is fraught with a diligijance by sending to the nearest checkpoint if you find yourself not agile.
The third view is perhaps the most boring. These are bosses who look like ordinary opponents, only with a huge health strip. The battles with each of them are extremely simple: you hide in the shelter and shoot back until it comes close, after which you run away to hell;Repeat to the victorious. Long and boring, the benefit of such episodes of the whole couple.
With locations, too, is not everything unequivocally. Most of them are memorable and steep: a sawmill flooded with the rain, a mine with branched tunnels, a narrow canyon littered with stones, a mountain railway, a huge swamp embraced by a fog. All of them transmit the atmosphere of the Wild West. But it did not ask cities: you will get into them quite often, but in fact it is the same settlement. The starting and end point and a couple of streets are changing, no more. An unpleasant trifle that nevertheless does not spoil the overall impression.
About six hours will take to pass the game, and at the end of the story the modes of Arkada, Duel and New Game+will open. The first is a set of already familiar locations with the horde of opponents, the goal is to fill as many points as possible. The second suggests in turn to defeat all the eminent opponents met on an honest duel. The third, as the name implies, will provide the opportunity to re -pass the plot, preserving all the skills.
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger has only one problem – the number of content. There are few enemies and weapons, repeated city locations and a short plot campaign. But pleasant shooting mechanics, filming of shootings, 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 content for tens of hours, but a small one, even a chamber, history. In any case, what to choose is to decide, but I need to rush. After all, somewhere now exactly noon ..
Many thanks to the master Shanti For help in editing text!
