Both Ray and Billy also have a character specific weapon each, and in Rays case it's a bible. By putting a cannon in one hand an a bible in the other, you can look really very scary indeed, with the right mouse button spewing various 'Great Vengeance and Furious Anger' type readings whilst the left button lays the sinners to waste. This can have the ability to terrify your opponents into paralysis with your hellfire and zeal, but just like Pulp Fiction, really it's just a way to sound cool whilst you're putting a cap in someone's ass.

Billy's particular weapon is a bullwhip, occasionally used to drive off wolves and tarantulas, but more often used Indianna Jones style like a grappling hook to haul oneself over otherwise impassable obstacles. Whilst Ray spends most of the levels up close and personal, Billy will range over some much larger terrain, riding horses over some of the largest single levels in an FPS, reminiscent of TES: Oblivion. These changes of pace are usually well handled, and one quite serene mission has you riding across the plains hunting rabbits with a bow and arrow. Juarez manages to keep that wide open frontier feeling that was always central to the western movie, but until now never captured in a game. These levels, with their size and abundance of foliage, are the most power hungry, but the most visually stunning and a surprisingly peaceful experience. On the flipside, some of the terrain can feel like an overly contrived obstacle course, as if someone has spent a great deal of time making a platform game - Pitfall 2006. On the subject of graphics even the opening loading screen takes the time to quietly point out the fancy new engine under the hood. Starting up the game, however, we are quickly reminded that these new mechanics require plenty of power to drive them along - the compatibility tests recommendation of at least 128 megs of graphics card is not just tough talk, and only my system's abundance of RAM really held the frame-rates together. It's been a long time since I had to go and push all of the sliders in the Video menu all the way to the left, so if you're still pulling off the cellophane from your shiny new Alienware muscle-system, this might be the one to show off with.

Once Jaurez had time to settle and I got used to looking at a game in 800x600 again, it still looks gorgeous, the animation and scenery done not just with care but with an obvious love of the gritty end of the genre. Juarez will really reward power, adding gorgeous texture and fluidity of movement. In a particularly zen moment, I watched the mechanics of the corpse of a rattlesnake slowly slide off a rock and over a cliff. The sound is also spot on, with the team responsible having carefully walked the line between accuracy and making an impression - guns explode and bodies drop with a satisfying weight to them. The is appropriately orchestral, evoking the sense of the epic Sergio Leone brought to The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly or Fistfull of Dollars.

In summation, The Call of Juarez is excellent, with only a few very minor glitches. Both the characters and the storylines are classic western, without falling into pastiche. The game engine is powerfully rewarding to top class hardware, but without punishing the more modest systems with overly long load times. The only serious criticisms to be leveled at Juarez, and you better hope you have faster hands than it does, is that it is a shade on the short side, which is bound to happen to any game with a quick save function and an increasingly ninja audience of gamers.

Searching for flaws one might also have to point out the occasionally pointless physics derived puzzles, such as the old chestnut of stacking boxes for weight on the end of a see-saw platform to enable you to cross it, which hasn't been an impressive physics trick in over a decade. The lack of a developed is usually a bad sign for in this day and age, which was fairly inevitable given the importance of stealth, slow-motion, and well developed set pieces in the game's character. My experience of this was limited, so I shall reserve judgment. A last hiccup is the encouragement of the player to collect little faux Wanted posters of the Polish production crew wearing silly hats, which look more like the 'Bandito' option on a Brighton photo booth - a touch that is neither welcome nor in-keeping with the rest of the game's tone. These, fortunately, are rare, and the bulk of Juarez is an excellent balance of gritty realism and game play. It's been a long time but Outlaws can finally hang up its guns and retire.

The Good:

  • Cinematic, engaging storyline with original distinctive characters
  • Excellent graphics, even in the lower settings
  • Balanced game play between and overt action

The Bad:

  • Physics puzzles are well below the rest of the game's standard
  • Limited appeal
  • Too short at only about 8 hours

The Ugly:

  • Comedy Mexican bad guys sounding like the worst pub impression of Speedy Gonzales you ever heard

89%

By Duncan Lawson