Call of Juarez (CoJ)


Call of Juarez is a story about a lost treasure, a boy’s past and a priest that are lead down a long path.

Here are some CoJ videos Supported at 1up.com:
videos

The Single Player allows you too play between two characters:

The two Characters you’ll be playing as in the Story Mode are Billy Candle and Reverend Ray. Interestingly enough the characters have little differences during game play except the actually mission style between both the characters. Billy Candle’s character is stealth based; the game offers a variety of different paths as the stealth character. Including going Gung-Ho and shooting up the neighborhood or taking a sneaky approach. But also adding to Billy’s character he is given a whip which is used for many of the actual missions in the game mostly for swinging from ledges or perhaps protecting yourself against animals when with out a gun and so on. This rope (whip) mechanic/physic is quite flawed and seems tiresome and seldom works well.

These characters will be switched between Episodes in the game there are 15 episodes in the Story Mode of the game.

Spoiler Alert!
(As Rev. Ray approaches his brother’s farm he hears shooting and screaming; Reverend Ray later stumbles upon Billy Candle fleeing the scene of his parent’s death. Billy Candle is Reverend Ray’s Nephew. This scene leads Reverend Ray to believe Billy is the cause of his brother’s death. While all along Bill decides it best just to run and meet up with an old girlfriend. Small mission on the side hint at The Lost Gold of Juarez and Billy’s past and as if they have something to do with each other, End Spoiler.)

Billy Candle Game play:
The Hunted for Most of the Game
Billy uses his whip and his climbing ability to get to a lot of the games tedious mission areas. Billy starts the game looking for his house, but gets caught going into town to check things out in town. Not with out a short tutorial before you get to your house, to help get things started with shooting and being sneaky. Billy gets to his house and finds screams, this leads to the Episode ending and “The Player” switches to Rev. Ray watching Billy run away from a “story event” that leads both characters of a fun game (not so fun) of Cat and Mouse. Rev Ray does the chasing and Billy Candle being chased. Later in the story Billy runs into events that allow him to face his fears.

Reverend Ray Game play:
Hunts Billy for First Half of Game

As Rev. Ray you are giving the ability to Dual wields pistols and pick up shotguns, rifles along with a couple random special weapons. As the game starts Reverend Ray walks into a gated area pushing a cart with a sheet over it. As you come to a stop in front of a build with men covering the area in full. Reverend Ray rips the **** of the cart and reveals a Mini-gun you begin in the Old West as a pistol toting preacher who’s a bad ass! Rev. Ray is also given a cheesy slow down “slow mo” for when things get rough in a gun fight you just put down your guns and activate a slow down for about 10 seconds. But this is quite fun. This would be much more fun with better AI and more work on the flimsy aiming in the “slow mo” Reverend Ray chases Billy as he believes the tells him so. Later as Reverend realizes Billy isn’t the one responsibly for his brother’s death, and perhaps he’s been doing a little too much killing for no reason as he chases down his nephew.

Personal view on game:
This game has a lot of potential like many games do. Its one of the first games in a while to pick up the six shooters and draw for some gun fights. I really enjoy the focal point of the game. I run this game on a 720p flat screen LCD. When you look threw the camera at look at certain objects the vision blurs just like real vision when looking at things in distances or really close up, a very vague blur to things in your focal point and things not in your focal point. But the Gun controls could be improved completely especially when it comes to the slow down. It dulls the duals as well as some of the intense gun battle in the game.

Title: Tenchu Z (Xbox 360)
Developer: Microsoft Game Studios
Category: Action


To those of you who only tried the demo: The demo did not do the full game justice, once you actually get good at the game, it's much more fun. But all in all, the game is just an OK game.

I purchased Tenchu Z today because, well...one of my best friends got it. I liked the idea of doing online play and running around as a couple of ninjas and silently killing off every last "bad guy" on the map together.

The demo was not that great, I admit it. There was no training, resulting in the gamer having absolutely no clue how to do anything. This game is kinda like Splinter Cell, but only in the sense that it has a little bar for your visibility. In Tenchu Z you can jump from rooftop to rooftop while keeping an eye on an enemy below on the ground, jump down on his shoulders and plunge your sword into his head. Believe me, it's more fun to do it than read it here.

The Singleplayer is awesome so far. 50 levels of great ninja-action. I recently beat all 50 missions with about 12 hours of elapsed time(I took my time on a few missions and killed off each and every person on the map, so if you rush through the missions, you'll beat it pretty fast). The AI has the IQ of a...smart monkey. When I say IQ, I mean their ability to spot you when you're completely visible. The difficulty level really only affects how difficult they are to beat in combat, so on Hard they'll block a lot of your attacks. The game is fun on whatever difficulty you choose, depending on your skill level and abilities.

The multiplayer is fun too. It's basically exactly the same as singleplayer: you can do all of the missions, with the addition of some friends. It's great fun to talk some strategy when you're about to gangbang some poor sap making his rounds through a building. Not too much to it, it's still fun with people you don't know, but even better with friends.

Singleplayer: 7/10
-Just a ton of ninja fun. This game isn't for you hardcore stealth junkies...there's absolutely no english-speaking people in the entire game, but thank goodness, there's english subtitles.
Multiplayer: 6/10
-Would've been better if they put a bit more thought into it other than just making it co-op. Still have a great time playing it though.
Replay Value: 6/10
-Sneaking up behind japanese gangsters and slitting their throats is a ton of fun, don't get me wrong! But like most games, it will most likely get old after a while.
Graphics: 6/10
-Graphics from far away are good, but up close in the cinematic sequences you'll notice that it's very choppy.
Overall: 6/10 (not an average)