Any shooter that’s released nowadays has to be absolutely top-drawer, or it just won’t get the exposure that it would have garnered in a less saturated market. Average just won’t do, and developers that take their market for granted are dropping like flies.
To say that I wasn’t expecting much from Bound in Blood then, is an understatement. I expected shoddy AI, lacklustre graphics and a storyline that put anyone who’s ever read or played anything ever in a position to predict the ending with great accuracy. What I got was an entirely different scenario. From the outset, the storyline – featuring brothers Thomas and Ray McCall – is compelling and held together well by some solid gameplay and graphics that – whilst not always hitting the mark – have the ability to take your breath away.
The game sets you right down in at the end of the American Civil War, with the brothers McCall – having become separated – trying to locate one another and fend off the enemy. Almost the entire first section takes place in the trenches as you try to hold the line using any weapons that come to hand – be they cannons, gun emplacements or the standard firearms that you always carry. The tension and claustrophobia of the trenches is stunning and really pushes you to play on and see what comes next. Once the war ends, the action travels down to Mexico as the two fighting McCalls and their other brother – a God-fearing fellow who tries to convince them at every turn that repentance is the only answer – become tied up in the legend of Juarez. This is where the game really shines and brings home the real feel of the Wild West. Shootouts, chases on horseback and tons and tons of spaghetti-coloured action help to lay it on thick.
And it works, generally. You only get to play as one of the brothers at a time, with the AI taking control of your ally. I was surprised at how well the CPU manages your counterpart and often you’ll find that he’ll have taken out the enemy you were aiming at just a split-second before you’ve pulled the trigger. Each of the two brothers can do things that the other cannot, with one being able to use a lasso for example, in order to pull himself up to higher ledges and to swing across prohibitive gaps. The game prompts you at the times that you need to use these special abilities, and this leads their inclusion to feel like something of an afterthought. It is nice to have different paths for each of the characters though – meaning that you’ll need to play through at least twice in order to say that you’ve truly seen it all.
The gunplay is a little strange at times though, it has to be said. Sometimes, you can fire a shotgun at an opponent’s stomach from five yards and watch as he flinches, grabs his leg for a second and then just takes the same position as before he was shot – generally causing you to be staring down a barrel. If you don’t hit them in the head, the drone enemies will take at least two shots before they stay down – so sneaky manoeuvres are generally ruled out. There isn’t a heavy reliance on stealth here, and that saves the game frankly, as the cover system is dire. You’ll be stood behind an object that is twice your height and width, and the game won’t put you into cover mode, meaning that you can’t peek out around the object to get an early shot in properly. With no way of entering the cover mode manually, this would have been a game-killer if stealthy moves were heavily relied upon. When the game realises that you’re in cover, all is well and works as expected.
Hardened gamers will find that the AI doesn’t pose a massive challenge and when it does – such as in the quickdraw duels – you’ll always have the option to try again or skip back to a checkpoint that wasn’t massively far away from where you were anyway. This prevents frustration somewhat, although it does feel like the game is giving you a bit of an easy time of it.
With a story this strong, the gameplay here only needed to be average to make the player want to play through the game. The development team have done a decent job of things though, and the game as a whole is of a decent standard. There are minor issues and bugbears, but that doesn’t stop the experience from being compelling enough to be going on with.
