Like New 2: Call of Juarez Gunslinger (2013)

I said I was going to play Hell Yeah but it turns out that doesn't work on Steam Deck and I was out of town. So instead I started Call of Juarez: Gunslinger and y'know what? This game rocks.

Let's try a new thing:

A few things I did not know about Call of Juarez: Gunslinger before I started:

• It's the fourth game in a series. Somehow I thought this was the second game, and a spinoff at that
• It is not a spinoff. The "Gunslinger" subtitle really gave me an impression of "side story" but nope! This is a tentpole launch for Techland, the company who made these games.
• It is not an open world game. And neither are any of the previous games. I really somehow thought these were GTA-likes, and I honestly have no idea why.

Despite apparently having no idea what the hell game I was about to play, I found myself extremely impressed by this game from minute one. It's a surprising, funny, arcadey kind of game not quite like anything I'd played prior.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (or CoJG, pronounced like it's spelled (CODGE-guh)) is a linear arcade-style first person shooter, complete with score, combos, bosses, and a design meant to be replayed. It's set during basically the entirety of the "old west" which is an era I could give maybe two shits about. It's also a story about revenge, tall tales, and being a weird old guy in a bar.

The most surprising part to me was how well the story was told. It's framed as "old man in a bar is telling the tales of his violent life" and they take full advantage of that conceit. Silas (the main character) often doubles back on things he's said, revising them and, with it, the game being played. He'll also recall details in the middle of the story, changing the landscape or plopping down dudes when needed. And his audience chimes in a lot, which is fantastic. They each have strong personalities, including a wide-eyed naive boy who believes everything, and a skeptical man who constantly questions Silas' stories and credentials.

My personal favorite example of the storytelling in this game was a scene where he talks about how insane it would be to enter a mine, which as the player I proceeded to do. During the shootout he's talked about every possible way of dying in a mine, like getting lost, falling down a shaft, getting caught by a ricochet, or accidentally detonating a load of dynamite. I was extremely careful, until someone else eventually blew up the whole damn mine with a stray bullet. At which point Silas says "So of course I didn't go that way. I was dumb, not crazy!" 

It's fantastic. 

As the story continues, Silas gets a little drunker and meaner, and the story gets more and more wild. You meet basically every famous person who ever lived west of the Mississippi, and the battles become increasingly outlandish. It's honestly a perfect match for the escalating madness that every video game has; it's rare for a game to match the tone of the writing and the play so well. 

So yeah! It's short, sweet, stupid, genuinely funny, and full of surprises. I'm glad I played it all the way through and didn't stop for an artifical deadline. It's not a life changing game but I'll think fondly about CoJG for some time. Codgeguh. 

I got some feedback that the best bit was the "Something Interesting" last time, so I'm going to expand that to a couple of other bits here:

Something Funny

There are way too many pumpkins in this game. It got to the point that I primarily associate pumpkins in any game with this game. I saw a raccoon carrying a pumpkin in my Minecraft server and somehow that memory became one about Codgeguh. They're EVERYWHERE. And you get 5 points for shooting them.

Something Weird

The game has these "nuggets of truth" that talk about the real personalities behind the bizarre tales of the wild west. And I wanna know...why the hell is it okay that Billy the Kid "only" killed 4 people? Like yeah, that's way less than the higher number of 21 that he's sometimes credited with, but why is that people get so friggin weird about the wild west? It's not like killing 4 people is a good thing just because of the age and place of the murders!

Like, read that top bit again. Were "petty rustling and horse-thievery" the worst of his transgressions? Or was it the 4 people he definitely killed??

It's just bizarre to me.

Something Interesting

I was talking to a friend (Hi Matt!) about Call of Juarez and his main understanding of the series was that they are pretty racist. That's a big risk with anything wild west-ish and is a large part of the reason I just don't care for much media about it.

And I can't speak to the prior games, but they do their best here. They have quite a few nuggets about Native Americans, and this line from one of them is my favorite. This attitude is sprinkled throughout the little nuggets, where they talk about colonialism and the awful things that native folks had to go through here. 

It's not like...a huge gesture. But honestly it's rare for me to see a game even try without it feeling like a half-assed effort. So that was nice I guess?

Next Time: We're gonna try Hell Yeah! again!!

codgeguh