A rootin, tootin, wild west shootin adventure that shirks the gritty WWII or shiny sci-fi posturing of most contemporary blasters, Bound In Blood is a breath of fresh air in a painfully clichéd genre.
Casting players as a pair of dusty cowpokes with different powers one roughntough, the other agile and handy with a lasso this prequel to the original Call Of Juarez offers a huge variety of challenges as the twisted tale of greed, betrayal and redemption unfolds, bombarding players with tense, High Noon-style shootouts, horseback gunslinging and a variety of gentle platforming sequences that keep the action fresh and compelling.
But while the setting is tremendous fun and the multiplayer mode and its wide variety of character classes add months of replay value once you nail the single-player game the way players are funnelled down a linear path rather than having the freedom to properly explore the open plains and frontier towns will frustrate those more accustomed to GTAs freeform gunplay, while the slow-moving heroes and antique weapons theyre packing feel creaky beside many of todays more bombastic gun toters.