Stopping bullets with your cheeks is surprisingly hype
So I finally got around to playing Call of Juarez: Gunslinger — Techland's gritty and incredibly stylish Sergio-Leone-them-up from back in 2013 that I've had in my sights for ages and boy, let me tell you, it left an impression.
I knew two things going in: one, that this game was a very budget title, which showed — short and with the levels of recycling that would make Greta Thunberg weep tears of joy — and two, that this game did some really fun and funky things with narrative. Semi-spoilers from this point onwards, if you want to go in blind.
First thing was patently evident (and easily ignored: the game isn't so long that it starts to become jarring, though it does become noticeable), the second I was sad to notice wasn't as prevalent as I was led to believe. The premise is hella cool: you're an old lonely cowboy wetting his whistle at a saloon and regaling the people present with tales of your glorious past — and whenever you get corrected, or misremember, or start your stories over, the level you're playing updates on the fly. Enemies get replaced, paths drop from above, in one occasion you get frozen in your tracks as your (narrator) character has to evacuate all the alcohol he's been drinking and you get to listen in on the rest of the patrons debating whether you've been bullshitting them all this time. It's brilliant stuff.
It's also not as common nor, often, as brilliant as I thought. Most of the time it's used to force you into or out of combat arenas with an "oh, I forgot there was this giant boulder blocking the path," which does start to feel annoying after a while. But the game is short, so we forgive it, and this is dragging, so let's skip to the point: this game has fucking gorgeous combat concepts and I'm surprised I haven't seen many people talk about it compared to how much praise is heaped upon the story.
Okay okay okay, first of all: it's a score shooter. Remember Bulletstorm? Sure, there's a veneer of (sigh) cringe surrounding it, in some circles, but that skills-pay-the-bills concept where you convert your killing style into experience points is still iconic. Gunslinger does the same thing: headshot an enemy, hit 'em through thin cover, snipe them from a distance, the trophies are all there and the combo counter — there's a combo counter! — ticks up multiplying the value of each shot. It's gorgeous, it's tied to interesting RPG-style upgrades and it's a joy to experience unfold.
Which is all fine and cool, but what it gets so shockingly right is the rhythm. Which is pulled together by one final idea: your Sense of Death. So there's this thing certain games have, the second chance mechanic (sometimes, as in the Kingdom Hearts series, literally called Second Chance), which is some kind of tool or ability that kicks in once the player is being given a coup de grace, giving them another chance at survival. In the aforementioned Kingdom Hearts and many others, it's a mechanic where, if you're above 1HP, no single hit can kill you — at most it can bring you to 1HP, giving you one final opportunity to heal before you're definitively sent back to the loading screen.
Gunslinger's is absolutely, utterly brilliant. Your health is low and you get shot: if Sense of Death is available, time slows down — and your camera is pointed at the enemy that's about to paint the wall with your brains. You have until the bullet connects with your face to press left or right to dodge, depending on the bullet's position — and you can only tell which side it's about to hit when it's close enough to be extremely dangerous. This in the span of at most two seconds.
It's a last chance parry mechanic! It's gorgeous! It's an exclamation mark in the conversation of a gunfight — shoot, dodge, headshot, shotgun, shoot, OH NO SENSE OF DEATH UUUH LEFT I GOT IT, shoot, dive, zoom, punch, SENSE OF DEATH THIS TIME TO MY RIGHT, shoot, dodge, you get the gist and I should get to bed.
Man, I'm seriously tempted to add an FPS level to my portfolio now.