Why Ubisoft's Next FPS is Set to Impress

We reveal all from a private showing of FPS western prequel Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.

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By Adam Doree, April 8, 2009

Back in 2004, Rockstar invited us to take a look at a new game they'd been crafting for the PS2 with an old western theme. Red Dead Revolver, as the game was known, turned out to be a pretty decent action game, but the thing that captivated me most about it was the setting. As a youngster, I'd always despised the grainy old look, worn colours and dodgy dialogue in movies of the same genre. But in video game form, the setting of the old west - and its awesome beauty - really came to life, and struck a chord with me for the first time.

Rockstar isn't the only video game pack to have traversed the rolling orange mountains, deathly valleys and stunning blue skies of the era though. Activision followed in 2005 with GUN, coming in at the dawn of the Xbox 360 lifecycle, followed more recently in 2007 by Ubisoft with arguably the best of the pack - according to our review scores at least - with Call of Juarez, a first-person shooter from Polish developer Techland.

Galloping forward to 2009, and it looks like all three western-themed titles have sequels on the way, with Red Dead Revolver 2 confirmed, a GUN sequel rumoured, and Call of Juarez 2 looking quite bloody impressive actually, based on a private viewing of the game we were treated to recently with Ubisoft Paris. So impressive does the game look, in fact, we assumed the game was running on the high-end PC that the guys later used to demo R.U.S.E., when we realised in fact Juarez 2 was being demoed on an Xbox 360.

Without hesitation, Bound in Blood absolutely looks the part, delivering a visual flame that can easily give titles like Far Cry 2, Crysis and even the mighty RAGE engine a run for their money. It combines the beautiful aesthetic of the old west with a solid, brutally fast FPS engine that we reckon is going to turn heads.

Almost always running at sixty frames per second, this fourth iteration of Techland's proprietary Chrome engine renders the game's vast, mountainous landscapes, with varied geometry, natural-looking (sometimes destructible) foliage and rocky areas, lit in suitably wild sunlight. Everything's filtered through some nice particle effects with decent smoke, fire, water and big explosions aplenty.

The producers are also promising more varied environments that stay true to the iconic setting, but will feel more familiar to players of modern shooters - in our demo we checked out an Indian reservation and a chaotic scene during the American Civil War that introduces the story in the desert.

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