Call of Juarez: Completed.

Finally, I have completed playing Call of Juarez. What a great game it is! After many years, the wait is over: a Western theme game that is worth playing.

I didn't actually count how many hours I've spent to complete the game as it is seldom a practice of mine anyway (however, I might recall how much I've spent if the game completed quite prematurely, e.g. NFS Carbon). Most of the time, I was captivated by the storyline and graphics of the game. Oh, the graphics really left me stared at the screen for so long! In fact, in some part of the games, sometimes I just stay and point the view to the game's environment: it is rich, looks natural and almost believable. Lots of screenshots have been taken using FRAPS. In CoJ, Depth of Field (DoF) and most importantly High Dynamic Range (HDR) play their role to enhance the the graphics realism, and the developer successfully make the most out of them in this game.

DoF in effect

Playing CoJ makes me realise how much I miss Anti-aliasing, as enabling HDR in the game turn this off (using 7800 GT). I am in a serious need to get at least an X1900 series graphics card if another game which uses HDR heavily comes out next.

HDR in effect

The game is fun to play and sort of balanced I might say. As mentioned before, we are required to play two characters, Billy Candle and Reverend Ray throughout 15 episodes in total. The game is a mixture of strategy, and also pure 'shoot 'em up' style at the same time and these are implemented through the 2-character system. When I played Billy Candle episodes, they mostly consists of strategy, puzzle and stealthy missions. While Reverend Ray, although religious, his missions are mostly shoot-to-kill type stuff, pure adrenaline bloodbath. Therefore, I can say that this is a smart strategy to tackle a typical problem where certain FPS genre games are lacking; a balance between a good storyline and varieties of game tempo. With alternating episodes between Candle's and Ray's, I found myself to be able to relax a bit, enjoying a slower progression after some chaotic gunfights which really drained me out (not biologically!).


I won't cover a complete review of the game as they're done by most game reviewers out there, but enough for me to share the experience. With the hardwares at my disposal, I can say that I can still enjoy game the way the developer want it to be. Here's what I use to play:

AMD 64 3000+
Abit KN8 NF4
1 GB DDR400 RAM Dual-Channel
200GB SATA
AOpen 7800GT at 470/1.13 GB (overclock)

Windows XP SP2
NVIDIA Forceware 91.47
DirectX9.0c October 2006

Graphics driver settings:
Image quality: Quality
Vertical sync: Off
Anti-aliasing: App. controlled
Anisotropic Filtering: App. controlled

In-game setting:
SM3.0: On
Antialiasing: Off (when HDR is ON)
Shadow: Medium
Resolution: 1024x768
Filtering: Anisotropic
The rest is maxed.

One thing I'm not sure is the level of anisotropic filtering used by CoJ when AF is enabled. There is no selection for 2X, 4X or even 8X.

Average fps: 30-35 fps (reported by FRAPS)

Although the game suffer from occasional stuttering, I can still enjoy playing at that framerates. When the game enters a bigger environment e.g. canyon, fields area, the framerates improved a bit.

In the previous entry, I've reported some graphical glitches that occured during gameplay. Well, it turned out that was due to my overclocked frequency. When the GPU and memory clock are lowered down (from 490/1.18 to 470/1.13), I no longer experience those glitches.

However, I notice a graphical bug/improper graphical implementation as shown below:


The water lake seems to make the edge of the tree branch, viewed from the player to have a 'ripple effect' although in the name of realism, this shouldn't be happening. Unless it's due to heat haze effect, I think I am right on this.

This game is definitely gonna have a high replay value. To the developer Techland, I'm waiting for your next Chromed-powered game!