| Call of Juarez | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Developer(s) | Techland |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Creator(s) | Paweł Selinger |
| Artist(s) | Paweł Selinger |
| Writer(s) |
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| Composer(s) | Paweł Błaszczak |
| Platform(s) | |
| First release | Call of Juarez September 5, 2006 |
| Latest release | Call of Juarez: Gunslinger May 22, 2013 |
Call of Juarez is a first-person shooter video game series created by Paweł Selinger in 2006. Released primarily on Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, there are four games in the series; Call of Juarez (2006), Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (2009), Call of Juarez: The Cartel (2011), and Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (2013). Techland has developed all four games, and as of 2018, owns the publishing rights. From 2006 to 2018, Ubisoft held the publishing rights.
The original game takes place in Texas and Mexico in 1882 and tells the story of Reverend Ray McCall as he hunts down his nephew Billy, who has been wrongly accused of murdering his parents. Bound in Blood is a prequel to the first game and takes place in Georgia, Arkansas, Arizona, and Mexico from 1864 to 1866. It tells the story of how Ray and his brother Thomas went from being soldiers in the Confederate States Army to dangerous outlaws. The Cartel relocates the series from a Wild West milieu to 2011 Los Angeles and Mexico and depicts an interagency task force investigating a powerful Mexican drug cartel. This decision proved unpopular amongst fans, however, and Gunslinger returned to the West. Taking place from 1880 to 1910, and spread across Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico Territory, Wyoming, and Mexico, it tells the story of bounty hunter Silas Greaves and his encounters with many of the legends of the Wild West, including Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and the Dalton Gang.
From a gameplay perspective, all four games are first-person shooters, and feature several common game mechanics, such as "Concentration mode" (a slow motion technique which is slightly different from game to game) and duelling (in Bound in Blood and Gunslinger, duelling switches the game to a third-person perspective). The first three games in the series offer different player characters. For Gunslinger, there is only one player character, but the game does feature experience point-based skill trees which allow the player to customise their fighting style as they progress.
Critically, reactions to the games have been mixed, ranging from general praise for Bound in Blood and Gunslinger to universal condemnation for The Cartel. In terms of sales, the original game did not sell well in North America, moving only 137,000 units across both PC and Xbox 360. However, its European sales were considerably better, with Techland crediting the game as putting them "on the map". Bound in Blood sold better, moving 900,000 units across all systems in its first four months of release. Gunslinger also sold well, and was Ubisoft's second best selling digital-only game of 2013.