Is this the one from Techland? I thought those guys had a lot of promise back when Chrome came out. Nice to see that they were able to deliver on it.

From what I saw of the demo, I'm really not sure. You do jump on a horse and ride for a while so it suggests a possibility of an open game but as far as I know, it's all mission based.

Any chatter about a port to consoles for this one?

Sweet. I love the cowboy setting as well, so it would be a shame to miss a good game that featured such an environment.

Ooh, thanks for the heads up. I've been ogling the steady stream of screenshots on this one for a while, and I'm glad to hear it's shaping up well. I'll be checking it out tonight.

Why the heck are they releasing a demo in July of 2006 for a game that isn't coming out until 2007?

Wow, I hadn't been following this game at all but I will be now. I haven't played a decent western shooter since Outlaws and this demo is suprisingly fun and polished for a game that is so far off. My only complaint is that the load times are very long, on my aging system anyway.

I think it's a thing with their engine. Both of the Chrome games had insanely long load times as well.

Hah.. I was just coming here to post that I thought the game was pretty fun (short as hell demo though) but the load times we're insane. I mean.. literally, I fired up the first part ("Ray" I think) and headed upstairs, went to the bathroom, refilled my wine glass, chatted with the wife a bit, and came back downstairs and it was still loading. I seriously thought it had locked up or something. Other than that, the game's pretty solid. As mentioned above, it's nice being in the old west where I haven't been since Outlaws (who's CD I still keep around to play the sound track.. friggin awesome music. Lucas Arts.. enough Star Wars, okay? You used to make other games, remember?).

The firing two guns using left and right mouse button was interesting, but I didn't really feel like it made a difference in regular gameplay. It may as well have been a 12 shot revolver as it didn't seem to matter which one I used. Perhaps they should put two crosshairs on your screen slightly off center left and right so which gun you use actually matters. "Concentration" mode it does matter but it was kinda weird with the floating crosshairs you can't really control. That will take some practice and it's a bit weird with "bullet time" going on in a western. I also didn't care for the floaty crosshair in the "showdown" mode, but I only got to see it at the very end so it's hard to tell how it will be. Would have been cool to have a couple "showdowns" to get a feel for it... of course I guess I could play through it a few more times, which I'm sure I will before I uninstall. I really dug the ability of having 1 gun equipped and your bible in the other hand. I was gunning guys down and then reading passages from the bible.. so wrong, yet so right.

To sum up... load times, bad... game play, good... if they really have a year left in development then this is really nothing more then a tech demo and I can't wait to see what they do with it. Throw some more polish on this baby, make the story interesting.. especially since it's being told from both points of view, and you've got a winner.

Not bad.

The demo's intro says "Juarez" is a border town where a treasure of gold is thought to be hidden. The gold itself is some old Aztec treasure which is rumored to be cursed and anyone who tries to find it goes mad.. and the madness is called the "Call Of Juarez".

There is horseback riding, but it's not that great. I've never played Gun, so I can't testify to the difference there.

I liked the story, voice acting and visuals. What I did not like were the screwy concentration/duel shooting mechanics. I didn't mind Gun's bullet-time mechanics so much, because they were simple and straightforward. These seem awkward and contrived. And nix the basic box-stacking puzzles. Stacking crates is so not wild west.

Definitely. Getting out of the barn was a pain in the butt.