Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is a prequel that solves a problem the first game never fixed. Techland’s 2009 Western shooter puts two brothers on the same screen instead of swapping protagonists level to level, and that single change carries the whole thing.
Trailer, via Ubisoft.
Ray and Thomas McCall
Ray and Thomas are Confederate sergeants in 1864. After a battle near the Chattahoochee River, Colonel Jeremy Barnsby orders them to retreat to Jonesboro and reinforce supply lines. They refuse, desert, and ride for home. They arrive too late. The house is partly destroyed, their mother is dead, and their younger brother William, a trainee priest, sits by her bedside.
Barnsby vows to hunt them down and hang them for desertion. The Union wins the war. Barnsby does not surrender. He keeps coming.
Two Styles, One Screen
Most levels let the player pick Ray or Thomas. The other brother is run by the AI. Each has a different style of play, and the source describes Ray as stronger and slower. Both carry handguns, rifles and shotguns. Both ride horses, shoot from the saddle and enter gallop mode. Both use the same cover system, snapping to surfaces and peering left, right, and over the top of a crate.
Occasional levels force a specific character. Sometimes the brothers split apart inside a level — Ray through a mine, Thomas over it — and the level design changes depending on who the player holds.
The Gold of Juarez
In 1866 the brothers are in San Lorenzo. Ray has heard of a lost Aztec treasure called the Gold of Juarez. It is supposedly cursed. He wants it anyway, to rebuild the family home. William watches their behavior grow more lawless and does not like it.
They meet Juan “Juarez” Mendoza, a powerful bandit, and his girlfriend Marisa. Ray becomes infatuated with her at once. Mendoza is hunting the same gold and offers them a share for their help. Meanwhile, Apache chief Running River plans war on the white man and sends his son Seeing Farther to buy rifles in Mexico, authorized to trade a medallion that reveals the gold’s location.
| Character | Combat style | Role in the hunt |
|---|---|---|
| Ray McCall | Stronger, slower | Infatuated with Marisa |
| Thomas McCall | Different style of play | Marisa looks at him the same way |
| William McCall | Trainee priest | Growing concern over their behavior |
| Juan “Juarez” Mendoza | Bandit leader | Offers a share of the gold |
A Prequel That Earns Its Place
Bound in Blood is the second game in the series and, narratively, a prequel to the first. The story runs eighteen years before it. Techland and Ubisoft shipped it in June 2009 in North America, with Australia and Europe following in July, on PlayStation 3, Windows and Xbox 360.
The game later traveled. It hit the PlayStation Store and the Xbox Games Store in December 2011, joined Microsoft’s backward compatibility program in November 2018 for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, and arrived on GOG.com in September 2019.
That is a long shelf life for a shooter whose main idea is a choice.
What the Brother Choice Actually Does
Here is the part worth watching. The character select is not a skin swap. It changes how a level plays, and in the split sections it changes what the level is. That is a real design commitment, and it is the reason Bound in Blood still reads as more than a Western pastiche.
The weakness is the story around it. The gold is cursed, the brothers want it, a bandit wants it, an Apache chief wants a war, and two men want the same woman. Ray looks at Marisa with lust; she looks at Thomas the same way. William notices. That triangle is the engine of the back half, and it is thinner than the shooting.
Barnsby and the Long Hunt
Barnsby is the best thing in the plot. A commander who loses the war and refuses to accept it, then spends years chasing two deserters across the border, is a cleaner motive than any curse. The game does not need the supernatural when it has a man who will not stop.
The AI brother is the risk. When the game hands Thomas or Ray to the machine, the partnership that the whole design rests on becomes a scripted helper. The levels where the brothers must directly aid each other — Thomas lifting Ray to a high platform, Ray kicking down a door for Thomas — work because they are authored, not because the AI is clever.
The Verdict on Bound in Blood
Bound in Blood scores 7.9 out of 10. The two-brother structure is the strongest thing Techland built in this series, and the Civil War opening gives the McCalls a reason to run that most Western games never bother to supply. The gold hunt and the love triangle are the drag.
Play it for Ray and Thomas. Stay for Barnsby.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
