Every year we're bombarded with more and more first person shooters so it's understandably hard to work out which ones are worth getting and which really aren't. With a veritable dirth of Half Life and Call of Duty clones out there on the market it's refreshing when somebody tries to do something a little different. With Call Of Juarez we have the first FPS based in the Wild West for a long time - and hopefully the first of many to come.

Call of Juarez is a very interesting game in terms of its plot and gameplay, obviously drawing on inspiration from some awesome Westerns of the Sixties, Seventies and early Eighties. You play as two characters; Billy, a young fugitive on the run after accusations of murder, and Reverend Ray, a former outlaw converted by religion and now on the hunt for Billy - Ray has a few issues, however, and he's convinced that God chose him personally to deliver his wrath.

Having two characters not only gives the player extra options, but different abilities. Playing as Billy is all about stealth, so you spend a lot of your time creeping about and sniping people. He also packs a whip, which you can use to latch onto ledges and trees and haul yourself into high places. If you stroll into a gunfight Billy is likely to die very quickly, so you need to use his stealth to stay alive. As Ray you're more of a hardcore shooter, so you can waltz into a gunfight and hold your own without a problem. Ray also has a cool Max Payne-esque bullet time feature, so you can wield dual pistols and riddle your enemies with lead in slow motion. In addition, Ray can use his Bible to launch fire and brimstone scriptures at the enemy, and if that's not enough, he has an armoured chest plate so he can take a helluva lot of damage.

There really is a fantastically dynamic Wild West setting for you to explore, with local saloons and brothels lining the dusty streets of the settlements that you come across. When you get "out of dodge" and into the countryside, there're wide-open deserts and parched forests, teaming with wild animals and Native Americans. The towns have that lovely light brown tint from the hot sun, the sand and the wooden buildings, and all the costumes are typically Western too.

Another great part of the game is Techland's Chrome engine, which lets the player use many objects in the environment like weapons or tools to solve problems. This can be quite entertaining at times, although they don't make full use of it here. One lovely feature is that if you start a fire, you can pick up any wooden material such as chairs and tables, add it to the fire and they'll be burning away in no time. Lots of games are picking up on this ability to use your environment - you need only look at Dead Rising, where you can use pretty much anything you can see to take out your foes, to see that this is going to a huge part of gaming of the future.

With so many plus sides it's unfortunately that Call of Juarez doesn't play that well; the gameplay is incredibly repetitive and often very dull. Very early on you're confronted by this when at one point you steal a gun, only to give it back to the sheriff five minutes later, so you have to steal another one. Playing as Billy is particularly frustrating too, as he's very rarely got any ammo and you spend your time sneaking about for ages, only to be blown away by some lucky cowboy sending you back to a checkpoint ten minutes before. It seriously doesn't make sense at times and as such feels confused and desperate to pull off set pieces to wow the player, rather than offering a unique gameplay experience. It's only very rare moments such as when you get to horseback ride that make it feel worthwhile, but even that gets boring after a while.

Graphically the game is pretty stunning; you'll need some pretty top notch hardware to get the best out of it, but it does look fantastic. The environments are very impressive, combining feature rich textures with excellent looking characters, even on the lowest graphics settings. The weapons themselves look great and historically accurate, revealing the attention to detail on the part of the developers. The audio is of high quality too, with a lilting guitar soundtrack to accompany the action and the story, and some awesome voiceovers for the characters. One very irritating point, however, is that there is a voiceover reading a story during the loading screens, which at first is informative but after a while becomes hugely irksome.

Where this game really shines is in its multiplayer mode, where you get to tear up your friends with your six shooters in all the usual modes; Deathmatch, Skirmish and Robbery (aka Capture The Flag). The multiplayer doesn't suffer any lag, loads really quickly and is awesome fun. Most of the maps are based around towns, so you can recreate your favourite scenes from all those Westerns of yesteryear - this is definitely a must-have game for any fan of online gaming.

Call of Juarez has to be respected for trying to do things a little differently. It's not very often you see an FPS set in the Wild West being realised, and unfortunately this is probably the main reason why this game may not sell as well as the developers would expect. It has many of the right ingredients, such as great graphics and an interesting story, but it still doesn't have the full package, as it suffers from frustrating, repetitive gameplay, which is hard to forgive. This is still a good game, but remains very far from a great one. Hopefully with the developer's next project - Dead Island - an FPS based on a zombie-infested tropical island, they can solve these problems, keeping the excellent presentation and story, then combining it with more rewarding and compelling gameplay. If they can, then they've got a sure fire hit on their hands…

Reviewed by Ross Alexander for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).