Recent reviews by Matti

Yes.

I refunded the game after doing the tutorial. Here is why:
- The game is heavily immersion breaking due to lacking ambient and environmental feedback.
- Loadingscreens, a lot of them. Immersion breaking.
- The combat is okay, but worse than competitors like Cyberpunk 2077.
- I bet nobody Q&A'd the game on Mouse and Keyboard. It just works.
- The game stalls you a lot, 20mins for a WASD tutorial + left and right click. There is no feeling of vastness, there is a feeling of intentionally being stalled.
- Horrible menus. I feel also my time is intentionally wasted here.

Positives:
- Surprisingly the VA's are decent, and the dated npc graphics and animations are less of a deal than feedback point.
- Character generation & costumization.

Due to the stalling and immersion breaking nature, I didn't really have fun at all. I have over 500+hrs spend on Bethesda games, but this one is a strong nope from me.

I changed this review regarding the 2.0 update:
Lets start with the good things:
* World/map design is really good and probably the most enjoyable aspect of the game.
* Side activities are great and fun, and probably one of the best writing in the game.
* Working half decent, but unfinished itemization system. It is fun now with 2.0, but half finished. Mostly pertains items, nothing to complain about the Cyberware system.
* Vehicles handling is better now, it is decent, but not good.

Now the bad things:
* Main Story/Bigger Side Story writing has quite some glaring issues: Continuity (e.g. NPC1 + NPC2 with you in a room, NPC1 leaves the room, NPC2 tells you something. You go to NPC1, NPC1 knows what NPC2 told you), others are straight up boring and unskippable. No big reveals/wow moments. You get fed breadcrumbs along the way, and then when a reveal moment should come, they tell you nothing new. It is just not engaging like this and does not work well. In their defense here should be noted, if you do the same dialogues multiple times you stop noticing these immersion breaking issues.
* Vehicle handling is still far away from where it should be, just comparing it to GTA5 here. Downforce does not work properly. Super cars have no racing mode,
* The crafting system is straight up bad/unfinished now. Why does the game let you craft weapons, but disallows you to create your own iconics? Why can you not switch the style of a weapon, but allows you to put mods on it?
* Why can I not go into the shard (text info you picked up) menu from other menus? But in other character submenus you can...
* Quite a lot of immersion breaking bugs (cannot switch mph / kmh, gotta think about it), cars driving through each other, objects not really existing for bullets sometimes, decapitated npcs talking, some of writing in the story.

The game is now carried by its gameplay quite heavily, activities are fun. It is a decent pickup. Would give it an 80 - 85 at the moment. Maybe up to 87 once the immersion breaking bugs are fixed, that do not pertain to writing.

It is a decent pickup sub 30€ / $30. With the Phantom Liberty DLC, probably about 45€ / $45 for the complete package.

Call of Juarez Gunslinger is just your average shooter, but what makes this game really special is its way of telling you the story. Awesome game, although it has little replay-value. I would recommend everyone buying the game when it is on sale.