Players get to experience to story from different perspectives depending on character they select. Each specializes in different skills and will need to solve problems in their own way when they occasionally become separated. Half the time, they'll need to combine their strengths to overcome obstacles. Ray, the oldest, is the heavy lifter. He can wield two pistols at a time or lob dynamite using one hand while firing a gun in the other. He's also the only one that can carry a gatling gun around to mow people down. Thomas is more agile and uses a lasso to climb up to higher ground, where he can pick off enemies with a rifle. The third and youngest brother (who cannot be played), William, acts primarily as a narrator and a moral center for the story.

Gameplay is relatively straightforward for a shooter that takes place in the Wild West, and players have access to weapons of the era. Features like the dynamic cover system, where players can peek out of cover by moving the mouse come in very handy, although it can be a rough time trying to spot a gunslinger dressed in brown against a brown background. Gunfights are often frantic, with bullets coming from multiple directions. To the game's credit, the auto-targeting system for Ray's dual pistol style works nicely. On the downside, most bodies don't stay on the ground for very long, so it can be a chore trying to remember where enemies were dropped and running over to that location for ammo and dropped cash. It can also be difficult to tell where shots are coming from, so we had to pay close attention to sounds while tracking bullet hits and watching for muzzle flashes.

The game makes things a little easier by including a bullet time feature that's charged by taking out enemies. Once it's fully charged, players can activate a concentration mode where they can quickly take out a bunch of enemies on screen. Unfortunately, players have a short time limit after filling the meter in which to use it, otherwise they lose it and have to start all over. Opportunities to maximize bullet time only present themselves once in a while, since a large majority of on screen enemies get killed just filling the meter up. So, players are often forced to either waste it on just one or two foes or lose out completely. There's also a tutorial about taking the stealth approach, where the player can hide in tall grass and use silent weapons, but it generally goes wasted since tall grass is somewhat rare in the arid deserts of Mexico. Even in the greener areas of the American southwest, stealth usually turns out to be much more trouble that it's worth.

Every chapter (and most side missions) ends with a showdown, where players end up in a quick draw duel against a major adversary. Simply put, the showdown aspect is probably one of the most annoying systems we've ever experienced. Players have to move from left to right to keep the adversary in front, where the bullet path will be. Meanwhile, players use the mouse to move the character's hand around, making sure it stays close (but not touching) the gun and high enough to grab the gun handle. A short music sequence (used in place of a timer) plays in the background and then a bell tolls. At that time, the player needs to swing the mouse left to draw the gun, and if everything is positioned correctly, a target reticule goes up the screen so players can fire in hopes of being the first to pull the trigger and hit a critical area. One confrontation in particular has you squaring off against a boss in a dark cave, where you can hardly see anything. Although we eventually got the hang of it (sort of) after a long while, it's an overly complicated process for setting off what amounts to a glorified quicktime event. Fortunately, the game lets you retry showdowns until you succeed. However, much of the game is filled with similar sequences, like kicking in the door and using both mouse buttons (each controlling a pistol in either hand) to take out a room full of people as the two targeting reticules come together. At times we felt like we were battling from one quicktime event to another.

Players can roam the open world in between chapters, where they can purchase new weapons from the store and embark on different side missions by picking up wanted and job posters. Unfortunately, the stores don't take trade-ins for their goods, so players can't sell off old guns for better ones. Each gun type uses the same kind of ammunition but purchasing better grade weapons presents a high degree of commitment since money is just scarce enough to force players to stick with select guns throughout the game. Guns that reload faster require more shots to take enemies down, but enemies hardly give pause when injured with anything less than fire. So there's little incentive to stick with the fast weapons when a high-powered gun will usually kill a target in one shot and make the most out of valuable ammunition. Additionally, players will often happen upon random events while roaming Mexico, which include rescuing civilians from attackers. There's no obvious payout from these random encounters besides the little that gets picked up from the bodies. So, the McCall brothers end up as a pair of cold-blooded, murderous criminals that are Good Samaritans during their off hours.

One would think that a game that involves a gun-slinging duo would cry out for cooperative multiplayer, but Bound in Blood doesn't have it, nor are the campaign levels designed to support two-player co-op. It's a shame, since the game can make you feel chained to your sibling half the time. However, there are a number of team-oriented competitive multiplayer modes including one called Wild West Legends, which has one team trying to complete objective while the opposing one does all it can to stop them.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood's well executed story is probably the single most compelling reason to stick with the game all the way through. The game has plenty of positive things going for it, like varied environments and frantic gun fights. One sequence has you riding an elevator going down a cliff wall while enemies toss explosives down. At the same time, frustrating gameplay systems like the Dueling are a real turn-off. Additionally, riding across the wide empty spaces of the Mexican desert isn't exactly a fulfilling experience and it's hard to keep track of changing mission objectives when waves of enemies are coming at you. Still, completing the single player game was worth suffering through its shortcomings, and the two characters offer different enough experiences to make replaying it an option worth considering. We were happy that we stuck with the game all the way through, but some of the gameplay is annoying enough to drive less determined players away.

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