Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time in the digital trenches—be it battling the krauts in Call of Duty, the, er, alien-krauts in Killzone 2 or the mutant-krauts in Fallout 3. Though gaming’s potential is literally limited only by the imagination, too often developer’s imaginations prove to be quite limited, churning out endless games with WWII soldiers or space marines.

Wherefore art the cowboys? Despite its gun-slinging setting, the Wild West has gone largely un-mined as source material. Which is why Ubisoft’s Spaghetti Western-inspired Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, a prequel to the 2006 original, is such a refreshing change of pace—even if this 19th century first-person shooter does begin with some familiar trench warfare.

But even that has a twist, as you’ll be playing as Ray and Thomas McCall, Confederate soldiers drafted into the army to battle the invading Yankees. It’s an odd side of the American Civil War to be fighting on—like playing the *** in CoD multiplayer—though it’s not too long before you desert to go protect your Georgia homestead from General Sherman’s scorched-earth March to the Sea.

Arriving too late, you soon set off on your own fiery rampage through the Wild West—taking on outlaws, Indians, Mexican bandits and eventually a corrupt Confederate general; traveling by horseback, stagecoach and canoe; and engaging in tense gun-duels on dusty, lawless streets in your ultimate efforts to steal an Aztec treasure (the titular gold of Juarez).

Bound in Blood is a blast to play, gorgeous to look at and boasts a gritty plot, to boot. But it won’t have the Wild West to itself for long.

Rockstar Games is readying Red Dead Redemption for release this fall. Set in 1908 as industrialization is bringing frontier times to an end, this sequel to its Playstation 2 shooter Red Dead Revolver brings the studio’s trademark open-world sandbox to the western genre and promises to be “every bit as ambitious as GTA IV."

To which we can only say: Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!