A war for anti-depressants.
It used to be its western setting, anyways. I've never played previous entries in the series, but that was the main thing that made me want to play. It's such an under used concept, and while Red Dead Redemption raised the standards well beyond what most any other developer could do, I'd really love to see the old western setting in more games. I think Techland saw what had been brought to the table with Red Dead, so they decided to fray away from the under used concept, in trade for something more traditional by today's standards. And that of course is the modern shooter. Call of Juarez always had inspirations with its gameplay from such series' as Battlefield and Call of Duty, but this is the first time that it's actually in the same exact league.
This brings me back to my complaint that this is one of the most generic games of this year. Everything that you encounter in the short 5 hour campaign has been done to death over the years. This wouldn't be such a bad thing, had these clichés been executed properly, but there are more than enough flaws to guarantee that you will never enjoy this game to its fullest potential. There are a few bright spots to this ball of predictability, but all of them seem to be drawn back due to poor technical performance, and a very big lack of polish.
To begin with, the story barely works. It's a game that revolves around a lot of what we're seeing in North America right now; drug wars, gangs, corruption, and more. It handles it in an "action movie" sort of way, where the game never really takes the chance to slow down that much. We follow 3 characters on their crusade for justice, all of which have their motivations and influences. The main fellow of this trio goes by the name of Ben McCall, followed by two other characters by the names of Kimberly Evans and Eddie Guerra. Each of the characters follow their own generic roles that ensure that you don't care about them one bit. But more than that, they make the effort of doing as much as they can to make sure you don't like them at all. We're stuck with these 3 for all 5 hours of the campaign, which means you won't have to deal with them for long.
The story has its plot twists and character developments, but at the end of the day, none of it will matter to you. Everything about how the story progresses and how it's presented it completely unlikeable. I'm sure it was meant to appease the gaming crowd that has that "xtreme baditude" going on, but I'm sure it will make them laugh too. Dialogue is plain stupid, but don't worry, there's tons of it. There's a lot of repeating throughout the game, and when I say a lot, I mean that you will hear the same line of dialogue at least 30 times from each of your team mates by the end of a single mission. Did I mention that those lines are completely pointless and laugh-out-loud bad?
As I mentioned before, the three characters are all there for your play through on the campaign. You take control of one character throughout it, while the other two characters act as friendly AI. Well, at least I think they're friendly. They seem to be more concentrated on annoying the piss out of me as opposed to actually killing people. Every time I think I have a place to go for cover, they always seem to be there to block my whole body from going behind the point of cover, leaving me exposed to die. I've never had this happen to me in an FPS before, so you could probably imagine my rage when I realized that my "helpers" were doing more harm than good. The enemy AI is fine, at least in comparison to what my helpers do. They cover, they flank, the shoot, they do everything you'd expect out of them at this point. There's pretty much no variety in what they do at all; some of them have machine guns, some have pistols, and some have- you guessed it, shot-guns. So the brand of generalness has come full circle, with absolutely nothing new to be expected.
There is a bit of variety in mission design though. You'll find yourself behind the wheel of a car, fighting helicopters, advancing through bullet ridden hallways, and more. It's a nice effort from Techland to spice it up a bit so it isn't totally monotonous, but there really isn't much to what they offer. All of the set recurring set-pieces that you see in The Cartel are usually half balked, leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth and the thought that these set-pieces should've been so much more than they were. Come to think of it, that's how this game is as a whole. Gunplay in The Cartel is solid, I suppose. It's about as solid as it could be for something that is mediocre, but it is pretty satisfying none the less. There are quite a few guns to use, but most function in ways that are the same. There are minor differences, like rate of fire, damage, and more, but they're barely noticeable. There are a few cases where the games are pretty much two different things, but most of the time, changing weapons won't really matter unless they are two completely different categories.
You can play through the campaign with each of the 3 characters, which slightly alters your playing experience, creating an artificial sense that there's more to the campaign than meets the eye. But the differences between each of the 3 characters are pretty scarce, and not too important. Objectives and collectables are slightly different with each character too, but it's the same case here; there really isn't much of a difference, especially since the goal in the end is pretty much the same case of getting from point A to point B. There's incentive to come back and get some trophies and experience, but that all depends on how well you handle the repetition in the game.
The multiplayer options for cooperative are probably the most impressive feature of the game. You and two other people (online only, unfortunately) can play the entire campaign together, sharing the monotony so it doesn't rub off on you too much. Things are spiced up considerably, thanks to this challenge system that you and your team mates share online. There are objectives that occur in certain parts that only last as long as someone hasn't completed it. It can be pretty tense trying to reach your goal first, and it makes for an exciting game when you have to worry about that and all the other crap that's happening too. Another feature to the co-op mode is how you can treat your team mates. There are objects scattered throughout each level that you can collect, but you have to do it in secrecy. You can either let your partners do that, or you can be an A-hole and catch them, giving yourself experience instead. It's a shame that the co-op in the game isn't all too popular, because it is a pretty neat mechanic that can make the game a whole mess of fun. It's a shame that the game is as mediocre as it is, because this would've been the one reason to stick with this game.
I wish I could tell you about the competitive play too, but that's pretty much dead too. I tried finding a game for like 30 minutes, and nothing came up. And from the sound of things, it's pretty much what you'd expect to see from it, given the circumstances that were already established in the rushed campaign. The leveling system from the campaign doesn't carry over to the multiplayer, so you'd have to unlock all of your weapons in the game for both the multiplayer and single player, which is kind of stupid. I guess it was meant to be that way to add replay value, but like I said before, replay value doesn't matter when your game is trite garbage.
And it only gets worse once you start talking about the overall presentation of the game. The menus look trashy, at best, and the font that they use in the game makes early fonts on the Super Nintendo feel superior. I'm not sure what type of look this game was trying to pull off, so I guess I could put this under the category of the "jack-of-all-mediocre-traits". Load times are long, considering that what they're loading is pretty much something that could've been drawn from the depths of the PS2 era. The games sound works just fine, but it's nothing that will blow you away. Some of the voice-acting is grating, but the 3 main characters do their jobs well enough. The music is actually pretty good, matching all of the scenarios in the game with a western like tone. Had it not been for the terrible visuals and bugs, I would've gone as far as to say that this games presentation could've been decent, but…
…This is an ugly game. The textures are bland and grainy, the character models are jagged and repeated constantly, and the filtering for everything is down-right bad. And to top it all off, this is one of the buggiest FPS's you will ever play on the PS3. It makes Fallout: New Vegas seem like a completely polished game. I wouldn't be able to write down what I ran into in the span of this review, so I'll just leave it at "this game is unfinished". I don't understand how Techland messed up the visuals of this game this badly with this supposed new engine. This game looks worse than both the first and second Call of Juarez games, and that is no exaggeration. This is clearly a game that isn't finished, and deserved a half a year more before it was ready for its prime time.
There really isn't much reason for you to own Call of Juarez. Hell, I don't even own it; I just rented it for the hell of it just to see if it was really as bad as people made it out to be. I've confirmed that those rumors are accurate, and that this game was clearly not ready for the market. There are a few redeemable parts to it, like the shooting mechanics, the cooperative, and the music, but those are pretty much the only good things that you can pick up from this game. If you want a good FPS from this year, then pick up Bulletstorm or Crysis 2 instead, or you can wait for September to roll on by to see if Techland's next effort, Dead Island, will redeem them from this mess. Hell, even Homefront would be a better option than what we have here. And if you've played those, then you still don't have any real reason to play this one. To answer my question from before: what does this game have going for it? Pretty much nothing.
+Cooperative mode is neatly crafted and fun to use
+The music is alright
+The buttons do stuff when you press them
-An awful presentation, from the menus to the fonts
-Incredibly stupid story with very unlikeable characters
-Poorly integrated variety in the campaign
-Gets very monotonous, very fast
-Filled to the brim with annoying bugs and glitches
-Terrible visuals, with murky textures and jaggies everywhere
-Dead multiplayer (I'm sure you know why)
Review by Cal Burkhart