El Matador; coulda been a contender!

User Rating: 7.5 | El Matador PC
After playing through El M twice now, I can only think "what if?'. What if the developers would have spent more time with writing & polishing a real, coherent storyline to go with the nice graphics & physics of this game. It's obviously heavily influenced by the awesome Max Payne games, w/ perhaps a tilt of the hat toward last year's Total Overdose. However, pretty graphics & good sound do not a complete game make.

El M has pretty one-dimensional gameplay, in that it consists of levels where you basically start off running & shooting at anything that moves, using the slo-mo/bullet-time feature to defeat the hordes of enemies you will encounter. After the first few levels you will have experienced pretty much everything the game has to offer...it all becomes a rehash of what you've been doing since the start. The boss encounters are almost generic in their uniformity & difficulty. I never saw or experienced anything that made me sit up on the edge of my chair & say OMG, as was so often the case in MP 1 or 2.

Having said all that, it still has its merits, if for no other reason than to remind us of how spectacular the Max Payne series was, & how much we all still miss its incredible gaming experience.