POSTED 7/8/11


CALL OF JUAREZ: THE CARTEL

Ubisoft
PS3 (also on Xbox 360, PC)

Yeah! Time to get our cowboy on again... except, erm, things have gone all modern. ¿dónde está el vaquero? No cowboy for you!

Well, unless you count anachronistic tendencies from one of three lead characters in Ben McCall, genetically linked to the git-along-little-dawgie horsiness of those cowboyish Call of Juarez predecessors. The other two ‘stars’ are generic DEA bloke or FBI chick in your own personal taskforcey triumvirate as the DEA and FBI generally aren’t trustworthy. Or summat.

The FPSiness starts bonkersly enough with a speedtacular freeway shootout, and veers between similar affairs, being all stealthy-like, taking on helichopperters and blamming drug cartel nefarious types en route to disenkingpinenating <McBain> Men-do-zaaaaaaaaaaaaa!</McBain>

There are some interesting ideas at play, like how which character you pick steers the story – abilities, motives and more affect progress, so if you play through with all three characters the tale will vary somewhat.

However, if you’ve the wherewithal to play through three times you deserve something medallic, for despite employing some initiative, The Cartel plays rather bleurghily. Alternatively, three of you can pick one character each and play together – cooperation is the root of shared suffering.

Ignoring presentation that gives hessian undies heavy competition in the roughness stakes – garish colours, abrupt screen transitions, appalling lip synch for ultra caseoso dialogue, yucky fonts, spelling grammatical and erors ect (we meant that, puerile shits that we are) – things generally tend to stutter more than Morris Minor and the Majors with Ken from A Fish Called Wanda on the mic. The odd cutscene shuddering a bit’s fairly forgivable, but when gameplay’s interrupted regularly for split seconds with sound glitches and video freezes then nope, sorry, no 10 for you!

It’s all in the execution... We’ll spare a hangin’, but the devs at least deserve a damned good paddlin’.

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