Reviewed: Call of Juarez – The Cartel

The Call of Juarez franchise has had its fair share of criticism, but the previous title, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood wasn’t as bad as many made it out to be.

Ubisoft’s latest offering into the FPS genre and the continuation of the franchise , Call of Juarez: The Cartel, doesn’t do anything to put the critics to bed.

But gamers who played Bound in Blood will more than likely play (and enjoy)  this one and it loosely ties in with BiB – by way of the children from BiB’s characters.

The player selection is rather interesting, whereby gamers can choose to play one of three characters. But all isn’t so straight forward, as each member of the trio has a secret agenda on top of the game’s overall story line.

But the most interesting part of the game is the plot. It twists and turns all the time and gamers will be forgiven if they don’t know which part is up or which part is down. As with most action-shooters, the starting plot usually evolves into something completely different by the game’s end. But that isn’t a bad thing, as it ensures that the story stays fresh and leaving the player guessing as to what is going to happen next.

In terms of graphics, we have seen better but it’s not the end of the world. There are some serious bug issues like clipping, texture popping and things just not looking right, but compared to the first two games, there is a slight improvement. Not great, but only slight.

It is rather disappointing, as we have seen games being released with less power but more oomph, if that makes sense, and this could have been one of them. Developer Techland made the first and second Call of Juarez and nail’d, so there track record isn’t spotless, but they do have the awesome-looking Dead Island on their release list for later this year.

Controls on the other hand, are a bit more responsive. The default controller layout is a weird, like pressing Y to reload, instead of the traditional X, but gamers will soon get used to it. Other than that, it’s pretty much stock standard – which is always a good thing.

But no matter how well the controls are laid out, the game suffers a bit from a hit detection system that is less than ideal. Although it functions great 99% of the time, players will get the 1% where they will empty a magazine into an enemy’s head, just for him to duck behind cover – shooting him in the toe at this point seems to do the trick.

It doesn’t seem like a huge margin of error, but considering the fact that a lot of bullets will be flying across the screen, that 1% will mean the difference between life and death. Speaking of which, expect to die rather cheaply often – on easy difficulty.

There is a marked difference in the difficulty between Easy, Medium and Hard, but death will be cheap. It’s the type where players might be low on health and while taking cover behind a box, a magical stray bullet will strike – which ties in with the hit detection system that’s a bit off.

There is also a co-op mode for the multiplayer inclined. Since there are three characters to choose from, each player can assume the role of a different character and play through the story mode, complete with hidden agendas and secret missions. It works on the same principle as Left4Dead 2, so it’s nothing new.

But when all is said and done, players of the previous games will probably enjoy this one – at least they know what they are getting themselves into. It’s not a fantastic game, but it will keep you busy (and frustrated) for at least six hours on a Sunday afternoon.

Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor