Tuesday 2 August 2016

Call of Juarez: The Cartel

Just like the good, the bad and the ugly... except they're mostly all bad. 

Despite having some control issues I quite enjoyed the first Call of Juarez as the story, told from two interchanging perspectives was told. It wasn't great but it was fun. This time around the controls are fine, the setting is more modern day with a number of driving segments that are pretty good, and this time there are three protagonists (possibly the worst examples of law enforcement people) to choose from. Oh and pretty much all your enemies are gangsters.

The three main heroes, applying the law (of gravity) on a suspect.
Don't ask how the noose itself is just attached to the roof like that either!

The story is also way more adult with trips to nudie bars, and I don't think you can go ten steps without hearing one swear word or another. An added thing is that each protagonist has "secret agendas" of stealing documents, money, drugs, guns etc. per map and to be successful in doing so your two other team mates (death immune NPCs in solo play) must not be looking at you when doing it. This is also the only way to gain EXP to unlock more weapons. Yep, killing armies of Cartel guys gives nothing - only theft does!

Alas the "choosing" of protagonists makes the overall story kinda grindy. While the shooting part is serviceable, it's pretty monotonous once you've played 10 minutes of it. So before where the story was mission 1 as person A then mission 2 as person B, now to get the full plot you need to do Missions 1 - 15 as Persons A - C. You can see how that's a problem.

There's also not much point in unlocking weapons, firstly because you can simply loot the often better guns off your downed enemies and secondly bullets are pretty effective regardless of what weapon you use. A head shot from your starting equipment is as good as a headshot from end game equipment.

Over all it's a mostly functional, standard A to B shooter but not one that earns a recommendation from me. I give it one and a half Alamos out of five.

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