Call of Juarez: The Cartel

It's depressing to think that Techland took a popular franchise, came up with some brilliant ideas for a new entry, and then botched the execution-but that's exactly what happened.

Perhaps with more development time, The Cartel would have been a more compelling experience but, with a game engine that's showing its age, a confused new identity and a fair few technical issues, it falls sadly short of most FPS fans' high expectations.

This might be a horrible back-handed comment on The Cartel, but playing it sparked me to go back and play some Bound in Blood, which has a far better single-player experience and I'd rather ride a horse in first-person than drive an SUV in first-person.

Quotation forthcoming.

Some distinguishing features give this shooter a touch of class, but bugs and execution flaws cast a long shadow over Call of Juarez: The Cartel.

Call of Juarez: The Cartel, isn't a very good game when you get to the basics. Its low production values and simple gameplay drag the experience down, while an erratic pace to the storyline makes it worse.

Compared to the previous Call of Juarez titles, The Cartel is a colossal disappointment.

The two previous Call of Juarez games were good games, but this third game is a bit of a disaster on different aspects. The audio will stop sometimes, visually it's looking pretty bad, the game is full of bugs and stupid mistakes. This game needed just one more year of development time to be a lot better. A shame.

The Cartel is a mediocre game. Something disappointing because we know the Call of Juarez saga, with much better games and far superior action.

What I played this last week was one of the least enjoyable video game experiences I've ever had, and I would be extremely surprised if there were to be a fourth game in this franchise. Not only is the game full of miserable characters, it's also lacking the polish consumers should expect of a finished game.

Chasing a Mexican drug cartel through the streets of Los Angeles is boring at best, with outdated graphics and gameplay that feel a generation old. [Oct 2011, p.81]

A rental at best, but better we just sweep The Cartel under a sombrero and forget about it.

Far from polished enough. We miss the Old West.

Call of Juarez: The Cartel moves into dangerous territory by dropping the Western-setting. It loses that special something and what's left is nothing more than a unimpressive modern shooting gallery. The story mode, however, though filled with clichés, is high on content and has some great ideas. Unfortunately, it won't pull you through its rough bits.

I was interested in this next step for the Call of Juarez series, and I really think it could have worked; but good ideas can only do so much, solid execution must also prevail, and that just didn't happen with The Cartel.

The style, attitude, and ideas are all good, and the graphics aren't too bad. But the game is way too slow for a shooter, the faceless enemies never miss a shot, the AI is terrible, collision detectiion is iffy, and the extra features designed to let the game shine fall flat.

It's shallower than the shallow end of a kiddie pool during a drought, and dammit, it's such a disappointment, because the series has delivered compelling storylines and settings, if nothing else, up to this point.

One of the most generic, bland and uninspired shooters I've played in a long time, and in turn has potentially sullied the work done on the series in the past.

Let down by enormous technical failings and a plot that's riddled with lazy, confusing cliches and poorly translated dialogue. [Oct 2011, p.104]

Limited promise is buried under an avalanche of technical failings in this derivative FPS. [Oct 2011, p.86]

Although Techland brings some nice ideas into the Call of Juarez universe, the game ultimately fails to deliver because of a way too typical story, dated graphics, loads of bugs and a total misunderstanding of the concept 'Wild West'. The Cartel is a major step back for the franchise and we would have been better off without it.

It feels like a budget title, not a Call of Juarez game. If you're a fan of the series I suggest forgetting this game ever happened and start hoping this doesn't become the series' swan song. That'd be a shameful way for a franchise like this to go out.

Interesting co-op concepts are lost in a title riddled with copious amounts of gameplay and audio/visual glitches.

The game is generic at best, broken at worst, and falls short in its attempts to innovate cooperative play.

A poor change of pace for the franchise. Taking the story into modern times seems to have robbed it of its passion and charm, replacing it with asinine characters and more cuss words than an Al Pacino flick.

The single best feature in Call of Juarez: The Cartel is the ability to play through the entire game in co-op.

Feels like that blatantly annoying contemporary relative -- a sort of unironic Ali G.

Sure, there are some minor kicks in three player co-op, but they're very short-lived and fraught with frustration. Call of Juarez should have stuck to its guns and remained an Old Wild Western. Avoid this like you would the real po-lice. [October 2011 p80]

It's a mixture of bad decisions and rush jobs. The only way it could be worse is if the disc punched you in the face every time you opened the case. At least it's not completely broken, I guess.

Call of Juarez: The Cartel makes a lot of mistakes. Changing the setting from the wild west to the modern day was the first sign of trouble, but it was by no means the last. The game is, to put it simply, broken. I could only recommend this tedious and tiresome gaming experience to people I hate. For everyone else, give Call of Juarez: The Cartel a wide berth.

Truly, this game is a disappointment on nearly every level.

Quotation forthcoming.

With The Cartel, you can see that the developers tried to ensure the atmosphere was nice... but it does not work. The characters are too predictable, and so is the story. The action sequences are too basic... playing in coop can still be nice, but it does not save a game that lacks inspiration.

Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a hodgepodge of bad ideas and performance issues. Even if you can get past the technical problems, this heavy-handed action game never quite lives up to its potential. If you have a couple friends to play with you might get some fun out of it, everybody else might want to look elsewhere for their first-person fix!

What's most disappointing about The Cartel is that it feels like a point of no return for what was once a promising franchise. It has really dropped the ball on the whole Western motif in favor of mostly grim urban environments and an almost actively disengaging plot.

Techland's move from the Wild West into the modern era didn't pay off. The Cartel is an uninspired, boring and sometimes broken game that should not have been published in this state.

Technically horrific, poorly written and outrageously dull, The Cartel literally has nothing going for it. [Issue#208, p.87]

It's a contemptible step back for a series which always had the fun factor on its side and it might just be enough to kill the entire franchise. This is a perfect example of why it's not always a bad thing when games get cancelled.

The Cartel could have gotten away with being an unremarkable yet playable shooter, but the galling lack of presentation and legitimately uncomfortable audio/visual problems make it an unpleasant experience overall. Unfinished, buggy, and barely fun to play, Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a sloppy serving from people who should know better, and ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Pretty amusing until you realise what a shameful rip-off it is. [Sept 2011, p.108]