Call of Juarez: The Cartel

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]