Call of Juarez: The Cartel – review
PS3/Xbox 360/PC, ? 39.99, cert 15 +; Techland / Ubisoft
What is it about the Wild West games? We know that they are highly entertaining as the two previous iterations of Call of Juarez and proved last year 's Red Dead Redemption, so why do they always have so rare?
Still, we foolishly thought, at least here's a new Call of Juarez game to satisfy our craving for Sergio Leone-style grit and shoot-outs. But such expectations were cruelly dashed, as it is set in the present day, featuring a storyline that teams a DEA agent, an FBI agent and an LA Homicide cop as a makeshift task-force taking on a Mexican drug cartel.
Completely changing the essential nature of an established franchise is an unprecedented move for the games industry, and one struggles to fathom the reasoning behind it. In the case of Call of Juarez: The Cartel, you even suspect that it may have been moved to the present day at some point during its development, as it still sports a number of missions set in places like Death Valley and Juarez itself, in which the meticulously created environments are straight out of a Western, yet the modern characters and weaponry seem incongruous.
Once you get your head around Call of Juarez 's sudden reversal ferrets, but you can find a game that is well executed and very enjoyable to play, without really shine in a particular area.
The environments, admittedly, are fantastic, and state-of-the-art visual tricks such as depth of field gives an impressively high-tech feel. The controls are large, supports a mode of concentration, that trigger after killing a certain amount of enemies, which causes everything to enter slow-motion for a period.
Perhaps the imaginative aspect of the game is that each of the three characters - tank, sniper and all-rounder - have their own agenda. The DEA man, for example, is in hock to the bookies and have medication (unseen by the other two) to move to collect his man in the cartel.
The storyline is basic but functional: the trio are drafted in to go after the Mendoza cartel after it bombed the DEA offices. The action begins in an impressively believable rendition of LA's dodgiest environs, but soon branches out into more countrified territory.
The gameplay doesn 't vary enormously, mainly consisting of shooting hordes of enemies, which is AI polished enough that you have a careful approach that heavy use of cover (the game uses a manual and automated system that makes sense and works well).
There are many set pieces reminiscent of Call of Duty 's Breach and Clear-sequences in which you kick in doors and take a room full of drug runners with a slo-mo period to give the edge. There are car chases galore, and helicopters with rockets and machine guns are armed, the equivalent of boss battles.
In other words, it 'sa perfectly decent game (though by no means spectacular), with a three-player drop-in \ co-op and the characters' various secret agenda to add some replay value. But all the way through the renunciation of the western theme nags at you. Can we back our six-shooter, please?
• game on the Xbox 360 checks
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