User blog comment:Foreborn/Call of Juarez: The Cartel Review/@comment-88.6.31.128-20121031045625

Found it for 20 bucks on a store, so I decided I'd give it a try. Bought Brink for around the same cash, and... Well, I liked Brink. So I was ready to like this. I mean, 20 bucks. Even if the game sucks I'm gonna think it's not a terrible purchase.

I'm Spanish, and the game's in Spanish. The subtitles have absolutely nothing to do with what the characters say at any given time. So turn off the subtitles, it figures, all right.

Second strike comes around. Hurtful fake Mexican accent with English phrases translated by grace and might of Google Translate. Yay. Come out so I can see you pussy, I imagine that's the way it goes in English, maybe with a Mexican accent (Probably just as hurtful) comes out as something like YO FINE PUSSY COME OUT SO I CAN SEE YA!!!

Thought it was funny the first twenty times. Then it got old. Then it went on for the rest of the game.

About the characters, I actually liked Eddie more than Ben. Kim's just pretty bland overall, she tries to play nice, she's obviously hurt about killing her brother's gang buddies, then she goes on to -Spoiler, if anyone cares- kill that Donleavy folk. Weren't you supposed to be the nicest of the three, lady? Well that's unconsistent. On the other hand, Thomas was a wolf in sheep's skin as well, and her gameplay really has Thomas all over it. She hides at a distance and picks enemies off with any sort of rifle, and doesn't really want to take it close and personal. Of course, if your rifle is an AK, you can always mix it up a bit, but mid to long is your range.

Eddie pretty much should just be the sole protagonist and have stronger support characters to develop the story of a heavily crooked cop, or something. And lose the cowboy. And the scenery. And call the game Adventures of Captain Gambles and his two wretched mateys. But not Call of Juarez. Eddie has great gameplay with all the auto weapons and the shotguns and the akimbo uzis, and odd enough, he is actually Ray's playstyle heir. He goes in close, doesn't really have to sight in often, can disregard cover except to reload, and he reloads pretty much as often as Ray did. Sprint is fast, so you can take up three to four enemies, then go into focus mode, then pick the rest off. He also cracks jokes, not very funny, but you know. Modern day action hero. And he's the one that fits the role the best. He even gets scared when Juan tosses his gun at him. To me, he's the most believable. He has quirks that show, he has problems that show as well, he's more Call of Juarez-y than the other two.

Ben's pretty much just an excuse to name the game Call of Juarez. He doesn't really have any of the feats of Ray even though he's a complete ripoff, point by point. Likes hookers, been in a war, dresses like a gunslinger, quotes the bible, he's copied down to the crucifix. But he's all virtues and no vices.

The guy's a living throwback. He's there to draw the loyal fanbase to buy the game despite it barely being Call of Juarez any more. He doesn't even do anything Ray-like. Ray gave thought to killing his own brother over a girl. Ben is a LOT more generic. He's even the only actually good cop in the group. Sure, revenge driven, ok. He still isn't stealing something every ten seconds or down right killing a guy because someone told him it might be a good idea. He just gathers evidence in an illegal way. Ohhh, but that's bad. Yeah, it WOULD BE, if we didn't have Mr. Stealsalot nicking everything even remotely valuable and Ms. I'm So Nice making deals with the bad guy because she wants to.

Thomas and Ray were greedy, murderous ass holes, who were likable because we could think they were people. Their situation was not good and they behaved like it wasn't good. Their interests started to collide, until William saved them from killing each other.

Ben doesn't even know what the Gold of Juarez is. He's just a bland good guy who tries to be Ray at times, and when he does try to be Ray, it just seems like he's bluffing. He wouldn't kill Javier, or Juan. He's just trying to scare them.

His gameplay is also... Well, just the least effective of them all. I've heard people tell me that Ben should be close range most of the time... But it's not really like that. Eddie can take that role much more effectively. With Ben, you find yourself playing an 1850s character in 2011. You should be wielding revolvers, which you can do, but they are still realistic hence pretty slow. The fun part is, now every enemy has a semi auto pistol or even fully auto rifles that can shred you if you miss two shots in a row. You get the gatling equivalent, light machine guns, which means you'll be wielding an M60 for the most part. Yeah, that gun with infamously bad iron sights. When you get the hang of it, it's not really BAD, as much as it is NOT OPTIMAL. You could wreck them up close as Eddie, you could kill them before they even got near as Kim. But you're playing the nostalgia character, so you're stuck with a terrible selection of guns when everybody has awesome ones.

Ray was overpowering, Ben just feels weak in comparison. If they wanted to make Ben likable, giving him the worst possible gameplay in a game that doesn't have much other than engaging gunplay is not a step in the right direction.

You see, in 2011, this was an obvious attempt at hitting mainstream sale rates, auto weapons, online modes, vehicle sections which were included in the online, coop campaign...

These are things casual gamers like. These are things that sell well, because casual gamers pick a game up and never even bother to finish it. Much less 100% it. Probably not even play it once through the hardest difficulty with a walkthrough.

No one is safe from it, judging by the new Honor of Battlefield: Call of Resident Evil 6.

The problem with The Cartel was probably that they would never hit mainstream sale rates with something that's not Modern Battlefield of Duty 29, much less if you do try to keep the trademarks of the name here. You see, The Cartel took it's attempts at being western, and it took its attempts at having beautiful scenery. When you are done wondering why are you burning a forest in the twenty first century when no one apparently ordered you to go there, or why is the desert such an awesome place for a hostage trade and a posterior shootout, you might as well wonder why the hell is the main character a 57 year old cowboy.

And please don't take me wrong, I actually like the game despite it's obvious flaws. Combat is fast paced, the campaign allows you to take a moderate amount of damage and that's a whole new thing (Unless you played F.3.A.R) hipfire is pretty effective, akimbo uzis as Eddie are as well...

Combat is fun, but you can't really take it to an in betweeny point without disappointing everyone. If you want to please your fanbase, just keep the western setting and weapons. Don't make them try to gunsling through 40 guys with fully automatic weapons, because it's just not fair. If you want to go mainstream, don't sell a good game's name to try to get a base number of sales to fans, because they'll end up disappointed. No one that was a CoJ fan will buy CoJ 4 if it's terrible again. In fact, I kinda doubt we'll ever see another CoJ.

On a side note, multi is fun as well. To some extent. On PS3 we are about 20 and we all know each other already. Most of us use either the starting sub machine gun or the second sub machine gun on the baddies side. You can camp, but sprint is sick fast so you typically end up getting one shot melee'd.

Of course, no one tries to be a cowboy. I am yet to see a good revolver user, or a light machine gun user, for that matter. Even shotguns are completely unplayable, since yeah, you might one shot a guy, but his team is probably not gonna be pleased about it. And they probably pack auto weapons.

I remember BiB's multi with people throwing dinamite around and dual wielding revolvers and shotguns. Can't quite remember if gatlings were available, didn't play for long. But if that's what fans want, The Cartel's multi kinda spits on it. Auto weapons are fast, agile, accurate, and hell, even the starting SMG can put down any cowboy really fast.

The buddies mechanic seems pointless. Why not give myself a buff and ammo to spare, instead of forcing me to walk around with another dude? Specially when he might just be spamming flashbangs on me, or taking away every kill I do (Thanks, reanimation system...) and never healing me when I'm hurt. We could just take away the wounded and buddy system gimmick.

All in all, it is fun, even if I plowed through the story mode in hard difficulty (Think that's as hard as it gets, too) the multi is still fun for now. Probably will re-sell it after my K/D hits 2.something.