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Call of Juarez: The Cartel might have been the first game in the series I played. That or Gunslinger. Either way, I remember enjoying Gunslinger a lot more. I recently decided to jump into the series again but start from the beginning and I’ve finally reached The Cartel so this time I have more context going into it. The first Call of Juarez is a good game but with some concepts that don’t work well. The sequel, Bound in Blood, is a big improvement and has become one of my favorite western first-person shooters. It was followed up by The Cartel.
Developed by Techland and published by Ubisoft, Call of Juarez: The Cartel was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in July, 2011 and PC in September of that same year. For this review, I played the Xbox 360 version on a Series X. As of this review, it is not available on Steam or GoG. The Cartel takes players away from the traditional Wild West setting and into modern-day and the plot centers on a task force investigating a drug cartel. I’m guessing the developers were aiming to change things up and deliver what you might call a modern western. It did not review well and some time later one of the people at Techland admitted the game wasn’t ready when it released and called it a “mistake”.
When the Mendoza Cartel is suspected of bombing the D.E.A. office in Los Angeles, an interagency task force is formed consisting of L.A.P.D. detective Ben McCall, F.B.I. agent Kim Evans, and D.E.A. agent Eddie Guerra. They are tasked with tracking down the culprits and protecting an informant who is the daughter of an F.B.I. agent that was investigating the cartel before he was killed in the bombing. As the trio strike at the Cartel’s operations and unravel a conspiracy, each member has their own secret agenda and must contend with their mistrust of one other.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a big fan of the premise. I’m a sucker for a cops and robbers, narcs versus cartel tale. But the plot isn’t great and the characters suck. From the protagonists to the villains, almost everyone is uninteresting and cardboard. The plot does get a bit convoluted and also leans into the cliched territory and I wouldn’t mind this if the characters were developed better and had more depth. The secret agendas of the protagonists give more insight to their motives and roles in the plot but fail to flesh them out in an interesting way. Furthermore, much of the dialogue is corny and the voice performances often come across as hammy which doesn’t always fit the serious tone the game is going for. The storyline may have worked better if it went in an all hammy, over-the-top, and tongue-in-cheek direction but, instead, it aims for the serious and dramatic and I found it hard to give a shit about most plot developments and any of the characters.
Before jumping into the gameplay, the player must select one of the three protagonists and because I selected Ben the last time I played through the game, I chose Eddie this time. Each character is different and has a unique skill, advantages, and preferred range. At the start of each mission, you can customize your loadout with all kinds of modern weapons and more are unlocked as you level up. You earn experience by stealing the hidden items in the environments and completing secret agenda objectives or optional objectives without being spotted by your partners and this is probably the most unique and interesting concept in the game.
The Cartel is a first-person shooter and shares many of the same mechanics as the previous games including concentration. Shooting enemies charges up concentration and when full, you can activate concentration to temporarily slow down time enabling you to easily pick off foes. The Cartel does support cooperative multiplayer which is nice but I was only able to play solo which meant the other two characters were controlled by the AI. Other than what’s already been mentioned, The Cartel is your typical run and gun first-person shooter. The gameplay is more in line with Bound in Blood than the first Call of Juarez. This means you’ll spend most of your time moving and shooting. No sneaking, no climbing around, and no open-ended areas here, either.
For the most part, I would say there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the gameplay of The Cartel. At least not in my experience. It just feels generic as hell. That’s the problem. It doesn’t do anything interesting or innovative nor does it have the traditional western setting to give it an edge. As a result, it gets repetitive quickly. You run through the environments gunning down bad guys. The action isn’t as flashy as I think it probably should be and the gunplay ranges from average to pretty good. In my experience, it really depends on the weapons you use. The gore effects are decent which helps but guns don’t always feel snappy to me and some just don’t feel or sound as powerful as I think they should.
It appears The Cartel is aiming for a more gritty feel than its predecessors and I would say it succeeds but I think the developers should have done more with the presentation to make the gameplay more flashy and feel better. Little things can go a long way. I think better visual effects, production values, and even faster-paced gameplay could have really changed the entire feel of the experience for the better. After I beat the campaign, my mind kept going to Kane & Lynch 2 and I thought to myself, “they should have done something like that with the action”. Say what you want about that game but I think the flashy action is what really makes it fun and helps carry it. I think if The Cartel went in that kind of direction, it would have turned out better.
The Cartel is not a game loaded with set pieces. There are a couple that have you leaning out of the window of a vehicle, shooting at foes during a chase and that’s about it. And this leads me to the driving sequences. There are numerous points in the campaign where you’ll have to drive. Sometimes you have to simply drive from point A to B to complete the objective and other times you’ll be escaping attackers, chasing people, or following people. Unfortunately, when playing solo, many chases become boring because you can’t participate in the shooting. So you’re just driving and getting shot at, trying to evade gunfire hoping not to die. In the end, I feel the driving sequences make up the primary form of set pieces in the game but unless you’re playing with others, most of these sequences are just boring.
One positive thing I will say about The Cartel is that I think the environments are well designed. Well designed in the sense they are well detailed and do a good job at conveying an urban and gritty feel. The campaign does put you in some cool scenarios which would be more exciting if the action wasn’t generic as hell. You’ll shoot your way through streets and alleyways, docks, underground tunnels, and a club among other locations. The environments are mostly linear with routes and areas off to the sides where the secret items are typically found. That’s the primary reason to explore. Otherwise, you move from objective to objective, gunning down bad guys and sometimes getting into fist fights. There are numerous points in the campaign where you’ll get to participate in cooperative actions like team entries and have to move from cover to cover as your partners provide covering fire. Since I played solo, I found the AI can hold their own pretty well and I never felt the need babysit them but they do make it easy to steal the secret items and complete the secret agendas without being spotted.
Visually, I think the presentation is alright. As mentioned before, I feel the environments are well detailed and I also think the game presents a decent variety of locations. Weapon models look good and some of the visual and gore effects look cool. I’ve heard of people complaining about glitches and visual oddities but in my experience, I can’t say I encountered any of that. Nothing that I noticed, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, the presentation is far from incredible. Maybe some animations could look better but nothing about it actually pulled me out of the experience. The sound work is okay at best and the action is backed by decent but not particularly memorable tunes in my opinion. I think some guns could sound better and you’ll hear both the protagonists and enemies repeatedly spout the same lines during gameplay which becomes tiring. On the technical side, I did not encounter any issues.
Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a generic first-person shooter. I won’t say it’s horrible but it’s not amazing, either. It’s a very predictable and run of the mill action game. The secret agenda stuff is probably the most unique thing about it in my opinion. What’s actually supposed to be fun and exciting is just generic. I do question why the setting was changed to modern-day. Hindsight really is 20/20 and I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone was skeptical of the decision before the game released. Personally, I think it was a mistake. Even if The Cartel turned out to be a good game, I still think the change in setting would have been a mistake. Traditional western first-person shooters are not a dime-a-dozen which makes the Call of Juarez series unique and it holds a special place in the first-person shooter genre. And I feel the developers could have expanded upon what has already established. But maybe The Cartel turning out the way it did worked out in the long run if only because it forced the developers to bring the series back to the Wild West with the next game, Gunslinger, which ended up being a much better game.
I would not recommend Call of Juarez: The Cartel. Maybe if you can get it for cheap and you’re in the mood for a run and gun shooter would I suggest checking it out. But there are so many better options and there’s nothing to give it an edge. Based on some of my research, The Cartel seems to be the result of some poor decisions and is unfinished. It’s far from the worst first-person shooter I’ve ever played but much of what it does has been done better in other games.