Call of Juarez: The Cartel

The game is poor. I played the game for the first five-fifteen minutes and I just could not get into it unlike the other. That is just based on the storyline not the graphics and that. I can not say nothing to the graphics because people have their own taste. However it was not my style of game and i would not recommend it to any other person (sorry to the game makers but you robbed us of what could have been a great game)

NEVER BUY OR RENT THIS GAME, THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE WASTE OF TIME. I made the poorest choice of my life so far, by renting this, played for 2 minutes, and felt like breaking the disc, to save others from renting this.

The biggest garbage i ever played, never seen the worse poo than this game, gameplay is crap, grafics are sh. t, how they could release this rubish

im not sure why there are so many bad reviews for this game and no positive. yeah the graphics/voice are pretty bad considering this is a ps3/360 game. i found game play pretty decent, better than bound in blood and story wasn't all that bad either plus you get the secret agenda which is an extra bit on the side. maybe im just easily please but i think its well worth a credit.

+ Destructible, varied environments

- Sound (out of sync, repetitive, overly-stereotyped)

- Bugs (clipping, invisible walls, even texture gaps!)

- Boring and frustrating gameplay

- Not the western shooting game I was hoping for

To say I am disappointed with this game would be a monumental understatement – I just don't know how to go further than that without sounding like a bit of a nutter. This game really is generally terrible in just about every aspect. It probably wasn't helped by the minimum expectation of “good” that I had of it, judged by the impressive reception the franchise has previously garnered. Unfortunately, where I was looking forward to some good ol' western style shooting action, I got extremely restricted, seen-it-all-before (and done better) urban modern day corridor shoot 'em up.

The one thing that might make this game stand out even remotely is the online-coop mode but in my case I have little interest in getting home from a long dull day in the office to play with demanding and uncompromising (possibly teenage) strangers who may or may not speak English (so what if I'm an anti-social gamer!?). In place of what might be quite capable human controllers you get two slow and whining AI partners, who seem to offer little help in either keeping up or protecting you and only occasionally manage to draw the covering fire they promise.

Think I've been particularly scathing so far? I haven't even gotten to the worst part yet – and I make no bones about it, this really makes a poor game verge on unplayable. The single thing that really brings The Cartel down is the diabolical use of sound throughout and I mean absolutely throughout. From the very outset the sound in the cut-scenes is at least a second out of sync, then the actual in-game sound is bland at best. Worse still is the truly awful dialogue and scripting of both enemy and ally voice acting, which will often contain some sort of derogatory racist remark or multiple strong curse words. Every enemy is voiced (and even subtitled) as a 'gangster', even if they are supposed to be a professional soldier for a private army! And just to top it all off your allies will frequently comment on your accuracy using the exact same phrase they said already said twelve times that mission.

For those people who can block out the jarring and overly-stereotyped dialogue of the game, there's bad news yet – this game just plain sucks. Aside from the frequent bugs (I saw enemies slide through barriers and bullets repeatedly hit invisible walls almost as often as I heard four letter expletives!), the game's just not fun. Most of the time you're forced down corridors shooting out pop-up enemies like it thinks it's some sort of on-rails arcade shooter, only to be punctuated by some of the worst driving sections I can remember. Or if you're unlucky enough to be on one of the missions that starts with having to punch out guards or bouncers, you'll discover the terrible fist-fighting mechanics too! (joy)

I really don't know how much more I can write about the game before I face-plant into my laptop screen. There must be something positive to write about this game... Let's see... there are 3 different characters and many weapons to choose from, each with varying capabilities. The environments range from run-down slum-like areas to cactus spotted deserts but these are peppered with noticeable texture gaps. Oh actually the one thing I enjoyed which is annoyingly still not universal to FPSs is that many objects are at least partially destructible.

The best way to really summarise Call of Juarez: The Cartel is jarring and repetitive. The worst of it is that when you're not going through something awfully familiar, it's done so awfully that you wish you were.