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Techland returns with a third instalment in its Call of Juarez series...
Call of Juarez: The Cartel tries so very hard to convince you that it's grown up. It swears profusely. It features relentless, incongruous nudity (because clearly, extra nudity is extra mature). Its characters are carefully mined from the rich cultural seam that gave us Gangsta Rap and Channel Five reality cop shows. It even stitches together its premise from overheard snippets of TV news headlines, constructing a terrorist plot involving a Mexican drug cartel in the process. Hey, terrorists are scary... and drug cartels are scary right? So terrorist drug cartels... that's extra scary! Who would want to make buckets of cash selling drugs, when they could embark on a lucrative sideline in blowing up American Government buildings anyway?
The problem isn't so much that Juarez has a ludicrous plot and laughable characterisation - plenty of games do - it's that it takes itself so bloody seriously, trotting out 'hard-hitting' dialogue with all the gravitas of a pre-pubescent 50 Cent fan. Why do all the women look and dress like porn stars? Are they so utterly downtrodden that they lack the means to find adequate clothing? Perhaps this is some sort of profound philosophical dialectic about the callous, dispassionate consequences of shallow materialistic desire? Perhaps the whole thing is a clever socialist in-joke about the self-consuming beast that is capitalism, and making a sub-par sequel to a sub-par game just because it won't sell is the punchline. Or perhaps not. The problem is, by trying so very hard to seem grown up, Call of Juarez only succeeds in demonstrating just how very juvenile it really is.
It's a problem that's only compounded by woefully shoddy NPC animation and A.I. During a shoot-out in a night club, half the room hit the deck, while the rest just obliviously boogied away - at least until someone nearby got shot, at which point they all simultaneously crouched like robots studying musical chairs. No one ran, screaming at the inhuman carnage that ensued; no-one cried, or whimpered with fear; they just crouched, and waited. A room full of crouching idiots. Crouching, anatomically perfect, idiots.
Who knows, the game could be brilliant - we didn't actually get to play it as Ubisoft's preview was a first look that took the form of a 30 minute demo showcasing the game's storyline and mechanics. Obviously, it would be incredibly unfair to lambast the build on display for being unpolished at this point, but it's clear that with just a few months to go until its proposed summer release, much work is still to be done.
Nevertheless, there's no denying that the present-day-cop-show conceit is unique amongst current games, and it's a setting that may well prove alluring to some. You play as one of a trio of law-enforcers tasked with taking down a terrorist drugs cartel, in a campaign that stretches from L.A. through to Juarez in Mexico. The main character - a disillusioned preacher's son - is accompanied by two officers with shady pasts and questionable criminal connections. You can play through as any of the three protagonists, each of whom has their own perspective on the events that unfold, or have two friends join you in 3 player co-op.
The co-op play-through we witnessed involved intimidating a low-level dealer to gain access to a cartel bigwig; this culminated in a nightclub fire-fight which ultimately spilled out into the streets, resulting in a frantic car chase down a busy L.A. Highway. Generic FPS cover-shooting mechanics appear to be the order of the day, although the game does pepper the action with moments of surveillance, commandeering vehicles to tail suspects, and using hand-to-hand combat to subdue unruly civilians (you're ostensibly a cop, so you can't just murder everyone you encounter). Fights break out in the shadows of dilapidated shacks as you drive through the rough streets of an L.A. Slum, creating a fragile atmosphere of desolate chaos that is only shattered when you spot yet another scantily clad Bratz doll prancing down the street in high heels and a leopard skin bikini.
A later level set in a stunnin
g desert environment features a sniper battle that ends in a frantic downhill Jeep ride through the dunes. Here one player drives the car while the other fires manically out of the window, gunning down hapless goons that have the bad sense to run straight towards your oncoming vehicle.
Occasionally the action will slow to a crawl during a fire-fight and your character will start babbling nonsense from the Bible, punctuated with phrases like "suck on this, motherf#%*er". These 'concentration' sequences have you picking off enemies in slow-motion while enduring the inane monologue, as though stuck in a nightmarish tenth circle of hell reserved for third-rate Tarantino knock-offs.
There's no evidence yet that CoJ: The Cartel is going to redefine the FPS landscape, nor does it seem as though it's really trying to. Clearly much work is still to be done, but there's perhaps still time for Techland to salvage a reasonable game from what its displayed so far. Somehow, despite its infantile 'adult' pretences, ludicrous facsimile of urban decay, and uninventive FPS mechanics, Juarez has a certain indefinable charm, and it's entirely possible that the game might turn out to be 'so bad its good' (just as we found its predecessor to be). There was nothing obviously broken about the game's fundamental mechanics, and the switch between driving, stealth and street fisticuffs might well prove to be an enjoyable idiosyncratic mixture - possibly even something of a guilty pleasure. However, just as Red Dead Redemption showed Call of Juarez 2 how a Western should really be done, there's a danger that a certain other Rockstar title might render The Cartel obsolete before it's even released. Clearly Techland's game is a very different title to L.A. Noire, but we wouldn't fancy its chances in a shoot-out.
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Game Information
Available On:
PC, 360, PS3
| Release Date: | Players: |
|---|---|
| Out Now | 1-12 (Online) |
| Publisher: | Genre: |
| Ubisoft | FPS |
| Developer: | PEGi Rating: |
| Techland | 18 |
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