Call of Juarez: The Cartel

While the game's emphasis on mindless action can be thrilling at times, a slew of technical mishaps lessen the appeal of the title's more bombastic moments.

With The Cartel, developer Techland has delivered one of the most generic, bland and uninspired shooters released in a long time, and in turn has potentially sullied the work done on the series in the

Call of Juarez: The Cartel tells the story of a three person special task force thrown together to bring down a Mexican drug cartel that bombed a US law enforcement agency.  You can play as either Ben McCall, who is a gruff LAPD cop dressed up like a poor-mans ‘Wyatt Erp’ and who just happens to be a descendent of the McCall’s featured in the previous Call of Juarez games.  You can also play as Eddie Guerra, a DEA agent with a gambling problem who likes to run around the streets of LA in a bad Sammy Davis Jr. mask.  Finally, you can also play the game’s single player mode as Kim Evens, who is ...

Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a poor change of pace for the franchise. Taking the story into modern times seems to have robbed it of its passion and charm, replacing it with asinine characters and more cuss words than an Al Pacino flick. It’s not the worst shooter I’ve played, but it’s got all the problems of a budget title and few redeeming qualities to make it worth recommending.

The story gets a little interesting, particularly the way each character is shady and has a different viewpoint with no-one getting the full picture, but there’s not enough to make me want to play it again to find out the rest. Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a disappointment and probably the end of a franchise that always had potential but never quite succeeded. And now it never will. Shame.

It has been lean times recently at X360A towers (if only we did have a tower, that would be kick-ass) thanks to a steady stream of average and below par games. For some reason they all seem to find their way into my grubby mitts and it has to be said that I am rapidly approaching breaking point. Thankfully we have finally been sent a game that is not a movie tie-in and actually has some decent history with the last title Bound in Blood, being pretty damn good. Of course, such heightened expec...