Game Review: Call of Juarez: The Cartel

Billy O'Keefe - Mclatchy -Tribune News Service

Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360

Also available for: Windows PC

From: Techland/Ubisoft

ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, drug reference, intense violence, partial nudity, sexual content, strong language)

Price: $60

Those who stroll unknowingly into "Call of Juarez: The Cartel" are in for a serious case of video game culture shock. The third game in a series of gunslinging first-person westerns takes place in present-day Los Angeles amid a looming war between the United States and a Mexican drug cartel, and while the national park setting is slightly novel, the game's first shootout would otherwise feel at home in that other series that has "Call of" in its title.

"Cartel's" chief protagonist has ancestral ties to the previous game's protagonist, but otherwise, this may as well be a new series altogether. If you played previous "Juarez" games precisely to get away from assault rifles, C4 explosives, launching rockets at choppers and small armies constantly firing on your position, "Cartel's" embrace of all that in the first mission alone will leave you deeply dismayed.

Whatever attempt "Cartel" makes to justify this change isn't helped any by its storytelling. The leap to present day doesn't strive for novelty, opting for a pedestrian cops-versus-gangs story instead of something that calls back to the Old West or makes the main character a fish out of water. You can play as one of three characters - "Cartel's" online co-op functionality lets you assign two other players to the other two - but all three are dull caricatures who blather in cliches and (along with their enemies) repeat themselves way too often.

Past the national park, the areas in which the story unfolds - warehouses, a nightclub, a whole lot of streets and alleys - feel like a who's who of urban warfare standards as well.

As for how it plays ... how does "passable" sound? "Cartel" has a good assortment of guns and its controls and aiming are perfectly sufficient. The artificial intelligence of your allies and enemies leaves much to be desired, but neither is so unfortunate as to break the game.

Rather, like everything else, they're competently ordinary. And while that faint praise is nothing new for the series when it comes to gameplay nuts and bolts, it's harder to defend when it's surrounded by the same old guns, enemies and environments instead of an Old West setting that's considerably more unique in this medium. You might enjoy "Cartel" while you play it, but it also might be the most forgettable game you enjoy all year.

The one area where "Cartel" flashes some ingenuity is via a handful of optional assignments and findable items that allow you to build a resume as a dirty cop on the take. Getting your hands dirty nets you rewards, but only if you can successfully do so when your partners aren't looking.

Thanks to the aforementioned A.I. deficiencies, going rogue is moderately fun but not very challenging when playing alone. But trying to pull some valuable wool over your friends' eyes while they try to do the same to you adds a fun layer of two-way paranoia to "Cartel's" co-op mode. The rewards and consequences for success and failure aren't powerful enough to make the feature a total game-changer, but if you elect to play "Cartel," asking a couple of friends to play along will go a long way.

"Cartel's" competitive multiplayer content (12 players) brings the game back to Earth. The two modes - gangs-versus-cops team deathmatch and a modified team deathmatch with rotating objectives - fit the new setting, and everything that was competent in the campaign remains competent here. But if you're already invested in another online first-person shooter, nothing "Cartel" does is fresh or fleshed out enough to shake your loyalties.

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