PC

  News 
  Reviews
  Previews
  Hardware
  Interviews
  All Features

Areas

  3DS
  Android
  iPad
  iPhone
  Mac
  PC
  PlayStation 3
  PlayStation 4
  Switch
  Vita
  Wii U
  Xbox 360
  Xbox One
  Media
  Archives
  Search
  Contests

 

El Matador

Score: 55%
ESRB: Mature
Publisher: 2WG Media
Developer: Plastic Reality
Media: DVD/1
Players: 1
Genre: Action/ Third Person Shooter

Graphics & Sound:

I like to bring up first impressions of the games that I get right from the start. When I plugged in El Matador, it was fresh off the heels of Just Cause. Despite several huge differences, I kind of had the same taste. I had never heard of El Matador through advertising channels, and that actually made me anticipate playing it. Usually when I see games with HUGE advertising budgets, it means they didn't spend enough on the game. So anyway, here I was looking forward to a decent shooter.

The graphics on the game are pretty high. Lower systems are going to experience substantial lag, so make sure your system is up to par for this one. This is a third person shooter, so there is a lot of peripheral scenery to look at. This is a good looking game. I would put its look and feel up there with the latest games in the Hitman series.

There is nothing that takes me back to even remembering the music. I had to purposely go back and re-listen so I could present this. I found in many places they didn't even bother with having a score. The voiceovers were plastic and not very cohesive, when they even bothered with them to begin with. They were actually just character sounders. The weapon and explosion sound effects were ok. In bullet time, they added a cool effect. Again, all and all nothing impressive about the score, sounders or sound effects.


Gameplay:

In El Matador, you play a DEA agent charged with ridding the world of evil drug-lords. The overall play of the game can be rather boring. You put yourself in position. You shoot whatever moves. You take it slow. I know that this is supposed to be a tactical shooter, but as a gameplay system, other games like the Rainbow Six Series are capable of pulling off more tactical gameplay. Just bide your time until the A.I. does something stupid. You won't have to wait long, because they will purposely leave cover to give you the easy shot. There is a bullet-time feature, but I rarely found occasion to use it. I will talk more about this below. Summed up, a very uninspired and old feeling style of gameplay.

Difficulty:

For all of its good looks and some interesting use of physics, El Matador suffers from some serious control issues. This makes up for a majority of any difficulty you may have. Alas, because it is third person, you have some camera issues to deal with in the middle of fire fights. Boss battles are stupidly hard and extremely frustrating. It brings forth that feeling that the game cheats as you hit them time and time again with little to no effect. The gameplay leading up to these battles, as I said before, was not very difficult, so it seemed alien and out of place that the boss would be so overwhelming. Be prepared for the same camera issues during your boss battles. In a word, frustrating.

Game Mechanics:

So for mechanics in El Matador, you move around poorly. You shoot the baddies. If you can't shoot them, you use the bullet-time feature to slow things down so you can. I found one cool feature that I know has been done before, with being able to ricochet bullets off walls to hit targets. This worked fairly well, but the areas in which you can use this were, of course, very purposely designed into the level.

I was very quickly bored by this game. It was uninspired and felt very dated with its substandard A.I. and use of bullet-time features. The look was good, but that cannot make up for the gameplay and mechanics.


-WUMPUSJAGGER, GameVortex Communications
AKA Bryon Lloyd

Minimum System Requirements:



Minimum Requirements:
Intel or AMD, 2 GHz, Windows 2000/XP, 512 MB RAM, 128 MB DX9.0c compatible card with AGP support, GeForce4 or higher, Radeon 8500 or higher

Recommended Requirements:
Intel or AMD 2.8 GHz, Windows 2000/XP, 1024 MB RAM, 256 MB, DX9.0c compatible card, GeForce 6600 GT or higher, Radeon 9800 Pro or higher

 

Test System:



Windows XP Pro, 3.2 GHz P4HT CPU, 2 GB Ram, 512 PCIE 16 ATI X1600XT

Sony PlayStation Portable SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 2 Nintendo GameBoy Advance Juka and the Monophonic Menace

 
Game Vortex :: PSIllustrated