This review contains spoilers
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2023/03/12/spoilers_el-matador-2006-review/
It’s not very often that a game comes out that is basically the equivalent of a Direct-To-DVD movie. A lot of games try to be the big blockbuster but rarely do you get something that feels like a movie that was always destined to be on the budget shelf of a big chain of stores. And El Matador is one of those Direct-To-DVD feeling games.
But as it turns out this game has some turns and twists to it. But more about that later.
El Matador follows Victor Corbet, a DEA special agent tasked with taking down drug barons. After a successful raid in the first mission, Victor is soon sent to Colombia to assist the local police in taking down La Valedora Cartel, who were involved in the massacre that killed Victor’s brother. Not long after arriving he is soon given the nickname of Matador for his determination at the way he takes down his enemies.
I would mention the other characters but nobody has a personality beyond the one line used to describe them in the design document and all of them only get a couple minutes each of screen time.
At least the acting is amusingly cheesy, even if it’s pretty obvious that English is not the first language of a lot of the cast, or I hope it isn’t because what dialogue that isn’t campy is stilted and obviously comes across as someone just reading it off a page. The main character even has the line “I need to shoot some scum” to give you an idea of the level of dialogue that we’re dealing with here. The game ends with a “And knowing is half the battle!” message about drugs.
The most noteworthy thing about the game is that it runs on the Max Payne 2 engine. I’m guessing this was done by Rockstar to make up for the low sales of Max Payne 2. And as a result the game comes with the bullet time mechanic from Max Payne 2 but nowhere near as polished. I’m pretty sure it was included in the game just because it was part of the engine. It’s not awful but it does feel rough around the edges, the fact that it’s using the engine of a much more polished game to help make up for it’s low budget and short development time.
The lack of budget really shines through with every boss just being the same as a goon but with more health.
Also I guess the developers were doing Max Payne set in a South American country long before Rockstar dragged Max Payne into a South American country.
Graphically the game looks alright for what it is. There are definitely parts of the game that try to take advantage of the physics engine that Max Payne 2 had by having explosions that through a bunch of crap around or having to shoot out boards nailed to a doorway to move into the next location. You can even jump through partially shot out windows and have glass flying everywhere.
It does have a few graphical glitches, mostly with the Steam version, where shadows don’t work properly, so if you feel the need to check this game out you should buy the GOG version.
It’s also pretty short so it’s more of an easy afternoon game. But it’s an incredibly cheap game even when it’s not on sale so I didn’t feel ripped off when seeing the credits 2 and a half hours and booting up the game.
But there’s more this game than it seems. It turns out that the actual bad guy is a Nazi named Helmet Koch. I don’t know how this game about taking down a drug cartel suddenly had Nazis in it, but there you go.
Surprisingly there is a completely different version of El Matador out there somewhere. When getting released in Germany it obviously got censored like a lot of games do when getting released in that county. Not only were some guns changed, like the MP5 being changed into a tranquilizer gun and the ragdoll physics being removed along with the ability to shoot at corpses along with the removal of blood. The most obvious change were the removal of a bunch of Nazi references
But I wouldn’t be talking about the German version if it was just a censorship change. In the German version the story was rewritten so that the main character was not an official agent of the DEA but a gangster and a double agent. There were numerous new cutscenes made to work around these changes too. So in Germany there exists this bizarro world version of this game.
It’s not very often that a game comes out that is basically the equivalent of a Direct-To-DVD movie. A lot of games try to be the big blockbuster but rarely do you get something that feels like a movie that was always destined to be on the budget shelf of a big chain of stores. And El Matador is one of those Direct-To-DVD feeling games.
But as it turns out this game has some turns and twists to it. But more about that later.
El Matador follows Victor Corbet, a DEA special agent tasked with taking down drug barons. After a successful raid in the first mission, Victor is soon sent to Colombia to assist the local police in taking down La Valedora Cartel, who were involved in the massacre that killed Victor’s brother. Not long after arriving he is soon given the nickname of Matador for his determination at the way he takes down his enemies.
I would mention the other characters but nobody has a personality beyond the one line used to describe them in the design document and all of them only get a couple minutes each of screen time.
At least the acting is amusingly cheesy, even if it’s pretty obvious that English is not the first language of a lot of the cast, or I hope it isn’t because what dialogue that isn’t campy is stilted and obviously comes across as someone just reading it off a page. The main character even has the line “I need to shoot some scum” to give you an idea of the level of dialogue that we’re dealing with here. The game ends with a “And knowing is half the battle!” message about drugs.
The most noteworthy thing about the game is that it runs on the Max Payne 2 engine. I’m guessing this was done by Rockstar to make up for the low sales of Max Payne 2. And as a result the game comes with the bullet time mechanic from Max Payne 2 but nowhere near as polished. I’m pretty sure it was included in the game just because it was part of the engine. It’s not awful but it does feel rough around the edges, the fact that it’s using the engine of a much more polished game to help make up for it’s low budget and short development time.
The lack of budget really shines through with every boss just being the same as a goon but with more health.
Also I guess the developers were doing Max Payne set in a South American country long before Rockstar dragged Max Payne into a South American country.
Graphically the game looks alright for what it is. There are definitely parts of the game that try to take advantage of the physics engine that Max Payne 2 had by having explosions that through a bunch of crap around or having to shoot out boards nailed to a doorway to move into the next location. You can even jump through partially shot out windows and have glass flying everywhere.
It does have a few graphical glitches, mostly with the Steam version, where shadows don’t work properly, so if you feel the need to check this game out you should buy the GOG version.
It’s also pretty short so it’s more of an easy afternoon game. But it’s an incredibly cheap game even when it’s not on sale so I didn’t feel ripped off when seeing the credits 2 and a half hours and booting up the game.
But there’s more this game than it seems. It turns out that the actual bad guy is a Nazi named Helmet Koch. I don’t know how this game about taking down a drug cartel suddenly had Nazis in it, but there you go.
Surprisingly there is a completely different version of El Matador out there somewhere. When getting released in Germany it obviously got censored like a lot of games do when getting released in that county. Not only were some guns changed, like the MP5 being changed into a tranquilizer gun and the ragdoll physics being removed along with the ability to shoot at corpses along with the removal of blood. The most obvious change were the removal of a bunch of Nazi references
But I wouldn’t be talking about the German version if it was just a censorship change. In the German version the story was rewritten so that the main character was not an official agent of the DEA but a gangster and a double agent. There were numerous new cutscenes made to work around these changes too. So in Germany there exists this bizarro world version of this game.
Reviewed on Mar 12, 2023