14 DAY TRIAL // 
The third person shooter sector of the game industry has been rather poorly attended throughout its history. Notable titles, but not necessarily of noticeable quality were The Punisher, The Suffering, or Manhunt. The only game that really stood up and gunned its place into the legend was Remedy's Max Payne.
Plastic Reality are the brave developers who thought to try their wits and contest its undeniable position. While a bull would have done a short work of an entire game studio, in this line of work only ideas and their game implementation matter. So we ended up waiting for a game featuring something more than a bull, a bull fighter. Well, not in the sense we will get our hands on the latest bull-fighting simulator and such (although it would be nice). But rather something to revive the spirit of the toreador in a promising Latin drama with serious gunplay cream on top.
Concept
In short, El Matador (lit. the killer) is Max Payne revisited. From the way the GUI is configured, the spawning opponents, the arsenal, setting, level bosses, "bullet-time" and ending with the classic themes: drug lord butt spanking, moral drama, betrayal and lust for revenge, everything's in there. Even the graphics engine, although in-house made, resembles in many aspects that of Max Payne's (The Fall of Max Payne).
This is not a problem however. I consider - and I believe this is a fair view - that Max Payne has founded the genre, thus being the first does not make its followers unoriginal. Accusing El Matador of cloning, it would be like calling every shooter a plain copy of Id Software's Wolfenstein 3D.
Max Payne was focused on its noir comic book style storyline with some action between the narrative scenes. Moreover, there is nothing here to point out any of the strong occult & psychedelic spice we've encountered in Max Payne. But this doesn't mean the story of El Matador will disappoint just because it is going to take a different path, on the contrary.
Story
Little is known about El Matador's storyline. By and large, it is about an elite agent, Victor Corbet, sent against a ruthless Columbian drug gang by the DEA as a reaction to the slaughter of its Bogota headquartered agents. Dealing with notions like corruption, revenge, moral ambiguity and ultimate justice, it has 50-50 chance to be either an intriguing experience or a close relative to your average bull manure.
Although the way it looks right now the story isn't going to surprise anyone by profound themes and virtuous narrative techniques, the developers believe that it will be one of the strong points of the game. And indeed, it would be a sad thing to have yet another sterile arcade third person shooter.
(It would be a subtle move from the developers to divide the story in three sections imagining a corrida: tercio de varas, tercio de banderillas, tercio de muerte).
Gameplay
True to its title (el matador/bullfighter), the game features a sheer load of "bad dude" obliteration. To go well with the CGI drug lords and their respective acolytes, a sizeable weapon selection will help you cut through their ranks. As usual, your weapons of choice are promptly delivered by your victims. Besides the already classic light fire arms like six shooters, pistols and SMG-s, assault rifles (both standard and scoped), shotguns and several types of hand grenades, Plastic Reality made room for a pinch of exotic weaponry like Gatling guns, grenade and rocket launchers - for Havok's sake.
Although there isn't much pointing in this direction, the presence of silenced weapons, smoke and flash bang grenades may indicate that El Matador will future some stealth elements. However, considering that the AI opponents are spawned by map triggers, it is a little hard for me to imagine how this will fit in.
The level design covers a reasonable range of map types and settings, both open and close quarters, thus providing the player with varied instances of gun fights and serious tactical value for each weapon. However, at this point the gunplay from El Matador is rather arcade centered, as your character and those that will be purged by him need a hefty amount of slugs in their chest in order to show some Havok falling techniques. Moreover, the number of weapons you are allowed to bring along is unlimited and it is little hilarious to see how Victor reaches for his pocket to take out his minigun.
The weapons' behavior is characterized by high rate of fire and high recoil. Combined with an extremely defensive AI - that makes very good use of any form of cover - they prove to be especially difficult to master. Because of this, the bullet time and the shoulder view will play an essential role in helping you get a good grip over your arsenal. Not the sniper view, though.
So there I was on a ridge, gazing at the small village underneath. I equipped my sniper rifle and begun searching for enemy presence. Getting nowhere, I change my position and surprise! Out of nowhere, at a range where my sniper rifle was no more needed, two or three baddies showed up, as if Mother Gaya itself spawned them. Same thing later on, when standing in front of a hacienda, I decided to fire thirty 40mm grenade rounds through every whole it had. By now - I was speaking to myself - everyone should have been well cocked. Wrong! Everyone was to be well spawned as soon I activated some sort of map trigger. Three digital spawns then came out through the door in to be gunned down in an orderly fashion. There is a chance they fancied bullets better.
Besides a good world awareness that allows it to find good defensive positions from where to throw everything at you, there isn't much to be said here. Closing down, all it could come with was an attempt to hold that position and find another spot behind the object he used it for cover - usually, the opposite side. Otherwise, he defended well from grenades and also managed to make very good use of them, subsequently flushing me out several times from my own coward's corner.
The AI failed to show any team coordination or tactics. Moreover, he alternated rather mechanically from shooting to ducking behind a crate or wall, allowing me to synchronize with his moves. Moreover, although my M60 was spitting slugs all over the place, he didn't wait for me to reload. To my dismay he showed a great head-shot spectacle. What were the chances he could manage something/anything under that rain of bullets?
Although the AI has a ways to go, I do not believe this is what we will have to go against in the final version. Supposedly, the player will be able to recruit teammates who will follow his orders, so something rather gritty is to be expected.
Video
The graphic engine is made in house by Plastic Reality. It is an improved version of what they used for their Korea: Forgotten Conflict (a Commandos-style game) and it is called Typhoon 2.
The game looks fairly well overall. The action takes place in South America and the engine does a great job rendering urban, harbor or jungle environments. The characters are also fairly detailed with smooth faces and natural movement.
I was personally impressed by the fact that large objects (columns, crates, carriages) are made up of several parts that may be severed by bullets or explosions. Bullets' bouncing off from metal surfaces was another detail I found delightful. Even though the graphic engine is still in a development phase, I will allow myself to believe that the battles will closely match those of F.E.A.R. in terms of intensity and visual effects. Or so they should?
Unfortunately, the rag-doll physics are meant to honor the dead. If still alive, a thousand bullets, and your target won't budge an inch. There is, of course, some flimsy airborne blood splatter that shows the particle effects at work. But that is that. Having characters that would react to every bullet or object that hit them would have added not just some sick entertaining value to the game, but more importantly would have allowed the player to think about the body parts he was going to aim at without taking into consideration killing his targets anymore.
Conclusion
My hopes are that El Matador will pass the arcade line and grow up to something of a more mature, closer to our times shooter. In other news, El Matador looks promising at this point, probably because it has a long way to go, leaving enough space for major improvements. But even at this stage, the game will probably appeal to many of those action shooter addicts. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
