izigame.me

This Game Sucks Ass
El Matador was a traumatic experience. Alike that one time I put my testicles in a vice, it was both a painful and pleasurable experience, though it definitely leaned more towards the former. Indeed, if one tries hard enough they can enjoy El Matador but nevertheless it is such a flawed game that even the thought of it makes my blood boil and my nuts quake.
The story is non existent, the main character is the only one with a decent voice actor who sounds strangely close to “not important” from the game hatred. The story basically consists of “hey el matador go and slaughter some drug dealers in X location” seven times over. You don’t pay attention to the story, it is just a series of tropes that exist only to string you from sequence to sequence of janky gameplay.
The gameplay, unlike the story, does exist but is not good. It’s like Max Payne if it was made by Russians high off their tits on fentanyl and pissed off their tits on vodka. Indeed, el matador shoots so badly I don’t think he’d pass a breathalyser test. The guns are all inaccurate, their recoil is ridiculous and their range is pretty awful too. There is also too many of them, and annoyingly they share ammo, so usually you have to choose one of each weapon type. Similar to my experience clamping my testicles, the pleasure only comes once you’ve spent hours of squeezing and tugging onto your gun and getting the kill. Indeed, the janky physics and insane blood splatters do make killing enemies fun, it’s just all of the inaccurate shooting beforehand that ruins it.
The slow motion, perhaps the most important mechanic in a paynelike game, is very bad. It actually makes you more vulnerable than not using it at all. The bullet dive usually results in you being shot out of the air, especially since once you have landed there is a long animation during which you can be shot. The bullet dive is only really useful for diving around corners and surprising enemies. The actual slow motion is okay, if you use it when you peak people to get faster reflexes, then it works. This should have been designed better, like in Max Payne, or Hong Kong Massacre, or Stranglehold where for the most part enemies fire like stormtroopers and not like spec ops soldiers. You are not likely to be hit when in a bullet dive in other games. Indeed that was the one question pulsing through my head throughout the entire play through, apart from “why am I doing this?”. If the devs had the template of max Payne 1 and 2, how did they fuck up the mechanics so badly? All they had to do was copy those two games.
what makes it even more enjoyable to watch the enemies die is their AI. These guys are seal team six level operatives, they could have assassinated Bin Laden. They have the aim and reflexes of a basement dwelling nolife siege or minecraft dweller, but also insane acrobatics. These enemies will dodge your shots, they will pixel peak you through walls and plant pots, they will even shoot you with a two handed weapon and simultaneously throw grenades at you. (Which do not work for the player, grenades seem to do nothing when YOU throw them) They are insane, which is why it is so fun to kill them
The bosses are even worse, every single boss or mini boss enemy plays identically. They have a massive health pool and insane accuracy. They are a nightmare to fight and most boss battles are a competition of durability. If you can’t find health kits, especially on the final boss, you’re screwed. If there is any way your body can be seen by theirs, they will shoot it. It’s the worst
One thing perhaps even more irritating than the bots is the half life 2 style robot turrets that do insane damage and kill you very quickly - these do not belong in a gritty payne like game.

Your teammates, unlike your adversaries, are a good advert for birth control. They take barely any damage before death and are as dumb as rocks. At least if the enemies are going to be laser beams, do the same for your teammates, but no. To be quite frank they’re more of a hindrance, pushing you out of cover because of their strict AI routines and moving you into the enemy line of fire. They are a hindrance.
The level design is a mixed bag, at times it’s quite fun - the third or fourth level, the one in the favela, is by far the most fun level in the game. It gives you plenty of health and weapons, including a mini gun which is perhaps the only genuinely fun weapon in the whole game, I mean FUCK they can’t even get the double barrel right - unless you’re on the receiving end of it since enemies apparently one shot with it. Some of the levels are not so well designed, apart from the last chapter which sucks ass, the prologue is the worst level in the game and displays the enemy AI for how truly overpowered it is. One level, in a jungle, Is cryptic and confusing and just awfully designed. But, at least the levels are different and unique in their own ways. There isn’t really enough of them, one could easily beat this game in maybe two or three hours, which I guess isn’t bad for the low asking price, if the game was actually fun to play…
I’ll make a final note on the performance. This game doesn’t work without a patch from the PCGamingWiki, which provides a basic fix to the game only running on one core, pretty simple to fix. There is even a fix that adjusts the difficulty to make the game actually balanced, but fuck that - I played vanilla. If you want to play el matador, you play el matador.
So to conclude, El Matador on paper is a pretty fun Colombian max payne ripoff. Seven shortish levels, a lot of guns to play with, dumb voice acting - but it plays like a nightmare. The difficulty is totally unbalanced, the gunplay sucks ass, the slow motion is useless, the level design mostly sucks, etc etc. unless, like me, you enjoy testicular torture, I cannot recommend this game.
PS - THE BARRELS SUCK AND SET FIRE BEFORE THEY EXPLODE - FUCK THE BARRELS