El Matador

Graphical Options

Sometimes it's nice to have a look at the graphical capabilities of games at the lower end of the scale. Below, we've got screenshots of how the game looks when you turn the visuals up and down, as well as our view on how the game performs when running at the recommended system requirements.

As for those requirements, here they are (direct from the El Matador website):

Minimum requirements (minimum graphical detail)

• 1.5GHz Pentium 3 / AMD Athlon class processor;
  
• 128MB DirectX 9 compatible AGP graphics card with HW pixel & vertex shaders support (NVIDIA GeForce 4, ATI Radeon 8500,...);
  
• 512MB RAM;
  
• 2.5GB hard drive space;
  
• Sound Blaster compatible sound card;
  
• Windows XP;
  
• DirectX 9.

Recommended requirements (medium graphical detail)

• 3.0GHz Pentium 4 / AMD Athlon class processor;
  
• 256MB DirectX 9 class AGP graphics card with pixel and vertex shaders v2.0 support (GeForce 6,Radeon 9800 Pro,...);
  
• 1024MB RAM;
  
• 2.5 GB hard drive space;
  
• EAX enabled sound card;
  
• Windows XP;
  
• DirectX 9.

Before the game begins, a graphical tinkering pop up opens, allowing you to change resolution and turn AA off. We did so and it looks like 4xAA is being applied, since there wasn't an option to scale anti-aliasing quality (it is literally on or off). Another thing worth mentioning is that there appears to be no support for widescreen resolutions.

The system we ran the game on played the game at maxed out settings, which at times can look really stunning. Check out the picture above to see what the game looks like in the best possible scenario (with HDR bloom and anti-aliasing turned on). Below is a screenshot showing how the game looks without anti-aliasing enabled, but with everything else enabled.

The biggest impact of all the graphical tweaks you can make was HDR bloom, turning it off had a massive effect on the outside areas and had a drastic impact on the way that the game looked. The game was even duller with HDR bloom turned off.

I'll quickly run through the other options you can tinker with: specular, soft shadows, indoor shadows, post-processing FX, decals, texture filtering and anisotropic. These options are all very generic in PC games and I won't go into detail on how each one affects the gaming experience. Needless to say the game looks rougher than a Dutch hooker when you turn everything off and drop the resolution down to 640x480 - see below.

Conclusion

This game is unsuitable for everyone except those who love the Max Payne genre. Even for the most ardent fans, this will only serve as a couple of hour's idle entertainment. As you can see, the graphics are at times pretty lush and the game certainly doesn't fall down in that department. Instead, it's poor level design, lack of unique ideas and just general boringness that make this game truly undesirable.

In terms of price, I would certainly hold off buying this game, as it will almost certainly be in the bargain bin before long. Right now you can pick it up for £24.99 from Play. If only William Shatner was in this game, I could at least get away with a hilarious gag and call this game 'El Shatador'. Unfortunately, he isn't, so I can't. Steer clear of El Matador.