Some of the reviews mention the B-movie-ness of El Matador; but let's not forget that MP was gloriously at ease with being the B-est of the B-Movies - if there was a movie theater in MP featuring B-Movies, it would have El Matador in 12 feet high letters on its marquee. Basically, it's a D- or E-movie that takes itself way too seriously. What made MP special to me was the secrets, and the set pieces - Mona sniping the baddies while Max was caught under a metal beam, the stadium at the beginning of MP3 - the way they pulled off pure camp in the first two parts, the live action shots turned into even more camp comic book panels, the perpetually constipated look on Max's face in part 1. All of that is missing in El Matador. If I'm happy to re-play a segment that I just finished just because I thought I could up the cinematics, like I would in MP, that's high praise, to me. This, also, is missing in El Matador. It implements the MP2 bullet time, but while I could score a handful of headshots in a single dodge using the Desert Eagle(s) in MP, aiming and hitting is notoriously less accurate in EM. The difficulty ramps up mostly through mass spawns (MP2 had a bit of unfair spawning as well, granted) and the lack of our own accuracy when contrasted with the opponents'. Every now and then there's a miniboss identified by a mugshot and a health bar appearing, and a real boss that's essentially a bullet sponge with a name badge; once despatched, the next scenario loads. I expect most potential Matadors to come here in search for "more Max". If you can boil that experience down to 1:1 MP2 bullet time implementation (and engine), then you will find a solid 4h here to keep you entertained - and let's be honest, it is priced to sell, and the developers did take a lot of time to craft some beautiful environments, in addition to a few throwaway ones. Keeping all of the above in mind, I did have an experience that - for the right kind of audience expectations - I will recommend.
I'm a big fan of GoG and CDPR; been a fan since the Witcher Enhanced Edition, mostly because CDPR went back and fixed what was broken in the initial release. The EE is a completely different beast from the original gold release, and I consider it a labour of love (just as I do Assassins of Kings EE - I preordered Wild Hunt but haven't played it yet). I'm a big fan of the Hitman games. Codename 47 was a bit of a mess originally, and I had to go and buy a very specific PS/2 mouse to enable weapon switching via scroll wheel. I have every single physical version of the PC games up to Absolution, even the double and triple packs and anthologies. I have all available parts on GoG as well. I have most of the IOI catalogue, and I did feel that the original Codename 47 got a bad rap upon release and review; remember that it's less than 300MB and gigabyte patches weren't distributed effortlessly back then. I own the World of Assassination trilogy over on Steam. My first purchase on GoG was made on May 15, 2010. I have never, in the last eleven years, refunded a single purchase. Until ow. I have often over the past eleven years purchased something on GoG that I already owned on Steam. When Hitman2o16 showed up on GoG, my first impulse was to punch the air YES!, they pulled it off! Nobody but GoG currently has the clout to make developers go back and _fix_their_mistakes_, especially in a five year old game. Technical issues are not valid, sorry; my 50GB of HDD space accommodate all the Hitman goodness that I can ever be expected to need. Keeping score of my progress is _not_ something that must mandatorily be tied to an online connection; it's the easiest thing in the world to write my progress to a local file, and restore it from there. Oh, but the leaderboards! - Really? No. Oh, maybe item unlocks? - No. Nobody cares if I cheat myself out of the experience by hex editing. GoG, _please_ do exert your influence; get IOI to patch their mistakes. Let them know.
