Torrente

2001 was the year European game developers came back into the mainstream with a vengeance. Finland gave us Max Payne, Norway Anarchy Online, Germany Gothic, Croatia Serious Sam, to name just a few. And from sunny Spain, from where we hadn't heard all that much since the end of the 8-bit era a decade earlier, came Torrente.

Torrente

In 1998, there was a movie called Torrente, el brazo tonto de la ley (Torrente, the Stupid Arm of the Law, or Torrente, the Dumb Arm of the Law, as it was known on Australian cable TV). It was mainly the work of Santiago Segura, who directed it, wrote the script, and played the title character, José Luis Torrente, a cynical and very un-PC cop. Wikipedia describes the plot as follows:

Torrente is a lazy, rude, drunkard, sexist, racist, extreme-right-wing Madrid cop; a despicable character who only cares about himself. He lives in a decrepit slum with his wheelchair-bound father, whom he treats quite badly. One day, a new family of neighbours move in, and the sexy younger daughter, Amparito, catches his eye, so he becomes a friend of Rafi, her nerdy brother, to get closer to her. At the same time, he discovers that a band of drug traffickers are operating in a nearby chinese restaurant; he knows that if he cracks this case, it could make him regain the status he lost within the police department; but the only people he can count on to help him are Rafi and his equally nerdy friends.

Torrente was a huge success in Spain and made Segura a star, and of course there were some sequels. The second Torrente movie, Misión en Marbella, made more than 22 million Euros, thus becoming the highest grossing Spanish film of all times. The game was released to go along with the second movie.

The Game

Torrente was bashed a lot by English-speaking critics. This is in part due to its unlucky release history. On its initial release in 2001, it got little attention outside Spain. And on its mostly unchanged re-release in 2004 it was three years old, and a lot had changed in these three years. 2004 was the year of Doom 3, the year 3D games finally started looking real good. Compared to this, or to Half-Life 2, or to Unreal II, Torrente looked just bland.

Setting

What sets Torrente apart from other comparable games most is its setting. Gone are the dark colors and dark places that dominated the past years, instead you are taken to a sunny, colorful Madrid, and later Marbella, the settings of the first two Torrente movies. It is not an exact reproduction of Madrid (the sequel four years later did exactly that), but many actual landmarks are there, which, of course, makes it more fun to play for Madrillenos than for other people.

Don't pass this lightly. It is a big change. From the beginning, computer games had a penchant fo caves, dungeons, and other underground and restricted areas. This goes back at least to the Great Underground Empire of the Zork games, and it is probably influenced by Dungeons & Dragons too. Besides, games have usually preferred fantastic settings on some sort. To start a game and find yorself in a very real city full of pedestrians and honking cars is quite a new experience.

Gameplay

The pedestrians have their impact on gameplay too. From Blake Stone over Marathon to Postal, shooter games have occasionally featured non-combatants the player should avoid to kill, but there were usually few and repercussion, if any, negligible. In Torrente, if you kill a pedestrian, your character will lose 25% of his health.

While on the first view Torrente may seem just a variation of the old FPS theme, there are more differences than just the default view. Instead of just staying alive and reaching the next level, the game gives you clearly defined missions. The first one is to find and disarm a number of explosives. Finding them is not all that difficult (a little compass in the top left corner of the screen points the way), but of course they are well guarded. Once you have found them, you have to disarm them by madly clicking the right mouse button till a bar displayed for the purpose turns green.

Of course there is a time limit for this, so speed is more an issue than in the average shooter. And due to the open maps, it is nearly impossible to keep your back free. At times you will be shot at from all sides.

Conclusion

I agree that Torrente is probably not by any standard really a good game. But it is different in enough aspects to be definitely worth a try.

Torrente Quotes

• You guys haven't heard of Torrente, you scum!
• Here comes Torrente, life and soul of the party!
• Good thing Torrente's here.
• Gooooo Atlético Madrid!
• This is like Night of the Living Dead, geez!
• Yeah, you're da man!

Reviews

In general, reviewers rated this game somewhere between bad and awful. I did not find a single one who recommended it. When reading these reviews, you have to keep in mind that they were written in 2004, when the game was released in the Americas, without any changes, not even an engine update that would have allowed higher resolutions.

• I could spend the entire review lambasting it, the reviewer on Gamezone admits, but there are some interesting ideas that this game has:

  For one, I really liked Torrente, we are all used to playing that elite character, the Master Chief, Sam Fisher and others who are described as being the best of the best. Well with Torrente, you certainly don't get that. If anything, he is more lucky then anything. Stumbling and shooting his way through one mess after another, only by sheer luck being the one who isn't lying dead after all the chaos ends. It's actually a novel idea for a hero, add in that he is certainly a flawed character who looks out for himself as much as your average scumbag. I liked him, he was fun.

• Don’t bother. It really is a bad game, Kurt Knudsen suggests:

  Torrente is truly a poorly developed game in all honesty. It isn’t THAT horrible but it is a really bad game. Graphically it is on par with Redneck Rampage. The music is decent and the voice acting is so-so. Gameplay wise it just doesn’t cut it at all.

• Not 20 dollars' worth of catchy, Erik Wolpaw thinks:

  Whatever charm the movie had didn't survive the translation from screen to game. Other than some brief narration before each mission and a handful of repeated catchphrases (all voiced by the film's director and star, Santiago Segura), there isn't any story here, or any humor beyond the level of a bad Duke Nukem clone. Apart from the fact that he's a fat guy with a comb-over, Torrente may as well be any generic action hero.