Bullfighting

Toro was developed and published by Recotechnology on Xbox One. It was released on May 15, 2015 for $19.99. A copy was provided by Recotechnology for review purposes.

Being a video games reviewer has never been more challenging: a single wrong word written in haste may be instantly shared thousands of time across the vast and uncontrolled expanse of the world wide web, often leaving reputations and lives shattered once the dust settles. I might be dramatizing things a little here, but with reviewers being lambasted left, right and centre for their opinions on games like GTA V, The Witcher 3 and so on, I wanted to approach Toro‘s rather sensitive subject matter (bullfighting for those not in the know) with a suitable amount of caution. I needn’t have bothered; Toro is so relentlessly bad that it would be impossible to review it in a positive light even if I was a huge bullfighting fan (which I am most certainly not.)

Although Toro is undoubtedly a game about taunting, jabbing and ultimately killing identical bulls in a multitude of nearly identical locations, I would be overselling it quite considerably if I were to state that Toro simulates or even vaguely represents what happens in an actual bullfight with any level of panache. Each “fight” is split into three timed sections in which the player is expected to hold down the left trigger and press the right bumper (to call the bull) repeatedly, then time one of up to four moves — without being dashed to the floor like some sort of bloodless human-shaped lump who seems to have long since experienced rigor mortis — until the timer runs out. At the end of the first stage, players are expected to press a few buttons in sequence in order to stick flags in the bull, and at the end of the third stage, do the same thing, followed by stabbing the bull just behind its head using a crosshair that the game seems to auto aim at exactly the right spot every time.

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