![]() He's spent his whole adult life on the trail of a man named Frank. So when a plan heads south-as even the most meticulously observed ones are wont to do, usually when one of the gang gets spotted or occasionally a carelessly discarded body is found-it's very much a case of the quick-load and the dead.Ĭooper's out for revenge. You can customise this reminder-tweaking the delay or disabling it entirely-but the fact the default setting is to nudge you every 60 seconds ought to stress the importance of quick-saving.Īrchetypal gunslinger John Cooper and his friends are rather fragile, even on the normal difficulty setting, while the cadres of thugs, gunwomen and assorted rifle-toting outlaws they find themselves up against are very much of the "shoot first, ask questions later" mindset. It's hammered home by regular pop-up notifications informing you of the time since you last quick-saved. Desperados 3 is built around that loop, an aspect reinforced by a tutorial which instructs you on how to quick-save and quick-load before it tells you how to deal with an enemy. Stealth games can often degenerate into a loop of quick-saving and quick-loading. By encouraging experimentation at every turn, Desperados 3 proves a stealth tactics game where invention thrives. It's a rapidfire process of forming an hypothesis, testing it and tossing it aside. In Desperados 3, however, it unfolds in masterful fashion, providing ample scope for you to dream up a multitude of creative plans alongside the ability to reset the board in a flash should the plan fail. ![]() In less astute hands, it could feel like an exercise in trial and error. This enables you to take out two or more guards that are looking at each other, for example, or you can choose two different targets for each of John’s pistols so that he drops them both at the same time.Imagine being able to take back every mistake you make, instantly, reliving each moment over and over until it plays out as you hoped. Showdown mode is a standout feature, letting you pause time and plan out actions for each character, which can then be executed together, or saved until the time is right. Abilities can be chained together, for example, using one of John’s coins so that an enemy turns and sees McCoy’s doctor’s bag, which they then walk up to. Different levels will group different characters together, giving you the opportunity to experiment with each one’s powers. Our protagonists are John Cooper, a bounty hunter armed with a knife, two pistols, and an infinite supply of fake coins to throw Doc McCoy, a mercenary physician with an interesting interpretation of the Hippocratic oath and a long-range pistol Kate O’Hara, a rancher who can distract male guards and lure them away for a stealthy takedown Hector Mendoza, a massive trapper with an axe and a f**k-off big bear trap named “Bianca” and Isabelle Moreau, a voodoo practitioner with a wicked set of occult powers. Your gang includes five characters, some of whom return from the original series. Saving and reloading is encouraged in fact, you can set a reminder to appear if you haven’t saved recently. Desperados III is very good at walking the line between frustrating and rewarding, presenting you with many different paths and obstacles, and just as many ways to surmount them. You can go in stealthily or guns blazing, or look for opportunities to create “accidents”, such as pushing boulders onto people. Each level is made up of a series of interconnected puzzles, each of which has multiple solutions, depending on how you want to tackle them. The campaign takes you through mountains, frontier towns, swamps, the sumptuous city of New Orleans, and beyond. The first time I held down ALT and freely rotated the camera was kind of mind-blowing. Levels are intricately detailed, and animations are smooth and expressive. Desperados III looks and plays beautifully. Having grown up on a steady diet of Commandos, playing this felt like coming home, only better because home got upgraded with all the mod cons. ![]() Desperados III functions as a prequel to the original series so it’s perfect for those who missed out (or weren’t born yet) when the first game was released back in 2001. ![]() The one bright spot recently has been Mimimi Games’ previous entry into the genre - Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun - and having proven themselves worthy with that title, the studio was given the licence to the venerable Desperados series. Fans of real-time tactical strategy have been in a bit of a lurch for over a decade now. ![]()
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