DESPERADOS III Hitman in a poncho?
Mimimi’s real-time strategy six-shooter is the best prequel to an original you may never have played. It’s a little nonsensical: this yee-haw-’em-up is set before Desperados: Wanted Dead Or Alive, which never made it to PlayStation, and has nothing to do with the second Desperados. Luckily, despite being as complex as this premise, in-game everything gels.
There’s a lot to grasp but Desperados III eases you into its systems like a plains-weary ranch hand cautiously lowering into a hot tub. Each of the five heroes, who come armed with particular skills from sniping to a knack for disguises and a dirty great bear trap, are gradually introduced over the course of the first two chapters (nine missions), enabling you to grasp their unique characteristics and how to team them up.
Channeling Hitman, the aim of each mission is to stealth through a stage’s maze-like map, topping off enemies in creatively silent ways. Other goals, such as eavesdropping on enemies’ conversations in the New Orleans’ map to discover the identity of a shady codenamed target, add atmosphere to the events.
The joy and brain-taxing frustration of Desperados
III comes from how you combine all five characters to take out targets. Each can be controlled separately for oneon-one hits, but the sense of accomplishment that comes from building pre-set attacks using every hero is the real goal here. Skills stack wonderfully to create inventive flurries of takedowns; enemies are sniped, stabbed, coerced, and crushed like tumbling dominoes.
THE UNFORGIVING
The fun comes with one caveat: Desperados III is incredibly hard. Observed from afar each map is a complex puzzle of enemy patrol patterns, and somewhere within is a hidden weakness to be exploited, a bloody solution to success. Once you begin chipping into this matrix of movements all hell breaks loose. The AI will spot everything from footprints in mud to missing co-goons. Get the timing or tactic wrong and you’ll poke the ant’s nest and need to reset.
Handily the game has been designed this way, and features one of the best quick save/ load systems we’ve experienced. Tapping the touchpad saves; holding Options loads one of three banked ‘moments’. Within seconds you’re back in the game.
It’s needed, too. This is a complex game. The controls and isometric model-miniatures styling can combine to befuddle. With so much happening in such detail sometimes it’s too easy to miss an enemy or select the wrong skill in the heat of combat. It means trial-and-error seeps in and can slow a stage to a crawl as you gradually pick your way through the puzzlehits to reach the map’s end.
Yet this is also to the game’s credit. Each mission is an itch that needs scratching, and forces you back in the saddle.
VERDICT
“ENEMIES ARE SNIPED, STABBED, AND CRUSHED LIKE TUMBLING DOMINOES.”
A complicated rootin’ shootin’ tactics puzzler that plays like a miniaturised Hitman-headswest. It can get muddled when all the parts are moving, but this is a must-play. Ian Dean