DESPERADOS
WILD, WILD WEST!!!!!
Let’s see the number of hands that say that they have played Commandos
and it’s expansion pack from Pyro studios. Now let me see the number of
hands that say that would like the same game set in the Wild Wild West. Instead
of being set in World War II, this character-based real-time strategy game
puts you on the old American frontier. Sounds enticing, well
don’t always believe the hype. Let’s begin with the story. You’ll
bring together a band of rag tag heroes to recover money stolen from a
railroad, and then the stories advances through plot twists based on the
John Wayne movies. The turns and twists are clichéd and done before, with
double-dealing and lots of bad Mexican voiceovers, Guess what the villain
is called - El Diablo. No prizes. But you see if a game’s atmosphere is
charming and engaging reminding you of those old westerns’, the next
question that follows is how is the gameplay. Well, let’s just say it
could have used some work.
In your adventures, you'll control the main hero, John Cooper, plus his gang of five desperados, each with around six unique abilities. For instance, Cooper can climb sheer rock faces or perform a quick triple shot with his Colt revolver to take down three opponents at once. Explosives expert Sam Williams tosses dynamite at enemies or startles them with a snake he keeps in a sack. One-eyed Civil War veteran Doc McCoy heals other characters and knocks enemies out with sleeping gas. Kate O'Hara, an expert poker player, seduces villains by sliding her skirt up to reveal her garter, and she can temporarily blind opponents by reflecting the sun in her mirror. A nimble Chinese girl, Mia Yung, fires a blowpipe dart at enemies to make them hallucinate or can distract them with her pet monkey, Mr. Leone. The hulking, clumsy Sanchez entices villains into a drunken daze with his tequila bottle and clears buildings by throwing people out the windows.
The
game has 25 levels; you’ll be controlling Coop and his braidy bunch
through a variety of story-driven adventures. In typical missions, you'll
rescue a fellow desperado from a heavily guarded paddle steamer, break
into a heavily guarded hacienda, or sneak across a heavily guarded town.
Notice the keyword Guarded, heavily guarded. Not much variety. The
gameplay follows suit.
This is one tough game.
The game frequently crosses the fine line between enjoyably challenging
and frustrating, and there's no difficulty selection to rectify that.
Ideally, if you make a poor choice, it should result in a temporary and
challenging setback, not instant death and a restart. Get ready for
countless saves and restores To beat the missions, you'll need to
take advantage of terrain by ambushing the bad guys from rooftops, hiding
in tall grass, or crawling below ridges. You can scan the whole map at any
time and can check each enemy's field of view independently, even if you
can't see him directly. His line of sight shows up as a sweeping green
cone, akin to Commandos or Metal Gear Solid. Guards usually act
intelligently and will go on a heightened state of alert if you make too
much noise or leave dead bodies lying in your wake, so you'll need to
consider every action carefully. In a pleasantly realistic touch, even
innocent bystanders will get in on the act and shout for help if they spot
something fishy.
To best your ornery,
trigger-happy foes, you'll need to use a blend of stealth and cunning,
plus a little good old-fashioned head busting and gun slinging. You'll
often use your characters' special abilities in concert to solve dilemmas.
For instance, you can have Kate employ her seductive charms to lure an
amorous henchman around the corner, only to get punched in the face by
Cooper. Coordinating all your characters can be a real chore, though,
since they do nothing on their own. The characters should have at least
been given some autonomous actions, like ducking for cover or returning
fire when rushed by villains. Haven’t these guys played The Sims?
A
context-sensitive cursor at least helps you interact with and navigate the
environments fairly easily. The interface is attractive and generally
functions well, letting you either click onscreen icons or use hotkeys to
initiate particular actions, the latter being far more practical when the
map is swarming with enemies. Some functions, like the telescope icon that
displays enemies' view cones, require either too many or counter-intuitive
mouse clicks. It's also unnecessarily hard to click on a moving character,
which can be a huge problem when you need to kick someone in a hurry as he
charges around the corner. Fortunately, the interface features a quick
action function that lets you store pre-selected actions as macros. So, to
make things easier, you can set Kate to kick a particular opponent once in
range with the click of a button. But ideally, you shouldn't need to go
through these extra steps in the first place.
If nothing else,
Desperados features a gorgeous visual style. Akin to the Commandos or the
Baldur's Gate series, the action takes place in 2D against beautifully
painted semi-interactive backgrounds. Countless little details will catch
your eye, like the sagging roof on an old shanty, the flower-covered
trellis against the wall of a stately plantation house, or stucco peeling
off an old Spanish-style mission church. The scenes are alive with passing
townsfolk, and horses and livestock remind you that you're on the
frontier. Smooth character animations provide added entertainment, thanks
to clever touches like, Cooper tipping his hat when he meets a stranger.
The full-motion video cutscenes feature the same attention to detail and
some stylish direction. Just the opening scene of horse-mounted bandits
robbing a moving train does a wonderful job of drawing you into the
gameworld. If the graphics have a flaw, it's that zooming in on a scene
produces ugly pixelation; it looks like you're viewing the image with a
paint program's magnifying glass tool.
It's a shame that the enjoyable setting of Desperados isn't used to its full potential. It just can't make up for the difficulties in coordinating your characters or struggling with excessively hard missions. As an action-oriented puzzle game, Desperados has a fair amount to offer, but as a true strategy game where you really feel in command of events, it usually misses the target.
