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Commandos-Like Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive

Erebus

Arcane
Joined
Jul 12, 2008
Messages
4,763
I've just finished Desperados and I feel like posting a bit about it. It's a pretty entertaining game, rather difficult at times, but seldom repetitive. The AI is pretty good for a 2001 game. While it is set in the Western genre, being very quick with a gun isn't enough to win even easy missions ! It's definitely a strategy game, where you'll have to plan the way you take care of every enemy. That being said, being quick and precise with your mouse helps a lot ! It's a pity the game didn't think of using a BG-like pause, during which it would be possible to give orders to your whole team. As it is, you can't control several characters at the same time very efficiently.

The story's pretty simple : there's a bunch of bandits robbing trains in New Mexico (or maybe Louisiana, I'm not too clear on the subject) and you need to put an end to it. Your hero and first character is John Cooper, a Captain Ersatz of the Man with no Name. His first three missions will be to get three of his pals to give him a hand (but first, you'll have to save them from the shitty situations they all managed to get themselves into). They're Samuel, a black dude with a fetish for explosives ; Doc, a grumpy, one-eyed older guy ; and Kate, whose greatest pleasures in life are playing cards and kicking men in the balls.

Much later in the game, you'll recruit Sanchez, a fat and extremely strong mexican bandit, and Mia, a chinese jailb... young woman who's totally 18. Obviously, Desperados is trying hard to be diverse (if I remember correctly, the sequel replaces Mia with an Indian).

Each of the characters has specific skills that can be used to kill, neutralize or confuse the enemies. Quite a few rely on items that are available only in (very) limited supplies : Sam's dynamite, Doc's sleeping gas and sniper bullets, Mia's firecrackers and even Sanchez' stupid (but very useful) rocks. On the other hand, while you definitely need to reload your guns, your characters carry an apparently unlimited quantity of ammo on them (except, amusingly, in the very last mission).
Some of the skills are extremely useful and some not so much (I don't think I found Sam's snake really useful more than twice in the entire game). The skills meant to confuse tend to get less useful with time, as the enemies you meet become smarter. All skills, however, are very much circumstancial.

Being seen and being heard are the two biggest issues in the game. In fact, you'll often feel like you're playing one of the Thief games. In most missions, you'll use silent weapons such as Cooper's knife and Kate's kick much more often than their guns. (Sam's can be especially useless in some missions since his best skills are pretty loud.)

There are 25 missions, six of which are simple tutorials meant to illustrate the characters' skills (embarrassingly enough, it's quite possible to die in some of them). The goals are pretty diverse, although in most cases you'll have to kill at least 3/4 of all the enemies present to succeed. The maps offer a lot of possibilities, but they nevertheless tend to be a bit linear when you need to get from A to B.

The scenario is nothing very impressive (not that it really matters, of course). Cooper's gift for hatching uselessly complicated and dangerous plans is the only reason for several of the missions. The team commits so many crimes (killing federal soldiers, breaking into a prison and killing most of the guards, robbing a bank...) that the best reward they could hope for after putting an end to the bandits is a presidential pardon.

The game's fairly difficult. There are a lot of enemies, they're pretty quick with the trigger and a single shot can be enough to kill one of your characters (which means game over). The AI's rather good, although it becomes less impressive once you've more or less figured it out. Some especially difficult situations (for instance, when I had to rescue a teammate surrounded by enemies whose first reaction to my arrival would be to kill him) required me to reload a lot !

All in all, a very entertaining game. I'll check the posts about the sequels (Cooper's Revenge and Helldorado, if I'm not mistaken) to get some opinions about what they're worth.
 

WholesaleGenocide

Liturgist
Joined
Aug 17, 2008
Messages
383
Desperados is pretty good, I've only played the first one. I didn't quite beat it, but I got pretty far -- I think I stopped when you had to go up some sort of many tiered mountain and it was unbelievably difficult.

Thanks for the recommendation for Robin Hood: Legend of Sherwood, I'm enjoying it quite a bit so far.
 
Joined
Jul 21, 2009
Messages
1,015
Location
Nowhere
Erebus said:
Much later in the game, you'll recruit Sanchez, a fat and extremely strong mexican bandit,

The%20Good,%20the%20Bad,%20and%20the%20Ugly.jpg
 

Kron

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2009
Messages
642
Location
The dark throne in Algalord
Sanchez pwns all other characters in the game, especially that useless azn chick.
She got replaced by a native american in Desperados 2.

By the way, this one really sucks. They fucked things up big time with the camera
 

Panthera

Scholar
Joined
Dec 17, 2008
Messages
714
Location
Canada
Wasn't there a Star Trek one as well?

I never quite got the appeal of these games. Having a whole group and being unable to control them was always frustrating. I'll have to give Desperados a try sometime.
 

Erebus

Arcane
Joined
Jul 12, 2008
Messages
4,763
Kron said:
Sanchez pwns all other characters in the game, especially that useless azn chick.

Yeah, Sanchez is extremely useful. His rocks are usually better than Cooper's knife, he can get rid of enemies inside buildings, knock down several people at the same time and he becomes a walking machine of destruction when he gets his hands on a Gatling.

Mia's not completely useless, but she's overshadowed by the other characters. Her poisoned darts can be very powerful, as the enemy they hit becomes insane and starts shooting everyone in sight. I was able to get rid of up to four enemies with one small dart. But Mia needs to be able to take cover immediately, since the victim will otherwise shoot (and most likely kill) her.
 

Astral Rag

Arcane
Joined
Feb 1, 2012
Messages
7,771
This just got updated:
Update: Modern System Compatibility (Win8, Win10, Mac and Linux support) and Demo Level added!

efad5d17a3d9d49fd642f5bc2cf772e7fbe73157.jpg


Dear Desperados Fans,

We are happy to tell you that Desperados - Wanted Dead or Alive now runs well on modern operating systems:
Windows 7 / 8 / 10
New: Mac and Linux support!

Includes a long lost demo mission where Cooper, Doc and Kate free a town from Outlaws.
A challenging level from back in the old days when some games still had rather difficult demos

Language selection has been added in game.
Main game: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, English
Demo mission: French, German, Spanish, English

Enjoy the update and let us know your thoughts in the forum or the brand new Desperados discord channel:
https://discord.gg/KR96Z9K

Cheers,
Your THQ Nordic Team


:incline:


Edit: Beginning of the Demo level:

A57B94B42F4903148B5B2FD12705EC745A8977A4
 
Last edited:

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Sweet. I remember playing the demo back in the days, it made me fall in love with the game immediately. Although I don't remember it being particularly hard. It had a decent difficulty, but nothing outstanding. Guess every old game is challenging to the new audiance of 2018. :M
Nice to see the new support for this gem.
 

Farewell into the night

Guest
I remember this game. Good times, it's like 18 eyars from now.
 

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