Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive

Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive is among those few games that I pick up from time to time to experience again, yet I can never get tired of it. This is because the well thought-out levels, the unique characters and the nearly endless combinations they make possible. There's room for multiple playstyles from going in "full-Rambo" to a more subtle and sneaky approach, and they all feel natural. The game -- apart from a few missions -- doesn't force nor discourage any of them and depending on your personal taste to do things, each is rewarding in its own right. Despite its age the game still feels fresh to this day (mainly and sadly due to the lack of a proper follow-up and the general scarcity of competitors in the genre) and thanks to their beautiful, hand-drawn 2D nature the graphics aged exceptionally well (there's also a widescreen patch available). The variety is astounding and thanks to it there's actually a point in multiple playthroughs. Not saying that the game itself is short -- on the contrary: the 25 levels will keep you entertained for 15-20 hours (depending on your playstyle and proficiency) and there's still more: the demo has an exclusive level worth about an additional hour of gameplay and it also acts as a loosely connected prequel of sorts to the main story (in my opinion it should've been included as an extra). There's a semi-regular case of freezing on modern systems not exclusive to this release (the demo has them too) where only killing the task helps, nevertheless I managed to finish the game on 2 different computers running Windows 7 (64 bit). Due to the very nature of gameplay it is advised to save often anyway (preferably every 10 seconds or so), but it's up to you to decide if you can / want to live with that. At first it might seem like a blatant Commandos-ripoff (in fact they look and feel so alike that initially I though both were made by the same creators), but this is one of those rare cases when the disciple gets above its master.

In the third level the mouse pointer is disappered and you cannot interact with the gameplay anymore.

Love the game, but the crashes are unacceptable.

If you don't have a machine that runs XP or Windows 7, don't buy it! It will not run on Windows 8.

I enjoyed the game for almost 30 hours but the game crashes when loading mission 22 with the message "Loading dialogues" on Linux. Tried Ubuntu and Arch to no avail. Unfortunately, this breaks the game completely for me (can't finish it) so I give it one star. The game itself is a good reimagining of the Commandos formula in a Western setting. However, I still rate Commandos, and especially Commandos 2, above Desperados. See, Desperados has some annoying design decisions such as the random nature of every action. Most user actions are non-deterministic (the damage received, the damage inflicted, etc.), which in a tactical game such as this is kind of astonishing in a bad way. Quicksave and quickload all the way until Sam can kill the guard standing 5 m from him with one bullet. For the rest, graphics are very nice and controls are responsive and precise. I liked the quick-actions a lot. It's a pity that I can't finish it :_(