Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive

Playing Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive feels like being in a relationship with a beautiful witty woman that keeps busting your balls every five minutes. She has many issues and everything must be just how she wants it but you indulge her crazy demands even though it hurts. Bottom line is you just can't help yourself. You're in love and you just gotta make love to her over and over again. You don't even understand why of how, but when you somehow manage to find yourselves in the middle, it's just perfect and so satisfying.

One of the titles that rightfully earned its place in gaming history, and not only in advertised category as it has specific quality that might appeal even to players typically not the fans of the genre. Speaking of which, Desperados is arguably the finest specimen of the isometric tactical strategy games and for many reasons. Voice acting is, with a few exceptions, excellent, lead by the defining coolness of John Cooper's husky tone. The visual component is impressive still, with the choice of several resolutions available (max. 1024x768). Designers have opted to present variety of locations throughout the game, all drawn in exquisite detail, which makes for no boring mission even aesthetics-wise. Cutscenes also deserve hats off and although some rough edges around 3D rendering according to modern standards are noticeable, it still features movie-grade directing and perfectly complements the rest of the story, developing interestingly in its own way. Various characters with numerous differing abilities are available for the player to guide, giving a lot of latitude when it comes to choosing desired path of achieving the mission objective. Especially nice touch are what may be termed training missions upon gaining a new member in your team, aimed at showcasing their specific talents, giving you the chance to practice them before going out in the open, all neatly interweaved with the story. During gameplay many parameters will have to be taken into consideration: NPCs' field of view, their hearing range (both varying depending on the terrain and atmospheric conditions), specific requirements of the mission, reactions based on events triggered by the player, to name a few. And with every new step taken further into the game, the player is rewarded with unfoldment of the classic Western tale. All this and more makes for a remarkable one-of-a-kind experience! NOTE: As of Wine 1.7.51 this game runs fine in Linux.

The Good: * Pretty Much everything. This game came in the time when games had high productions values and were shipped when they gave so much more to the player for their price. Beautiful locals and animations. 25 missions, when each has a short CGI clip. Each mission can take 20-45 min depending on how you tackle the mission and how much time you restart / Reload the game. Awesome and unforgettable cast of characters. Supreme level of interactivity between characters, environments and enemies. Multiple paths for finishing objectives and much, much more. You own it to yourself to play this game and you will be talking to yourself while playing stuff like: "Why we don't see more games like this or at least as polished as this one???"... Yea, this game makes today's games look like they were created by an amateurs who only care to make quick $$$ and run away. The Bad: * I can only nitpick here... But still, there is some 0.5 sec delay while entering buildings. This causes the animation to start and you will see the character enters the building but as soon as he will be in, you will die because at that moment someone shot you. The Ugly: * This kind of games do not exist any more... Lets hope that in the future we will see something akin or at least an HD remake of this game. It really deserves it.

Started playing it and was enjoying myself, but the framerate was really sluggish. Eventually, it froze completely. It's virtually unplayable on Windows 10. I'm only giving it 2 stars because I could tell that I would have enjoyed playing it bug-free.

A game that reminded me as a mix of Commandos and Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood. The way the enemy starts investigating or tells others if a fellow guard is not at his usual post is so good. Loved that in the Robin Hood game. The game to me felt more difficult as you truly had to plan things out and using the queue up for actions helps a lot. The game has its issues at times when the AI could bug out and you had no chance to progress so make sure to save. Happened 2-3 times in my playthrough of the game. Had no issues with the game otherwise. Can easily recommend this one.