Mimimi brings us one of the sagas of our childhood revamped, polished and perfected to exhaustion.
Desperados III is the perfect storm. The genre of tactical stealth that brought us so many nights in suspense with sagas such as Commandos, Robin Hood and the Legend of Sherwood or the saga we are dealing with had been dormant for years. Only Mimimi, a small German studio, had dared to venture into it recently, with the highly successful Shadow Tactics. With this first launch of the studio, the genre was redefined, adapting it to the new times with improvements in quality of life as well as a new layer of visual paint. But apparently they were not satisfied, instead they used their experience with the title to boost their skills as developers and the popularity of it to get the chance to work on the next installment of a franchise like Desperados. Far from wasting this opportunity to get hold of one of the most transcendental sagas of the genre, Mimimi shows that he has managed to mature at lightning speed and become the benchmark study of the genre. Desperados 3 is a masterpiece, clearly created from the most meticulous passion and perfectionism. We tell you why.
Cooper’s return
Desperados III is situated as a prequel to the previous installments of the saga. We will follow the story of John Cooper in his quest for revenge for insults committed in his childhood, a bizarre journey through emblematic places in the Old West where we will meet emblematic characters like Kate O’Hara or new and classic snapshots like Hector Mendoza and his curious obsession with his beloved Bianca bear trap. Although the story tries in moments to include a certain drama in its events when it works best is in the mildest moments, those in which our daring adventurers share mischief about the mission. For the rest, history tends to operate more as a framework to justify the changes between levels and as such it fulfills its mission amply.
We must insist on the evident affection that has been put into forging those relationships between characters. A mission, for example, puts two of the characters in direct competition to get the highest number of casualties, recriminating each other each time one gets ahead of the other in clear reference to the similar situation between a certain elf and a certain dwarf in a certain wall during a certain battle. Another mission begins with the consequences of the actions of our characters the night before and we must try to solve our antics having lost our weapons. The game never lets up a mission as an opportunity to develop the interaction between the five characters, expanding our knowledge of each individual in the process.
An unforgiving squad
These interpersonal relationships also translate into an almost total mechanical dependency between characters. Rare is the case in which the game allows us to be efficient with a single character, but the vast majority of situations will require the combination of their skills. Seduce a private soldier with Kate and lure him into McCoy’s bag of medical supplies and then stab him with Cooper. Distracting a bandit with a Cooper coin while we shoot another behind his back with McCoy and use Hector’s whistle to lure another to Kate’s right kick. We will constantly discover new synergies between our characters as we face new situations, whether caused by the environment, the specific groups of enemies that we face or the specific moment in history in which we find ourselves. Regardless, they are all perfectly designed not to be too powerful without help. One of the new characters that we will not reveal to keep the surprise seems to be obviously broken when reading what his abilities do but soon you realize how his obvious limitations make him one of the team.
Helping to execute these maneuvers is the “Showdown” mode. Just by pressing the Shift button we can pause the game and assign an action to each of our characters. This allows us control over the entirety of our equipment that was previously only accessible to the most skilled with keyboard and mouse, reducing the distance between what our brain imagines and our hands can execute in the game. Using this mode does not consume any type of resource and is always available, although its use is not as simple as it may seem given the real-time nature of the game. Occasionally the characters did not respond exactly as expected to our assigned actions, usually by colliding with some part of the environment, leading to a failed execution despite a proper plan. Fortunately these cases are minimal, this mode being during the vast majority of the game an excellent help for those less quick at the controls or the keyboard and an increase in maximum complexity for the most learned of the genre (however fast we are never before we have been able to assign one action per second to each of our five characters.)
Polished like a sushi knife
As far as the genre’s overall control and mechanics have been polished here to the limit. Except for the very few exceptions that we have already mentioned with the movement, the rest of the actions are carried out smoothly and without unnecessary delays. We kill an enemy with a click, we click once more while the animation is running to collect the body and the next click leaves it on the ground. There is no room for error due to controls that force us to load the last autosave. In the same way, we have the ability to right-click on any enemy to see their cone of vision as well as to do the same at a point on the stage to see which enemies are looking in their direction. The design is perfected so that the errors are practically always due to a failure in the player’s strategy, not in clicking on the wrong site. When we find ourselves struggling to overcome a cone of vision by one or two pixels, there is usually a much easier alternative to execute using and combining the abilities of our characters.
This is another of the game’s greatest qualities, its extraordinary ability to always position enemies in such a way that it is practically impossible to use cheap tactics to finish them off. Throughout the game, almost every time an enemy seems easy prey, there is another in the distance, obviously watching the place where you intended to kill him. Attempt after attempt, you discover that each encounter with a group of enemies is a practically impassable fortress. It is in that search for the Achilles heel where the playable satisfaction of Desperados 3 lies. After twenty minutes without being able to kill a single bandit successfully, you finally find that unguarded man during a section of his vigilance pattern, a small opportunity to sneak up on you. in enemy defenses and start a sequential death domain effect with which to annihilate the entire group.
It is also worth discussing how the scarce variety of enemies is always distributed in an apparently random way but after intense study we discover each of the enemies is there to prevent any of your strategies, to put another obstacle to overcome. Maybe you think it’s a good idea to use Kate to seduce that perfectly positioned soldier into him and lead him to the sharp knives of another member of your team. When you hover your cursor over it you see that it is indeed a woman and therefore impervious to Kate’s charms. The game is packed with moments where if a single enemy would change its type the challenge presented would be substantially less. But this is not the case, each enemy is placed where he should to make the most challenging experience possible.
Total excellence in level design
Undoubtedly the main quality of Desperados, above all others, is the impressive work done in the level design. From a train in the middle of a holdup to the classic Californian village, the streets of New Orleans or the banks of a river that we already wanted to cross with Kayak, we have been very surprised by what appears in this aspect. Each of the levels has its reason to exist. Of course, from a visual and thematic point of view they differ from each other, something already difficult given the setting of the game. But it is also that the vast majority of levels have a mechanic only present in them or a series of unusual objectives until then. Sometimes we think that we are facing a normal size level for another video game only so that when completing what we believed to be the mission it is revealed to us that we were seeing a third of the total level.
We do not know exactly how to express the thoroughness of the work done in these settings. From a visual point of view they are splendid, being the first ten minutes that we spend looking at the level obsessively our favorite moment of each one. Countless details populate every inch of isometric perspective on-screen, there is not a single span where you have not put some love into showing something. Comparing the glossy maps of the present with those of the past of the saga highlights the leap that Mimimi has taken for the genre, a difference similar to the leap that the Hitman saga has recently taken. Adding to the enjoyment that is playing them for the first time, each of the levels has a series of challenges that we will not be able to complete in a single pass. Whether completing the level on a completely different path or doing it without using stairs, ropes or any type of tool to change elevation, these challenges are a major incentive for perfectionists who want to squeeze the title to the maximum and get the tens of hours that can be removed.
Finally, we did not want to leave without mentioning the great sound work of the title both in its compositions and its dubbing, which unfortunately still does not escape its original version (the texts of the game will be translated into our language). All the actors do a great job bringing their characters to the screen and the amount of dialogue available is much greater than we would expect in a title of this nature. The soundtrack is an instant classic where each of the songs represents a hymn to the Old West, powerful harmonicas backed by scratchy banjos and dominant violins painting an excellent mural on which the adventures of our team are projected. Of all the qualities of the title, perhaps this represents the greatest improvement for Mimimi after an unremarkable soundtrack in its previous title. Excellent in this regard and also remarkable the extraordinary ability of the game to increase the tempo of the music even if you have not been detected, something quite unusual in this type of game.
CONCLUSION
From start to finish, while we were playing Desperados we were looking for that moment that usually occurs with any game in which an annoying enemy is introduced, an unpleasant level of completion, an unpleasant mechanic or even simply repeats something in excess. Never arrived. It is not a game that will fascinate the genre that has never managed to captivate, but for those who like tactical stealth, it is an absolutely indispensable title. Packed with the highest quality content, Desperados III is a game that manages to offer a round and complete experience, exudes passion on all four sides and represents a new peak for this small subgenre of stealth.
THE BEST
- Spotless Level Design
- Thematic and mechanical variety
- Showdown mode is a great addition to the genre
- Disparate, balanced and funny characters
- A sensational soundtrack
- Polished in virtually every aspect
WORST
- Sometimes the characters don’t move exactly how we would like
- Some visual bug
Very good
Game with a remarkable finish that we will enjoy and remember. A good purchase, highly recommended for lovers of the genre. It is well cared for at all levels.
