Desperado: Duel of Vengeance

In my high school, 'desperado' was the name given to any male who had trouble convincing any of the giggling girls to 'go for a walk' with him. A strange jeer seeing as the film of that name features a rock hard, gun-toting Antonio Banderas who swans about playing the guitar, looking cool, killing bad guys, and managing to seduce Salma Hayek in the process.

Perhaps none of my school mates had actually watched the classic Rodriguez film. Then again, maybe it was better that way as those on the receiving end of the insults could quietly imagine they were being heralded as some sort of macho god – a common fantasy amongst 16-year old boys.

Which, by some remarkable coincidence, is precisely the fantasy you get to live out in Desperado: Duel of Vengeance. Or rather, the one you live out if you apply a liberal amount of imagination to this slightly bromidic platform shooter.

You play Desperado, an unusually tall man of action and of few words, with nothing but revenge in his heart. The game is essentially your basic 2D platformer with a large helping of evil Mexican henchmen shooting thrown into the salsa.

Movement is controlled by the '2', '4', '6' and '8' keys, with '5' taking care of the firing duties. You can also execute a barrel roll followed by a sharp shot, with '1' and '3' mapped to their respective directions.

As you progress through the levels, you're met by hordes of identikit bad guys to dispatch but it's the platforming sections of the game that provide the main challenge. Pixel-perfect jumps are the order of the day here and you'll often find yourself repeating sections with a furrowed brow that no amount of tequila can relax.

The level design, which is a cut above a straightforward left to right affair, does at least help to offset some of the frustration of traversing these, enabling you to move freely between dusty streets, bars and rooftops.

The shooting mechanic, on the other hand, is as basic as they come – you never have to aim, only pull the trigger when someone comes into the line of fire. There are a few different weapons but they can't be selected at will, so, for example, picking up the sawn-off shotgun will equip that weapon automatically until it is out of ammo.

There are also scripted sections where you get to use the guitar case machine gun hybrid of the film, but even as a short lived affair, the novelty tires before the weapon is dry.

Desperado: Duel of Vengeance isn't a terrible game. With slick presentation throughout, solid clear sprites and a surprising (and welcome) quantity of dialogue, it's worth a look for die hard fans of the film looking for a no-nonsense platform blaster.

However those less enthusiastic about the licence are likely to find the combat dull and the platforming sections just on the wrong side of testing their patience threshold – beyond the point where the experience goes from being challenging to infuriating.