Where to get it

2007 · Spellbound Entertainment · Real-time strategy · Real-time tactics

Helldorado

Helldorado is a brand-new, standalone 3D-real-time tactics game at highest level. The story leads the six heroes around John Cooper into a dusky precipice of a deadly conspiracy and through completely new and thrilling locations of the Wild West.

Released: 2007
Platforms: Windows
Genres: Real-time strategy Real-time tactics Strategy Tactical Western
Developers: Spellbound Entertainment
Publishers: Viva Media
Series: Desperados
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: First person Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Stealth
Country: Germany
Age ratings: USK 12 ESRB T PEGI 12
Languages: English, French, German, Spanish (Spain)
Time to beat: 13hmain story14hcompletionist

About

Helldorado is a real-time tactics video game. It is the spin-off/sequel to the 2006 game Desperados 2: Cooper's Revenge, continuing a plot development introduced in the final sequence of that game.

›Story

Santa Fe in the late summer of 1883. Lester Lloyd Goodman is dead and buried, and his railway empire lies in ruins.

Cooper enjoys his bittersweet revenge, but only for a short while, because something else is wrong: Doc McCoy has disappeared. He was kidnapped and poisoned. The person behind the disappearance seems to be Goodman’s widow.

She meets Cooper in a church in Santa Fe, where she makes him a diabolical offer: she will spare Doc’s life if Cooper will carry out a few assignments that will brand him as a criminal. Cooper agrees.

Together with his friends he sets out to free Doc McCoy. But the more enmeshed they become in the crime, the clearer it becomes that much more is involved than the revenge of a young woman.

Players say

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Story

Angel Face's widow kidnaps and poisons Doc McCoy, and unless John does some 'menial' tasks for her, she will leave McCoy to die. These menial tasks inevitably brand Cooper and his friends as criminals, since they involve robbing a bank and stealing a train full of U.S. Army weapons. While Cooper and his team are forced to perform the tasks, they discover that they - as is Mrs. Goodman - are mere pawns for a more dastardly plot: the Mexican revolutionary El Cortador's plan to assassinate Chester Alan Arthur, the President of the United States.

Reception

Helldorado holds a 65/100 aggregate score on Metacritic.

IGN gave the game 5.7/10 criticizing its trial and error approach calling it "only for the hardcore strategy fan that has a massive reservoir of patience". GameSpot gave it 4.5/10, praising its huge levels but criticizing frustrating difficulty where a single mistake can cost the game.