Whenever I have a chunk of holiday sitting in front of me, the possibilities seem endless. Maybe I'll finally play Cyberpunk 2077 now it's been properly patched, I think. But maybe I should also finally finish Nier: Automata in preparation for when Replicant comes out at the end of the month. There are also those dozen odd indie games I've got piled up, too. Narita Boy, the final bit of Record Of Lodoss War: Deelit In Wonder Labyrinth, Signs Of The Sojourner and goodness knows what else. "I could probably do a bit of each!" I say optimistically. In the end, though, my grand plans for playing loads of games never really materialises. I might be able to manage it if I literally play games every second I'm awake from morning til night, but that's not very relaxing now, is it?
In the end, after an impromptu viewing of the 90s western film Tombstone, I decided to opt for the very manageable mission chunks of Desperados 3 as my big Easter holiday project, which is the latest rootin' tootin' real-time tactics game from the Shadow Tactics devs, Mimimi Productions. I'd played the opening few missions back when it came out last summer, but its long, sprawling maps gradually demanded more time and dedication than I was able to give them. I like to do entire missions in one go, you see, and do them stealthily, which often takes even longer because I'm pretty bad at being sneaky - as my five hours doing a complete ghost run of Dishonored 2's Clockwork Mansion level will attest. Now, though, I had entire afternoons to luxuriate in its detailed, densely packed playgrounds of trigger happy cowboys, and goodness, what an astonishingly satisfying and generous game it is.