As you probably know, Commandos 2 is a World War II era game where the Allies are coming to the point of desperation at beating back the advance of the Third Reich. If you payed attention in those history classes at all, then you'll know things weren't looking so good for Europe in the early 40's. The British Isles were pretty much the only sanctuary left in Western Europe for the forces of freedom and justice and happy kittens and puppy dogs. So in order to head up the rest of the war and take the hurt back to the attackers, the Commandos were formed. A group of highly trained and specialized soldiers bent on wreaking as much havoc with their little group as possible.
Missions take place over beautifully rendered maps that can be zoomed in and out if you need to have a closer look or an all encompassing look. Zooming out all the way brings up stunning scenes with incredible attention to detail. Zooming in... doesn't. I'm not really going to fault this though considering all that the game actually does do, and I really didn't find myself minding the pixelization that occurs upon zooming. Animations are also done very well. Watching the little people react and run around is a treat and each of your commandos has a different gait showing off their personalities in the way they move.
Aside from some small control issues which I'll go into in a minute, and some minor crash bugs when loading up saved games, Commandos 2 is a solid product. Yet this solid product manages to be soft and pliable in all of the right places. This happy little paradox amounts to levels that can be played through in a ton of different ways to explore your own thought process and try some new ones on for size when you're done. Wanna be a gun toting freak? Feel free. Wanna be a sneaky back-stabbing freak? Go right ahead. But one thing is for sure. No matter which way you play the game, it's going to take some thought to win through and complete your missions even with the help you receive in briefings and the objectives handbook.
Basically, you'll begin each mission with different Commandos. Sometimes, you'll have one. Sometimes you'll have a few. Sometimes you'll have a few, get all of them except for one caught, and then have to rescue them so that you can complete the mission with a few again. You get the picture. Each of the Commandos has a special purpose and ability. My two favorites had to be wiry thief who is nimble enough to climb walls, is good at hiding, and can lockpick, to the big and burly Green Beret whose hobbies include shooting and knifing members of the Axis forces while not really minding the pain of bullets and punches. A few of the characters are proficient in distractions including the dog Whiskey that barks to distract, Natasha the seductress, just point her lipstick at a soldier and watch them watch her, and the spy, who can adopt the role of German leaders due to his impressive language skills and French "I'm better than you attitude." He really is better than you though.... The other characters are specialists for sniping, explosives, driving vehicles (which I found really fun in and of itself by the way), and diving operations. They can all use basic weapons and skills, but I found myself mainly using them for their designated roles and special equipment they posses.
And that's where this game really does shine and also where it comes off as a puzzle game. Even though there are guns involved, and it is possible to just kill everything on the map if you set it up just right, you'll find yourself using the various characters as tools and pieces. Each has certain skills to get you through specific obstacles, but they're all put in great context, like you really are in charge of a very balanced group of individuals.
The interface in the game is pretty key to the whole experience, and while I didn't have too many problems doing the tasks that I needed to, it took a long time to learn well due an atrocious tutorial. I was forced to read the manual to figure things out. Sure, that's what it's there for, but I don't like having to pause the game to look in the manual to figure out a control. Luckily the manual was pretty complete and fairly well laid out.
Navigating around the map was also easier than I had anticipated it being. Due to the rendered maps, I figured the camera setups would make the game a little more difficult having four angles to switch through. Firstly, there was rarely a spot that I had a hard time seeing around (although I wish that the character outlines would show up all of the time when your guys are hidden behind a building from your view). Secondly, there is a great picture in picture feature for several cameras so that you can both follow several of your characters around at once and give commands in each of the windows, or set up several cameras around the same spot so you can see it at all angles simultaneously. It works very smoothly and is extremely helpful at times. Unfortunately, I'm a dumbass and didn't use this feature for a while... I hate dumbasses. What? Who? Anyway... there is also another picture in picture feature when your characters are peeking into windows and doors. A window will appear in the upper left corner which can be tilted around to view everything inside that can be seen from said window or door. This gives you the chance to see what you have to look forward to before you enter a location so that you can plan and time your moves correctly.
Commands are generally completed through clicking or shift-clicking on objects, enemies, or terrain after selecting what command you want to use either through the graphical interface, or with hotkeys. Hotkeys are really the way to go here if you can remember them all (imposing) as you can get rid of the GUI at that point and have several cameras unimpeded.
While the game is very difficult and AI is usually pretty darn good at alerting the rest of the troops when they spot you, there were times when they faltered a bit. After being punched in the back of the head and rendered unconscious, more often than not the same guard will just wake up startled and go back to his normal routine without being too disturbed. Sometimes they get up and run around looking for you (at which point you should be ready as they tend to be pretty thorough) but are surprisingly calm about being knocked out. Same for hearing gun fire. If you can kill someone and hide them before any more enemies can get there and see you, they'll just forget and go back to their position not even bothering to really look for the source of the gunfire. Of course, now it seems like I'm begging for the game to be even more challenging, which I don't think it needs.
And that is where the crux really is. As I said in the first impressions, this game is ass hard. At that point I was still figuring out controls, learning game mechanics and AI routines, but even now that I know the controls and have learned how the enemies are likely to react to certain situations, the game is still ass hard. And I was playing it on normal, which is really the easy setting since it only goes up to hard and very hard. But after all is said and done, I appreciated the challenge. Even with the frustration of losing (which happened a lot and thanks for the quicksave), I found myself sitting around thinking about how I could get the thief into an area without being seen, or given the small amount of sniper ammo, which targets are the most important to take out at a long distance. When you've got a game on the brain like that, that means there is something positive going on.
I suppose one of the other main problems I had with the game would be the repetitiveness of the acknowledgements. The quality was actually fairly good with some slightly overdone accents that were generally fun to listen to, but they said the same thing so often I found myself wanting to smack that silly little spy halfway across the map. Aside from that, the music was pretty fantastic and the voice-over introductions to each of the levels were done very well.
So my recommendation is this. If you have high blood pressure and don't react well to stress and frustration, don't buy this game. You'll go crazy and your heart will explode. But if you like a good challenge and can deal with failing a few times before winning, this is probably a game you'll want to grab. There're a lot of positives here with very few negatives.
-- Dan Adams
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