Reviewed: January 19, 2003
Reviewed by: John Carswell

Publisher
Eidos Interactive

Developer
Pyro Studios

Released: September 10, 2002
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen

7
5
7
8
6.5

Supported Features:

The average missions is structured around a high number of objectives. Rather than focusing on moving from point A to point B and killing everything along the way, these missions are generally more involved and rely heavily on stealth, disguise and distraction. You will often find yourself sneaking around guards, tanks, snipers and the like to execute your objectives as quickly and silently as possible. To help accomplish this, you are given a wide variety of options such as peaking through keyholes, disabling security systems, distracting guards with one of your more alluring female members, and dispatching enemies for a change of cloths. For those harder moments, Commandos also allows you to take control a handful of vehicles including a tank.

Starting each mission, you'll first be greeted by mission briefing (text and voice) and usually a small in-game seen to acquaint you with your environment. You'll have access to a number of Commandos pre-chosen for the mission. These characters each have there special abilities and tote the gear appropriate for their skills and the objectives at hand. The characters given to you range from a stealthy thief, Lupin is ideal for softening up a base's defenses from inside, to Natasha who is well suited for distracting guards and casual espionage, and the usual assortment of muscle and know-how. In some levels you'll even be joined by a dog who makes for an excellent page boy with a bark to unhinge the concentration of nearby guards.

For a game that mixes so many different play styles, Commandos has a fleshed out Stealth system. The player is able to bring up a "view cone" for enemy characters (although only one at a time) and the hostile units follow a consistent pattern. These cones allow the player not only to see their target's focus but also gauge what evasion techniques will work at their given distance from the enemy. As an example, at certain distances you'll simply be able to crawl through a View Cone and go unnoticed while at other ranges nothing short of a good disguise and a brisk walk will provide cover. This lends Commandos 2 a stealth-puzzler feels much like that found in Metal Gear Solid.

Surprisingly, I found the combat to be something of a low point. Basically, fire fights consist of switching between targets and pulling the trigger. There is no "run and gun" factor here and since Commandos 2 uses a fairly realistic damage/death model, battles are generally over as soon as they've begun. I actually didn't find this to be a detractor since it fits in nicely with the rest of the game but people expecting frantic action-based shoot outs will be disappointed. Nevertheless, Pyro Studios has included a large assortment of weapons. From the obvious array of pistols and machine guns to highly enjoyable mines, traps and heavy artillery. All things considered, there may be enough mayhem and explosions to be found in Commandos 2 to assuage those feigning for some action.

Unfortunately, the core of Commando's gameplay is wrapped inside a prohibitively difficult control setup. Based around a weighty interact/function/item system, issuing orders to your soldiers is rarely a single button press away. Instead, you will find yourself flicking through mode-settings and mini-menus to execute even simple actions. For instance, moving a character out of the water and onto the shoreline requires a small amount of menu navigation which, while not horrible, seems unnecessary. It's little conveniences like this that pop up throughout Commandos and create a much larger problem. Even after getting a grip on the control and menu layout, I never felt comfortable with them and it definitely hindered my enjoyment. Ultimately, this greatly damaged my experience since it felt as if half of my time was being spent wading through the controls.

Once inside a structure, the camera becomes fully rotatable. The level of detail here is still high, but the outside vanishes, leaving the rooms to float in a sea of blackness. In addition, when the camera swivels around there is a disconcerting feeling that all of the pixels are moving independently of one another, much like early voxel-based games.

The graphics in Commandos 2 also contribute to much of the game's shortcomings. The characters in the game are very small and without the aid of a High-Resolution monitor, they are oftentimes reduced to amorphous blobs. This causes obvious problems when trying to plot your course and discerning whom you need to subdue and who will shoot at you. Further damaging to the gameplay are menu icons that are as small as they are complex that are so unintuitive that they make an already busy menu-system all that much more daunting. For instance, the icon tile for a health kit is an actual first aid kit. While this certainly sounds reasonable, when you put that kit in around a 1-inch x 1-inch box at a television's resolution, you end up with a hodgepodge of pixels that little like a health kit. Why then, in porting Commandos 2, did the developers not switch to larger tiles and more standard icons (a red cross in this case) is perplexing and unfortunate since it seems like such a fixable issue.