Commandos 2 is essentially just a bigger and better version of the original, but then sequels aren't supposed to innovate; they are supposed to quench the thirst for more.
They do everything bigger - more explosions, more characters, more missions, more story. It's the same for movies. This isn't a stereotype; it's a simple, logical facet of every sequel. Commandos 2 doesn't try to pretend it's something it's not, but everything it does is better than the original game and there's more of it, and that's why it's so good, and why fans of the series won't be disappointed.
Take the cast, for example. In the first game you only had a handful of operatives, but this time around there are new faces at your disposal who will prove essential to certain missions. On the one hand you have your Green Beret, the strength and skill of the outfit, with his trusty knife for dispatching guards; and a deadly marine capable of knife-throwing and other interesting methods of waste disposal.
Then there is the sapper, a demolitions expert perfect for causing a ruckus when it's most needed; your mechanic, who can hotwire any vehicle; your spy, capable of disguising himself as the enemy; a sniper; and your typical female secret agent. New additions include a thief who can sneak in and out of the deadliest of situations without harming a hair on himself; and a bull terrier, to help distract your enemies when you need to get yourself out of a hole.
Although there is always some way to complete an objective, Pyro Studios have done an excellent job of masking this by giving you such a limited set of skills, weapons and other equipment that you do feel like someone with his back up against the wall. You have plenty of strategic options when you first start out, but which is the right one? And which one fits your resources? It's a Blue Peter-esque balancing act at times.
You may have a plan, but can you really make it work, or are you missing something vital to your success? Just like the original, things can take a turn for the worst easily, but unlike the original that doesn't mean tracing your steps back to whichever deadly situation got the better of you.
Commandos was often criticized because most puzzles effectively had only one solution, and once you had found it you just tried it over and over again until it came off. With Commandos 2, you could be walking into a trap the whole time - you can take nothing for granted - and if something goes wrong you needn't necessarily go over the same process repeatedly. You could just try another door, so to speak.
Strategically though, Commandos 2 shares a lot with its predecessor, and you still have to case the joint if you want to succeed. Every single guard needs to be carefully noted if you want to make your way through to the objective.
Pyro never bothered with the fog of war, because that could never work. As such, you spend most of the time just staring at the screen trying to piece together the routine needed to overcome your enemies and steal your way through to the objective. The tension doesn't come from something silly like a ticking clock, it's born in the pit of your stomach just before you go to work.
Before you step out into the open. The only thing that caught me off-guard in Commandos 2 is the multiplayer mode. What genius. If you can find someone as fanatical about the game as yourself, get together and play Commandos 2 co-operatively. There is nothing to match the joy of completing a mission in Commandos 2, except perhaps completing it as a team. Try it with your girlfriend, she'll find you irresistible for weeks.
Note: actual results may vary. Commandos 2 is a resounding success on all counts. It looks better, it sounds better, it offers you more strategy and single player game time than the original did, it takes longer to complete, it has a multiplayer mode and it boasts unparalleled replay value which forces you to think laterally about the same situations because of guards with increased alertness.
This will probably see you through until next year, so if you have been looking for this winter's killer application on PC, pull up a chair and ration yourself some cocoa. It's going to be a long haul. How to run this game on modern Windows PC? Contact: , done in 0. Search a Classic Game:. Download full Commandos 2: Men of Courage: Download 1. Commandos 2: Men of Courage screenshots:.
Crew Cut The maps themselves are equally believable. But when the reviews came out it was clear they loved it. It's been a long journey for Gonzo though, who started out working in advertising and cinema 24 years ago, up until the rime a Spectrum landed on his lap in I made about six games with them and went independent in , around the time the industry fell apart in this country.
According to Gonzo, the consequences of that crash can still be felt today, and it was only in that he was able to start work on Commandos. But even then it was an uphill struggle. Most of the talent has gone abroad and there's very little investment, so it's quite hard.
There's only really three big teams in this country and, after 17 years, I'm practically the grandfather of the industry. Most of the people who were working when I started out all retired in the early '90s. One of the toughest things making this game was to build a good enough team and make sure we brought all the best people.
There are people who are great programmers, but have no experience making computer games, so you have to train them up. But because there's only three teams, at least what little talent there is isn't completely diluted.
But Gonzo is nothing if not tough. His heavy build and strong features go hand-in-hand with the fact that he used to be a boxer. I love contact sport. You can never foresee what's going to happen and you can only work with what's in front of you. That gives your life a more vital rhythm. Gonzo doesn't speak English, so he stands behind Jon Beltran - the talented lead programmer - telling him what to do.
He is a natural leader and strides through the press room like a general briefing foreign troops. He also seems a little nervous, and his eyes twinkle while Jon translates everything he says. He looks like an excited father as he shows off the myriad of details the game possesses and manages to stun even the most cynical of journalists present.
Commandos 2 is just what a sequel should be. Ir rakes the idea of the original and catapults it to a whole new level. Gonzo shows us the thief climbing walls, peeking through windows, hiding under beds and stealing from Nazi soldiers.
He shows us the commando, swinging from cables and diving underwater among schools of fish. He shows us the sniper aiming from a window inside a building, soldiers in the street and officers sitting in a room in another building. He shows us all the vehicles you can drive and the massive, detailed maps of the missions, including a full replica of the Eiffel Tower and a stunning recreation of Colditz. Later I asked him how they managed to capture so much detail and whether they had the chance to visit all the locations in the game.
We did get to see Japan, but that was only because there was a conference there. Wherever we could, we took digital photographs, but most of the research was done back in the office. We have about 40 square metres of World War II books, so we were very well informed. And, of course, whenever you need to find out a niggly little detail, there's always the Internet. One thing that Gonzo is quite keen to make clear from the start is that Commandos 2 is nowhere near as difficult as the first game, which was never designed with mass appeal in mind.
The new game has three difficulty settings, so die-hard fans of the original's near-impossible gameplay will still be able to play in that style, while most of us switch to an enjoyable challenge. That isn't to say that playing on the lowest setting is a breeze. Once you do you'll want to play on the medium difficulty setting at least.
Someone who's just spent the best part of Pound on your game is usually willing to spend that time learning. Not every game has to be pick up and play. I tried out the first mission, and can confirm that even the easiest setting is quite a challenge.
It's also incredibly addictive and involving. You'll be happy to know that you can now save at any stage too, so the nerve-wracking frustration we all experienced with Behind Enemy Lines should be a thing of the past. This game is clearly geared to a much wider audience.
And there are few subjects able to command as much attention as World War II. Shooting Nazis has always been acceptable, but you can't get away from the fact that there's a massive entertainment industry built around one of the biggest atrocities in human history. If you think about it. Star Wars is crammed with atrocities and is considered apt children's viewing.
The Empire wipes out whole worlds, killing millions of people. And what about the storm troopers that our heroes so merrily blast away? How many of them are young men of Luke's age who don't really want to be there? Of course, the evil Empire is closely based on the Third Reich. I asked Gonzo why he thought people are fascinated by such a horrific war. All wars are horrid, but when a human being is put in such an extreme situation, he is in touch with himself in a way that most people never experience.
That is what fascinates people. Saving Private Ryan, despite the rubbish beginning and ending referring to the modern-day flag-waving and gushing sentimentality of the old man visiting the graves with his family really shows you both the horror and the fascination of the war. Another reason it's such an attractive period is that suddenly our western civilisation couldn't understand how, being so developed culturally and socially, something like this could happen.
It's like a trauma that has affected our whole society. He also reminds us that this was the first great war to be properly documented in all its aspects. Then there are all the photographs, the books written by experts and survivors. This is a good situation when you're making a game, as you don't have to worry about introducing the player into a world, and you can take advantage of all that general knowledge to establish a believable context for the gameplay.
Commandos 2 really tries to capture that sense of adventure you get in great war films like The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen. In fact, the unfinished code used for the presentation gives it all away in the names of the levels. Another thing it tries to do is bring to mind those derailed models you can't play with because they're made of lead.
When you bring those two things together, you start to get a sense of what Commandos is all about. The first game was more of an extremely hard puzzle, while this one looks more to the grand adventures of those films. Gonzo refuses to be draw n specifically on which films he has borrowed from, but he does explain that the Invasion mode is heavily based on Savin Private Ryan.
In this mode you are given command of a group of soldiers outside your core of characters, which you can give orders to. You can tell them to cover a certain area, lie down and wait and effectively set up ambushes. I really wanted to put that in the game. I'm only sorry we won't have time to do some sort of versus mode based on that, where one player could hold the village while another one tries to invade it.
After taking a chance with the first one several other publishers turned it down. Eidos is keen to turn this into a blockbuster title. But were Pyro under any pressure to produce a sequel or did Gonzo really want to do it? His answer is unequivocal. I've already spent five years doing Commandos and I'm ready to move on to something different. I love my job but, after 17 years, I'm also tired of it, so I only want to work on new things that really excite me.
I've no desire to work for two and a half years on a title that doesn't interest me. I wouldn't be capable of doing a job just for the money. It's not that I don't like money, but I don't want to work on shit. You should only work on things you love, that are worthwhile. Even if you fail, it's better to fail doing something you want than have success with something you don't.
This is a man who wants to make a difference to the games world. And I like people who take a chance and risk their reputation on something original. You can't live in the shadow of your successes. Rut I still want my next game to have the same sense of depth as Commandos and 1 want it to lx?
Thai's the secret of a great game: depth and replavability. It should have a coherent and well-developed world you can play in, even if it isn't realistic. Because you're only ever as good as your last game or, if you're very lucky, your game before last. If you're worried the PC game has been dumbed down so it can be ported to the PS2 and Dreamcast, you shouldn't be.
The console version is very different, givinc you direct control over the characters in a Metal Gear Solid-style of gameplay.
It looks good, but is more about action than strategy. Gonzo is hoping to make it into the Japanese market as well. Commandos 2 Is intended to be a big super-production, which is something the Japanese are very good at I want to create something that takes your breath away and then makes you want to play it all again. That is something the Japanese do.
The Germans took it well, but I'm not sure what the Japanese will make of It". Not As Much a strategy game as a wonderful WWII adventure full of brainteasers, Commandos 2 presents a miniature world as rich in detail as any ship-in-a-bottle. If, like me, you gave up on the first Commandos about two minutes into the very first mission because of the insanely high difficulty level, don't be put off from trying the sequel. It's much more approachable and easy to get to grips with.
Once you get used to the mechanics of the game you won't even notice how artificial they are enemy soldiers' line of sight shown with bright green arcs, sound ripples indicating hearing range and so on and you'll just get caught up in the classic comic book feel of it, admiring the scenery and the myriad touches of originality in the process. It won't please everyone, of course. But it's their loss. Whether you're manoeuvring your sniper to a high-rise position inside a giant Buddha to take out a general, or simply figuring out how the hell to orchestrate a seemingly impossible rescue, Commandos 2 is addictive, enjoyable and constantly surprising.
It may not have flashy 3D graphics or even a proper storyline, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the best games of the last couple of years. The early s were hard times. Young men were sent away to war to lose life, limbs and mind, countries were turned to rubble and rationing forced the nation to live on a diet of powdered egg and hot gravel.
Well, if they thought they had it tough they should have tried playing Commandos. Many a hardened journalist has been brought to his knees while playing the World War II strategy bestseller. The insanely high difficulty level, unforgiving gameplay and the fact that you couldn't save in-game saw you repeatedly restarting levels, only to see your soldiers dead before you knew what was going on.
It's a testament to the game's quality that, although it was so demanding it should have been confined to a modest fanbase of hardcore gamers, it became a massive hit, topping every chart in the computer-playing world.
Well, Commandos 2 is not only more accessible, it's also much better looking, immensely playable and quite probably the most detailed game we've ever seen. It gsenrestobe an even bigger hit. This is a real world miniaturised to fit onto your screen, not some chalked up sketch. There are 12 missions spread out across ten locations.
And if you think 12 isn't that many, you haven't taken in our comments about them being huge. You start off in a Normandy village, devastated by bombings not unlike the one in Saving Private Ryart and occupied by Germans. This is the smallest map in the game, but it will still take you around three to five hours to complete. There are dozens of buildings, a river you need to cross, loads of Nazis and a big gunfire battle raging on between Allied and German soldiers at one end of the level.
Another map has a full-size replica of the Eiffel Tower, which you can explore fully, and another an absolutely enormous aircraft carrier. There are changes of scenery with a tropical island of crystal clear waters and a submarine base in the snow-covered Iceland. WWII buffs will probably enjoy the level on Colditz the most; the prison duplicated in such astounding detail you could spend all week just looking at it, never mind playing in it.
And it just might take you a week to complete some of the levels, although the fact that there's no set path, and no right way to complete a level encourages exploration and experimentation. But what's really incredible about Commandos 2 is the overwhelming sense of actually being there, the total immersion in a realistic surrounding.
This feeling is not uncommon to good first-person games, or even third-person ones, where you move through the environment and use the screen as an extension of your eyes; but in a top-down strategy game? But it's the perfectly balanced if occasionally tilting to a mammoth challenge gameplay that will keep you coming back again and again. No matter how many times you fail, you always manage to get that little bit further, and the sense of achievement easily surpasses the frustration you might feel now and again.
There is just so much to see, so much to do, that you simply have to keep going if only to see what happens next. The best way to show you is to give you a few examples. In the Iceland map, cute little waddling penguins will be alarmed and bring attention to you if they spot you, while polar bears will attack you. In rather hotter climates, you'll find an island with a shipwrecked loony who is perfect for diversions and a group of Japanese school children that you need to rescue.
But this being the perfect pinnacle of attention to detail sorry, there's that word again the kids run away frightened, calling for help from the German soldiers as soon as they see your scruffy, square-jawed strangers.
First you need to find their teacher on another part of the island. When they see him, they'll calm down and come with you quietly.
If you decide to swim underwater, there are not only schools of tropical fish, but also piranhas and sharks competing for a piece of your flesh. Your machine-gun doesn't work in the water, so what do you do? How about getting out and spraying the sea with bullets from the large stationary guns mounted on the shore? There are so many examples like these we could go on forever, but we'll squeeze a couple more delightful moments, just to whet your appetite even further.
Like the way your thief can use his rat to distract soldiers or how you can give Whiskey a grenade and tell him to drop it at the feet of a bunch of Nazis, who are still wondering what a dog is doing there when their eyeballs explode.
Want to kill a high-ranking officer entrenched in a room at the top floor of a heavily guarded building? No problem. Simply send your sniper to a nearby structure, find a suitable window and you can target him across the street. In fact, windows are a valuable feature in the game. You can climb in and out of them, shoot through them and even stick your head through to spy into the interior.
Is anyone left cynical enough to be unimpressed? Perhaps we should tell you that you can drive all sorts of vehicles the aircraft carrier is so big you need a jeep to get from one end to the other and even command groups of soldiers outside your group. You can't control them directly but you can give them different stances and tell them who and when to attack. They're perfect to cause diversions and to set up massive ambushes.
What else can we possibly say? The interface is easy to use and a considerable improvement on the last one. You can interact with everything in sight and you can play the whole thing in multiplayer co-op mode. We'll be adding to this single-player review with an online mark next issue if servers are up and running. A hearing range has been added to the extremely helpful line of sight of your enemies, making stealth even more important.
You can tie up unconscious soldiers and steal their clothes. And while these won't let you get away completely undetected if you get too close to the enemy, they serve their purpose from a prudent distance. The gameplay might still be too fiddly for some, requiring real patience and perseverance. But the only real criticism we can think of is that it's just too big, too overwhelming and dare we say it, slightly repetitive in nature.
The fact that the very first level takes more than three or four hours on an Easy setting might put first-timers off, but hopefully the challenging one-more-go-and-I'll-finish-it mentality will mean that even more people buy, play and complete this sequel.
It does so many things you feel like cowering in awe at both its grandeur and the gargantuan task ahead of you. To use the WWII film analogy the game so closely observes, it's a three-hour epic or hour epic, if you will with an all-star cast, shot on location all over the world with an unlimited budget.
Not only that, it's the DVD the deleted scenes. And you'll want to watch it again and again. Sequels to successful games are always suspicious creatures, products of a business impulse rather than the creative drive of an artist, made to make money and cash in on that success rather than developing a genuine artistic vision. Not Commandos 2. Gonzo Suarez is a visionary on a par with Peter Molyneux or Warren Spector, not the organ-grinder to a corporate machine. The game shares with other sequels the higher budget, the better graphics, the more-of-everything-only-bigger and the number 2.
It's a continuation with a life of its own that doesn't just rehash old ideas. And you simply must play it. World War II isn't just an historical event ot monstrous proportions, where millions of people died and whole continents suffered horribly. It's part of our mythology. It resides in our collective consciousness, where it can be reshaped into a world of endless fascination. Books, comics and especially films have constructed another WWII.
One full of heroes and anti-heroes, of larger-than-life characters and extreme situations. And It's in these films that Commandos 2 has looked for inspiration. And boy has it found it. Following the release for the PC, Eidos has taken their action strategy game, Commandos 2: Men of Courage and released it on the Playstation 2. Set during World War II, the army has recognized the need for a specially trained group of men capable of infiltrating the enemy and causing chaos.
From this the Commandos were created as eight trained specialists with different skills and abilities will attempt to complete their missions, helping win the war against the Third Reich.
As you take the Commandos through the twelve missions, they'll encounter and interact with over eleven different environments as they steal enemy uniforms and weapons, climb poles, swing from cables, and use vehicles. If you're concerned about there only being twelve missions, don't be, as it takes some time to finish them. Most will have to restart a number of times as you try different strategies for each mission.
Unfortunately, console gamers have historically not had the same patience as PC gamers and may get frustrated attempting to finish the missions.
The graphics also may frustrate console gamers as the focus of this game is the strategy element.
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