Commandos: Strike Force

Probably one of the most unknown yet interesting strategy game series available to the PC market, the “Commandos” series was all about a kind of pseudo-teamwork aspect that is rarely seen in strategy games today. With a feel much akin to Command and Conquer but only allowing the player to control around 5 soldiers, you controlled an elite task force in large arenas to accomplish insanely difficult goals.

A few months ago, though, Pyro studios randomly decided that it was time to bring the Commandos series to the FPS genre, and attempt to keep the whole strategy aspect in the mix. Just like Command and Conquer: Renegade in this respect, the whole game is somewhat an attempt at taking this cult classic and making it fully 3d and completely operational.

Well, this is a good thing and a bad thing, and I'll try to explain why. First off, let me say wholeheartedly that I am all for interesting twists in gameplay like this, and I have absolutely nothing with Pyro studios doing a 180 in this direction. But, I have one small requirement- the game itself has to be good. Just because a game studio goes a completely different direction does not give them invulnerability when it comes to the market, and the gaming population is going to expect the same quality out of the new game as any other game on the market- no shortcuts, period.

Commandos: Strike Force is set in World War 2 (Like older games, but it hurts more now that it's a shooter). Yes, I know- we've seen this hundreds of times across hundreds of platforms, and Commandos: Strike Force wants us to actually believe this is a unique concept- it's not. Set, for the most part, in the French front of World War 2, you yet again are a spunky group of allied soldiers (The elite “Strike Force”) who are sent to instill fear into the hearts of those kitten-killing world-hating apple-pie-hating Nazis. The best way to explain this game is to mix Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six with Medal of Honor, and mix in some very rudimentary strategy until you have a big ball that we in the industry call a “Easy game”.




And yes, Commandos: Strike Force is easy. Setup exactly like any generic FPS, the whole concept of Commandos: Strike Force usually boils down to “Kill the bad guys, don't get killed”- exactly what gamers have done hundreds of times. And, Commandos: Strike Force makes this extremely easy, due to the fact that your characters rarely die (Even in the hard mode, soldiers willing to heal you are prevalent), and even so, you have up to three soldiers you can switch back and forth from simply by hitting the TAB key. That's pretty cool, at least in my opinion- but it's stupidly easy as well.

The real core of Commandos: Strike Force is in these three people- “Green Beret”, “Sniper”, and “Spy”. Each with their own weapons and set of skills, virtually every mission will require combined use of any of these characters to achieve the goal. For example, Green Beret seems to be the tank, who you mow into enemy territory and start clicking. Sniper, while generally weak, has the scope, and ends up being the person you position in the back. And, of course, Spy tends to be a spy and do spy-like things, which you would think would be pretty useless on the battlefield, which is completely true. One of the key flaws of this game is, no matter how well you manage these characters, after you switch from them (And you use another character), they go virtually lifeless, and end up being prime shooting targets for the enemy. This may have worked in a slower and more strategic game, but an FPS is not the place to have to worry about stashing Green Beret behind boxes just so he doesn't get beaten to a pulp.

While this introduces strategy, I found Commandos: Strike Force to be just like any other shooter, just with more Rainbow Six than Call of Duty. Instead of running around wildly shooting, there are some “smart” parts to Commandos, obviously 50% of them trying to figure out how to prevent your other teammate(s) from getting shot.

One thing touted by Commandos is the open environments and general ability to do what you want, when you want it. As usual, I have to call out them on this, and say that in fact, Commandos: Strike Force was one of the most linear FPSes I've played in a while. While it does allow you to formulate your own plans, the virtues of which I have extolled above, the environments I found were remarkably boring and stupidly easy to blast through, while the game itself utilizes cheap tricks to appear bigger and harder than it truly is. For example, in one of the earlier levels of the game, Sniper is in a farmhouse and Green Beret in the farm itself, and Germans are coming down from a large hill. Instead of making it open at all, I found that not only was Sniper essentially confined to the farmhouse (blocking his point of view completely), but Green Beret could not charge through the enemy lines, or he would “Mysteriously” just fall over and die. Period. He may have had full health and nothing may have been shooting at him, but the second he touched the invisible wall of World War 2 game death, he fell over with an injury.




This kind of dollar store cheapness is reflected in the graphics as well. While on the surface, Commandos actually looks rather next generation, close inspection of the graphics in game reveal that a lot of shortcuts were taken. Anything in general plain view looks decent, whereas anything “In the back” (Such as a toilet inside a farmhouse) are remarkably simple and remind me of games 5 years ago. That's not such a big deal if you don't care, but I do think it shows that this game cannot really match up to big “Next-gen” World War 2 games like Call of Duty 2 or Day of Defeat: Source.

The one thing that truly could have saved Commandos: Strike Force would have been the multiplayer, which unfortunately fails miserably. Instead of allowing multiple players to go through the missions as different characters (Which would be absolutely awesome), the game pulls another mediocre attempt at free-for-all and team based deathmatch, which obviously is about as entertaining as having a cold. The game was obviously not made for insanely speedy deathmatch games, which ends up meaning everyone hides and snipes. I guess that explains why not many people play it.

Another small complaint is the general action itself, which is, as I mentioned above, stupidly easy. When you are Green Beret, there are no real tactics to use, the simple way to win with him is to simply hold down your mouse button and sweep bullets at everything that looks German. Stealth means you don't get in the view of the soldier, which ends up meaning I just knife everyone and run around with Spy without a care. Obviously, Sniper is the real one to use in the game, because picking out the “Hard” enemies Green Beret is supposed to deal with could never be more fun than when the enemy has no idea what's going on. The radar also tends to be a killjoy, making the whole game remarkably easy (You could play the whole sneaking parts without ever looking at the screen and just checking the radar from time to time).

There was a lot that Commandos: Strike Force could have been that it was not, primarily due to the lackluster attempt at strategy and the underwhelming shooter engine it was put on. Fans of the older games will find Commandos not only quite easy, but also remarkably boring and a misrepresentation of their favorite series. Hopefully, just like Command and Conquer: Renegade, this will be the first and last of the FPS ports of the Commandos series, and we will all return to the happily familiar overhead perspective sometime in the future. But, none of this FPS stuff. Never again.

2.5 star(s) out of 5

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