Article Type: Review
Article Date: October 30, 2001
Big Installation
Installation of Eidos’ Commandos 2: Men of Courage took about fifteen minutes on my machine due to the 3-gigabyte size of the program files from three CDs. These are huge files due to the dramatically good graphics and intricacies of the many possible interactions and movements assignable to the “pieces.” These pieces are the computer generated men and their equipment on your commando team.
 |
640X480 view of Ist mission  |
You can set your resolution from 640 X 480, 800 X 600 or 1024 X 768. Lowest resolution works fine and all can be zoomed into. Background music varies per mission and is non-intrusive but can be shut off during play. During install the program measures your system and sets appropriate starting perimeters that can be changed by the player.
As should be normal regimen for any installation it is recommended that you use scandisk and defrag beforehand. And, of course, ALL other background TSRs and anti-viral programs should be closed.
Windows 95/98 are recommended OSs. XP hasn’t been thoroughly tested though. Windows 2000 sounds like a gray area in the set up instructions with suggestions of updating sound and display drivers to Direct X 8 and Windows 2000 specs. Windows ME is not discussed but seems to work on my system. Direct X 8 is included on the setup discs, which will save you a 30-minute download at 56k from the Microsoft site.
I won’t bother with minimum suggested system specs. Eidos recommends a CPU of P II 450 or equivalent with 128MB RAM and a 32MB 3-D video card plus an 8X or greater CD ROM speed. I believe this to be acceptable since there are no quickly changing scenery occurrences, as you play on one static piece of geography with men moving around in it. The richness of the detail within that screen is what needs 32 meg video cards and 128 meg of memory. With my system the missions loaded in seconds with no delay.
Sounds aren’t heavily emphasized though the mission area has all the ambient and pertinent sounds of the scenario. The commandos respond vocally to your commands and the Germans speak German too. You don’t need boom-box power to enjoy it.
 |
| Full zoom-in of German officers |
The 52-page manual is relatively thorough but actual play will help you to understand it all better. There’s an MSWord “readme” document with more hot key info and troubleshooting help. All actions are accomplished with the mouse and keyboard. You can re-map the hot keys pertaining to weapons or items usage.
This Ain’t No Flight Sim
Ok, combat simulation fans, here’s what you will not like. You begin able to choose one mission only with the next two available in preview form only. You cannot pick and choose missions. Like Silent Hunter II recently previewed, one can choose command of a U-boat and style of mission and go from there. In flight sims one can evade and survive even if you’re not greatly victorious. But Commandos is arcade-like in its levels of achievement. You play one mission until you succeed, though you can go back and play previous levels. It has three difficulty settings.
 |
| Night scenarios look good |
This is very frustrating since even though you have a semi-clear mission goal you have to experiment as to how to pull it off. You may like that. I do not. I’m not a fan of running a mission and getting killed, going a bit farther next time and a little more the next until you get through it after 75-100 tries. It’s like being locked into an un-dynamic flight sim campaign where in a mission you MUST take on six enemy aces over and over until you succeed and are allowed to go to the next mission, which is progressively harder.
The only way around this on long, complex missions is to save often so that if you don't like the results of your latest movement you can go back somewhere closer than the beginning. You'll need to do this on missions that can last many, many hours.
You Get
You have seven commandos and even a commando dog. Each has specialized skills and equipment. There’s a female seductress/spy illustrated on the box with large breasts. Of course, she has her strengths and “equipment” too. The unfortunate part of what appears to be a great game is that you cannot pick your people and equip them before a mission. THIS is what I want to do. Would that make it a more difficult program to write? Yes it would, but it would give it broader appeal to non-arcade game folks.
There are nearly fifty pieces of equipment or implements usable by your commandos in-game. The items are very distinguishable too. A .45 Colt 1911 pistol that commandos start with is visibly unique to the Luger. An MP-40 looks like the sub-machine gun it is. Only some items are out of scale so they can be easily seen in the scenario but they blend well into the scheme of things overall. They all get carried in the commando’s backpack that is viewable by contents. The backpacks have limits and you may want to ditch something in exchange for a better item you find. At any rate, the item is retrievable if you leave it on the ground.
Just any commando, unfortunately, cannot use all items. As each has special abilities, another can’t use some of the other’s equipment. If a guy with a knife dies and his pal picks up the knife he can’t use it. Who ever heard of some commandos not being able to use a knife?
Commandos can scavenge weapons, ammo, equipment, uniforms and more of killed enemy soldiers or from fallen comrades. This is a cool feature. Even if all the equipment can’t be used all weapons and uniforms can be. If a character picks up an item and puts it in his backpack there is a possibility that another commando can use it though it takes some messing about to exchange and see. You’d better grab all you can from the Germans you kill. A Mauser rifle is nice to have for long range kills and an MP-40 is a great medium-range weapon. If a little guy dies and another commando scavenges a med kit the hypo can revive the fallen fellow. Blood is shown but in small amounts. It's no splatter game.
 |
| After killing these soldiers by the house you need to get their |
There are intricate things you figure out as you replay missions. A thief character commando may need to pick the lock of a box and get what’s inside to use later by himself or another commando. The player must figure out when and in what sequence to make the various moves to proceed forward through the mission. For example if you take out a certain German soldier first and things go awry you may need to reassess the situation and knock off another guy first. Your commandos can crawl, walk and run and it may take a combination of those steps to get to a certain point in the mission as you move along in it.
It’s Tough
The frustration is that you may move through a mission carefully for an hour and have it fail. You must begin again. Sometimes if three commandos are your assigned team and just one is killed the mission fails. If this long-term commitment to a game sounds good then Commandos is for you. You certainly will not be unchallenged or be tired of it in a month. On the other hand, the player must devote large blocks of time to it. If you are “cold” from a couple days of non-play you’ll have to get into the rhythm again and you may have forgotten what steps you made to make it to a certain point of success before.
There is excellent in-game help with descriptions of every piece of equipment and how it works. You can re-read mission goals. Since there is no time limit you can be slow and careful. While you study in-game information it pauses anyway. Views can be switched around so you can get different points-of-view and angles on things. Can that German see me? You can also hit the enemy view spectrum to see if you are visible. The best feature is where your commandos can be ordered to give weapons coverage. The screen shows what area he can defend with the weapon he has and where it is pointed. You can then have other commandos do other things more safely. It is a bit hard to direct all of them to do the same thing at one time though. When you meet Allied soldiers you have a limited amount of control of their actions.
A very negative feature for me was the inability to draw a weapon and move with it. You must move then pull it out. Commandos can’t run with a pistol drawn? It leaves you needing to hit keys quickly to draw down on the enemy and then fire after moving close enough. Fumble with the keys and you’re dead. Each side’s firearms when used in their characters’ hands have unlimited ammo like the Colt .45 for commandos, but if you take a German weapon it can run out.
 |
| Preview of future mission- even a bird flying at lower right |
As you move up levels things get much more difficult and complex. The scenario screen gets enlarged proportionately and the area of the mission becomes larger. You interact with many more items and vehicles plus enter/exit buildings. The nighttime mission illustrated covers a rambling dock complex. The good thing is that the night action is quite visible. Eidos bathed the scene in dark blue light to simulate darkness and it works well. I wish Silent Hunter II’s nighttime U-boat bridge were as visible,
One important keystroke never worked for me. While the “readme” document said one thing the instruction manual both agreed and disagreed. In text it agreed yet in an inset illustrating key commands it showed something different. It pertained to the tie and gag command if you knock out enemy soldiers whereupon you can steal their goods and uniform and pick them up and carry them out of sight. It never worked and is important. Only after you killed them could you carry them to a safe area to examine their backpacks. But sometimes even killing them with a knife allows them to cry out and alert others. Knocking them out doesn’t.
 |
| Same 1st mission scene- different angle |
Conclusions
Commandos 2: Men of Courage does get you immersed in the action, especially if you’ve been trying to succeed on a level for many hours. It is intricate and you must concentrate like you're building a house of cards. And it is addictive since as you move up levels things get more complicated with more items and people coming into play. But when you fail there is no debrief as to exactly why when just one chap is killed. It’s probably due to the loss of his skills to the team but it would be nice to know exactly why. At other times you can lose a couple guys and the game continues. Sometimes you’ll get disgusted and quit if your patience is thin during a session but will be drawn back.
I’m not at all certain whether most folks will commit to master all the intricacies that must be learned to get a little good at it or whether they have large blocks of time to invest in the game, though they are save-able to come back to if you temporarily burn out. It is possible to play one mission over many days they are so long.
What I would have liked would have been more combat sim-like. You choose a mission. You get a mission briefing. You choose your team members. You equip them. You move out. You could progress through like a campaign or play single missions. Your commandos, weapons and equipment choices could be prompted to some extent by the program with things like, “you’ll need Molotov cocktails,” or “you’ll need a sniper.” If you make a bad choice the program tells you. You can change it or go on your own decision.
I recall a COMBATSIM.COM forum guy once talking about the then new European Air War in that he desired more ground detail saying something like, “I want to see Tommy kids jumping off their bikes as my 109 makes a low pass.” Well in Commandos this is finally a reality. German soldiers relax and are visible smoking cigarettes and every figure is fully articulated in human movement. Whether that will ever be integrated into the end-all flight sim I don’t know. But this game is painstakingly detailed with no compromise in quality of graphics in any way.
But as I’ve always said regarding combat flight simulators, pretty clouds do not make a good sim. There are many factors involved to make a good piece of entertainment software. Commandos is not bad. In fact it’s pretty good. It’s just not as good as it could be. I enjoyed it more than Green Berets’ ground war action of the same arcade-level genre. It won’t replace your dynamic combat sims but is a fun diversion. You will want to "beat" the thing and will get deeply involved if you give it a chance.
P.S. After finishing this review I found the elusive and confusing gag and tie key to incapacitate enemies after knocking them out. I was messing about and hit the 'TAB' key by accident and found that works! Unfortunately I spent a lot of frustration without it on the first few missions.
Review System Specs:
- ASUS A7V133 mother board with 256MB PC –133 RAM
- Athlon T-Bird 1.2GhZ CPU
- SoundBlaster PCI 128 w/Yamaha YST-M7 speakers
- nVidia GeForce 2 Ultra 64MB
- Windows ME
- Direct X 8.0
- 17” monitor 28 dpi
- Samsung 52X CD drive
