Reporting for duty… sir.
It’s 1940. Great Britain is constantly getting bombed by the Luftwaffe. Winston Churchill decides to form an elite division of men to be sent way behind enemy lines to destroy Nazi installations in a stealthy manner all over occupied Europe, Africa and the Mediterranean. You of course, are the commander of such an elite squad that will turn the tide of the war for the allies.
1998 saw a barrage of superb games for the PC. Such games as Starcraft, Fallout 2 and Baldur’s Gate seemed to be on every young geeks holiday wish list that year. I recall reading reviews for Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty getting great reviews in video game magazines when I was a pimple ridden teenager. Amidst playing such classics I overlooked this title and I’m sad to say I did. Well, better late than never, right?
Commandos plays a bit like one half Metal Gear and one half Lost Vikings. You’re given control of seven men, each with their own set of abilities to achieve your objectives that usually boils down to your team blowing something up such as a damn, fuel tanks or anti-aircraft guns. There’s the Sapper who’s special ability is explosives, the Spy who can impersonate enemy officers to distract guards and the Green Beret who can scale walls, distract enemy guards temporarily with his radio and bury himself in the snow. There will be missions you won’t have all seven men, upping the handicap even further. Now, the Metal Gear aspect of the game deals heavily with stealth. If you’re expecting this RTS where you send wave after wave of expendable soldiers it’s not going to happen. If one of your commandos happens to die, game over. There will be some missions where you men will be sent in with minimal provisions. So you’ll find yourself stealing Jerry’s bombs, boats and other goods to get the job done and get the hell out before the entire German army is on you like sauer on kraut.
Enemy soldiers have a cone of sight that’s divided into two parts. The lighter, green portion of the cone allows the enemy to spot you when you are lying prone, while the darker green cone allows you to slip by unnoticed like a snake on your belly. It’s generally not a good idea to kill an enemy off right. It’s ideal to distract them, sneak up behind them and kill them silently with your knife. But don’t expect the guards to just ignore their dead comrades, they’re not stupid and they’ll alert the base sending out more troops to canvass the base looking for intruders. The Enemy AI is excellent. If you’re trudging through snow and they notice foot prints, expect them to start looking for you. Now, it’s not just visual cues that send guards into a frenzy, they also respond to sound. They’ll investigate explosions, gun shots and odd noises. Not all the guards patrol the base alone, time to time you’ll run into a gaggle of guards. Expecting to kill each one of them silently when they’re all packed together will prove impossible, so it’s moments like this where you decide to distract them all, or allow the marine with his machine gun to send them straight to hell. If the guards to catch you it’s tough to continue as enemy patrol is stepped up with more men coming out of their barracks to look for you. The game is pretty much trial and error as there seems to only be one way to beat the levels, but if you’re creative enough I’m sure there is other avenues of approach. There will be times where you’ll slam your fist down in a fit of rage having the to re-load your last save game when you think you had it all figured out. So in a sense, the game can be like a puzzle at times more than an RTS. Speaking of the save system, this game even has a password system. I really don’t understand why a game in 1998 on the PC would have a password system unless you want to skip ahead to another mission for whatever your reasons may be. The game is extremely hard at times but with enough patience you can get the job done and damn is it ever rewarding when a mission tougher than day old french bread is accomplished.
Control wise the game is rather simple. You can point-and-click your way through everything but timing plays a big role in Commandos so you’ll want to memorize the hot keys first thing. I hate it when games, especially on the PC do not allow you to re-map buttons. Most of the hot keys make sense such as “G” to draw your pistol (that every commando carries) but hotkeys such as “X” for your knife, instead of “K” is a bit strange. There are also hot Keys for various camera views. F2 through F8 will bring up various camera views. Personally, I didn’t find this feature all that useful and just found it much easier to stick with the default camera view. I suppose this was to be able to switch back and forth easily with each commando, but due to the slow nature of your commandos it’s something that’s better in theory than put to practice.
Speaking of views, the graphics are on par with most games released eleven years ago. To be honest it’s sometimes hard to make out who’s who with the higher resolutions turned on due to diminutive nature of your commandos. The level design is excellent as you have to take in cover and other terrain into consideration while making headway to your objective. What’s strange is that there’s no music during the missions. You’ll get a short little fan-fare of sorts during the initial map load out, but the deafening silence ads to the tension and you’ll jump from time to time thinking you’re safe from enemy view to hear “HALT!”. In Beyond the Call of Duty, music was added that sounds like something out of any standard Hollywood war movie. This seems to take away the tension associated with the missions personally, but you can always turn this feature off. The voice acting is pretty poor and sadly it gets worse in the expansion, it’s really hard to explain how it went bad from worse but once you play the two back to back you’ll notice the difference immediately.
Going Above and Beyond the Call
Beyond the Call of Duty really is more of the same with eight new insanely hard levels. New additions to the pack is a new Commando called the Dutch Contact a femmè fatal figure that distracts guards by making out with them. On top of a new Commando whose specialty is sex, the original commandos get the ability to throw rocks and cigarettes to distract the enemy. There’s also the ability for some Commandos to capture enemy guards by gun point which allows you to control them provided they’re within range of your gun. One would think all these additions would make the game easier, but it’s still just as challenging if not more so than the initial installment. So once you’ve exhausted the first 24 missions, give Beyond the Call a shot, maybe you’ll enjoy some of the nuances maybe not.