Way back when, in the late 90s, the Commandos series began, and it was awesome. I remember purchasing Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines at the store and enjoying leading my squad of six specialized commandos across Europe during events of WWII. In time, a standalone expansion would release, as well as two large and successful sequels, and then a forgettable transition to first person shooter on the original Xbox. For some fifteen years now, the series has been silent, but just recently Kalypso Media published an HD Remaster of Commandos 2: Men of Courage as done by Yippee Entertainment.
When I first heard about the HD Remaster last year, I was excited to see the series get some much deserved attention. Unfortunately, one month removed from launch and several patches later, the game still has a ways to go to restore it to the former glory of the original. The silver lining is that Yippee are paying attention to the community and are continuing to address performance bugs and the like with regular patches, and that says a lot, but the game would have been a much more polished release with another few months of development. Additionally, in a polarizing move, the decision was made to remove the original war iconography, as one community member put it. This means that the Nazi insignia and even the Japanese rising sun imagery has been sanitized. I’m not sure the reasoning for this given that this is a videogame and one that is based very much so in a dark time in history. The decision to censor these images out of the remastering of this game seems heavy-handed and disagreeable. The game touts authentic WWII scenarios, but goes through a lot of trouble to avoid historical details. Afterall, trying to brush these things under the rug doesn’t make them any less a fact of history, and removing them takes away some of the sense of historical immersion and atmosphere the game used to have when it was first released nearly eighteen years ago.
All that aside, what you have underneath these two bigger issues is still a gem of a game. Yippee Entertainment have set out to rework the controls of Commandos 2 (though no gamepad support yet, and understandably there might not be in the future), and also have updated the UI and offer a nice intro tutorial mission. Honestly, I don’t remember much about the original experience in terms of controls or UI, but I don’t recall having any major gripes. Anyway, the Unity 3D engine was used for this remaster, a first for the Commandos series. Not only is the graphical quality improved, but players can rotate the camera around to examine the environment in impressive detail.
That said, the game begins with an introductory mission that takes you through some of the many elements and mechanics. I found myself referring to the in-game help guide a lot during the first couple of missions to get acquainted with the ins and outs, but once you get the hang of it you’re fine. Getting used to watching enemy patrols and watching their field of view, crawling in prone position, getting to know your commandos and their special skills — it’s a treat, and I’ll say to this day that I still enjoy the characters (there are nine playable characters throughout the campaign now). You’ll become surprisingly invested in this crack team of war experts as you get to know their personalities and voices and the great teamwork that they’re forced into. Tiny, the enormous Green Beret and the Sapper, Thomas Hancock, has a great accent — there is a spy, a thief, and even a helpful dog. It’s a great crew, and most missions have you controlling three of these characters at a time, carrying out beautifully designed missions that can be executed multiple ways, depending on your creativity, skill, and a bit of luck. There are about ten missions total across a variety of environments and these missions are large and can take hours to complete. The ability to save any time is vital as it doesn’t take but a single mistake to throw the entire mission off, and unlike a FPS, it’s hard to recover from such a mistake.
Artwork and attention to detail is always something the Commandos games have been able to claim, and obviously the same is true with the HD Remaster. Environmental textures are excellent, and most animations looks great, too. There are some minor graphical bugs and hang-ups like items overlapping and clipping one another, but these aren’t unique to this HD Remaster and aren’t alone enough to break the experience.
To this point, Yippe Entertainment has done a pretty good job with this HD Remaster, but as it needed a few more months to bake. Since launch, patches have helped, but there is still room for improvement, and it’s reasonable to think Yippee will get there. At the same time, the elephant in the room has to be pointed out, and that is that you can get the original Commandos 2 game for 75% less than the cost of this remaster. In fact, you can get the entire Commandos series (except the awful Strike Force first person shooter on Xbox) for less than the cost of this HD Remaster. That said, if you’re a fan of the series, you want to support the HD Remaster, but at the same time it’s had a rough go out of the gates that might give you pause. I’d recommend keeping an eye on this one and seeing what develops, but RTS fans should definitely make it a point to play this series if they haven’t yet.
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