Commandos 2: Men of Courage Review

As for the original characters, they are much the same as they used to be, apart from the fact that most of them are able to swim now, use different weapons, or drag a dead body... still some illogical rules of play remained: for instance, sapper, a specialist for throwing hand grenades, refuses to throw smoke bombs, CS-gas or Molotov cocktail...

One thing that disappointed me was the sound. After Beyond The Call of Duty, they returned the original voices but reduced their number to a couple of samples only for god knows what reason. You will rarely hear Tiny say anything else than "This is Mine" or Lupin say anything besides "I was born for this"/ "Good idea... I suppose" and the same goes for the enemies. This is a real shame... I can see no reason for what they've done, they have introduced a lot of sound effects (mostly of walking on different surfaces) and a good ambient soundtrack, but I still think this can hardly pass as a replacement for "Alarm! Alarm!" and other "famous" quotations.

Gameplay is practically the same. The main difference is that now, you have to mess about the inventory and weapons, which you didn't have to do in the original game. All maps are abundant in various objects, ammunition, weapons and equipment, and all characters in game have inventories. All this changed the gameplay a bit, as you will have to spend some time in the game playing with your inventory and moving objects from one character to another. We asked for this, we got it... but rummaging through all those drawers and closets, and even the inventories gets tedious after a while.

Apart from the classical handgun, you will get to use an entire range of guns, rifles, machineguns, and other objects that can be used in combat. Even though only the standard revolvers and marine's harpoon (and allied rifles) have unlimited ammo, I doubt, you will ever need to use them much. I remember that in the old game I used to take care of every bomb, sniper bullet, and time and remote controlled bombs; but you don't have to rationalize weapons in Commandos 2. Health-packs are also abundant in the game. The only thing that will cause you severe problems is remembering keyboard shortcuts and what character is able to use what items... but don't worry, you'll get the hang of it by the seventh mission ; )

One of the useful new options is the so-called auto-fire mod: give your soldier a gun, tell him to look in the desired direction, and he will automatically shoot the enemies he sees there. This can get very useful, especially when you need backup or someone who would defend your position while you're trying to snipe someone off. If you give your troops guns which can kill with one shot, you can be certain they will cope with the enemy better than you would. Do not hesitate to use this option as it is sure to save your hide more than once...

There are initially twelve missions altogether, two of which are training missions. The training missions are useful to get grips with the game. I got a bit annoyed by the second and third mission as they are exceedingly long and are taking place on the same, huge map. The rest of the missions are great, somewhat shorter, and set all around the world. You start off in Europe, go a bit north travel to Asia, and then return to Europe for the big Paris finale. Each mission has primary and secondary objectives and additional tasks. Some of the tasks and objectives can get silly at times, like when you are ordered to hide in the bushes for no apparent reason, or to cross a river on an elephant.

The best thing is that every mission will let you get a bonus by finding pieces of old photos of your team members. These pieces are scattered all over the levels, mostly in boxes and drawers, and they are usually very, very hard to find. If you do manage to collect all pieces on a level, you will be awarded a bonus level, which greatly increases the replay value.

As for the enemies, I didn't manage to notice any differences in comparison to what they acted like in the first Commandos. There is a slight change in the pattern in several 'invasion' missions, when a group of enemy soldiers ransacks your base, running around and inspecting each corner.

The game has three levels of difficulty: normal (your characters can't die on this level of difficulty), hard and very hard, and it also features a cooperative multiplayer mode. If you ever played any games of this type (And I'm not counting the ridiculously easy Star Trek: Away Team there) and are quite proficient with holding a mouse, I suggest you skip the normal level.

The difficulty levels also differ in the number of hit-points you tend to loose when hit, number of enemies around and your guns' firing rate. This last thing really made me play slowly and plan my every move, trying to avoid open conflicts with more than one enemy.

Phew. That's what it was like playing Commandos 2. It wasn't too long, but then, I always look on the bright side of things: at least now I can sleep, eat, or even leave my room...