An incredibly difficult, immensly satisfying, small scale rts/action game.
That is becaues, this game is one of the most trying, frustrating, unforgiving and plain hard games on the market. Commandos is a game where you lead a team of allied operatives
(commandos- geddit!) deep behind enemy lines to carry out tense and dangerous missions. There are only 6 Commandos in the whole game, but they each have their own unique skills and abilities. And if you are to be succesfull, you have to utilize all of them. For example, the Spy can dress up in officer or soldier uniforms to pass guards unnoticed. Or the green beret can pick up fixed machine gun emplacements and use them against the enemy. Whatever the scenario, you have to be ready to use what you have.
There are 10 missions in the game spread over 3 campaigns. The maps have a lot of variety too, which helps. There are some smaller maps and some very large ones, but either way you are guaranteed a good fight.
Typical of these types of strategic games, you will often be pitted against overwhelming odds, and this makes the game very difficult. This can be a turn off to some, especially if you like to play a game for 15 minutes and then leave again, but some of the less casual types may find this is just the kind of difficulty that they like.
The game's visuals are nothing stunning, especially in this day and age, with games like the Total War series and CoH. However, the 2D maps have a nice retro feel to them, and you will quickly forget that these are 2D maps once you start playing, thanks to some brilliant art design. The interiors however are in full 3D, with an easily manouverable camera.
Which brings me on to one of the less desireable features of the game- the camera. Inside=OK, outside=bad, bad, bad. There are 4 set 'directions' in exerior areas. You scroll between them using the mouse wheel. Easy!, you say. Well, not so much. Because the outside is all in 2D, it has to load a whole canvas of new images every time you rotate the camera, which means a lot of jitters when you want a different perspective on things, regardless of your system. This can leave you rather disorientated once it finally loads the new camera direction and can take some time to find your team again.
While most of the maps encourage and reward you (and sometimes you have to) by using stealth to accomplish your objectives, a couple of them can really only be completed by going all guns a-blazing. This is quite unfortunate seeing as gunplay is so cumbersome. Your commandos only have one option where they will defend themselves without you commanding them called 'Cover Mode'. This is where you set an arc zone in front of your commandos where they will shoot any enemy entering that arc. This is useful to cover doorways and other small spaces, but pretty much useless for everything else. If your men are flanked without you realising, they will quite happily be shot at until they die, or you do something about it.
Anyway, to summarize; this is an incredibly difficult game, but it rewards cunning and logical thinking. The graphics are outdated, but it is easy to look past those. However, watch out for some dodgy camera movements, and be prepared to babysit your 'Highly Trained Commandos'!