Commandos 2: Men of Courage

"History is in your hands. Dont screw it up..."

Gameplay 9/10
Like me, I am sure most of you after playing this game for 5 minutes will think: ''Why did I buy this''? But I later learned after you got used to the complex controls, and strange targeting system, it became a very fun game. However, everytime you have more than one person on your team, you need to ''player zap'' between them, which takes away from the whole ''Band of Brothers'' experience. For example: If you are off fighting a war somewere else, and a German enemy makes it past you and then to your team, you would not know they would be getting attacked, and scince they have no AI when you are not in control of them, they become target pratice for the enemy. The shooting system is pretty dull, you control your soldier and he has a cross hair in front of him, and you need to get into a certain range of a German so the cross-hair will lock on then you shoot. It also requires alot of strategy and espionage type action. The characters will have certain abilitys that you need to get through a level, such as one could maybe run faster than another, or climb a rope, Etc. This is proboly the strongest area in the game overall, even though the targeting sucks, this is really a thinking mans game, and its so good at that, that I gave it a reasonable 9/10.

Graphics 5/10

The graphics are something you would see on the old Playstation, but obviously the graphics were not Eidos' first concern. The small and blocky character models suck, but the back round and weathering effects are pretty good, but they could have done it better.

Sound 6/10

The sound really isnt anything special, screams of dying enemys, and even allies. Everytime you get and objective done a voice would come on and say ''That wasnt so hard, was it?'' Or something like that. It would be so annoying if the voice was not so high pitched and french-like. I think there is some back round music, But I never really noticed scince I was too wrapped up in trying to think of a logical way to get around something.

Control 7/10

Bah. Another flaw. The controls are too complex and inconvienient. After about 20 Minutes of play, they will become easier than after a while you wont notice them. But still, it could have been better.

Story 9/10

It dosent start off too well, but after a while it relocates real Pacific Islands that were taken in WWII.
The only downside is that while on the Allies, you never really get to play as any Americans. Just British and French soldier fighting the Germans and Japanese.

Overall: 9/10

The only reason It scored so high after recieving many flaws, is that the strategy gameplay was just too fun. I would rate the Replay value around 7/10.

Rent or Buy?-Running low on cash? If so, rent it first. If you liked the first one, you will want to buy this one.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/29/02, Updated 08/29/02