Commandos 2: Men of Courage

"It's like a little kid, you just have to show some patience."

Ah yes, Commandos 2: Men of Courage...I doubt any game has brought me as much joy as it has brought grief, quite like this one.
Truly, this game is one of the few where the sense of fulfilment is worth buying a new controller after you've thrown the old one against the TV screen one too many time.
Quite the outrageous statement, wouldn't you say? Well then, lets see if I can explain exactly why this game is worth the expensive experience it'll be if you have a short fuse.

The setting:
Commandos 2 (from here on referred to as "C2") takes place during the Second World War, during the course of the game you'll be visiting quite a number of exotic resorts, changing between the tropics of Thailand and Burma, to a German castle and surroundings and downtown Berlin and Paris. Each and every one of these levels is created beautifully, with a ton of details to be seen everywhere, this beauty becomes even more apparent with the overview camera, which gives you a good view of the entire scenery.
Changing the camera is done by pressing a simple button combination, and although the camera itself is rigid in not being able to take more than 4 locations (you can turn it 360 degrees when you're in a small indoor location though), but it still gives you a good enough view of what's going on regardless of where you stationed your men.

The characters:
During your quest thwarting the German and Japanese advance as much as you can, you take control of 8.5 elite commandos, each with their own skills. 7 men, differing between a true commando able to slit throats, a thief, able to steal off of enemy sentries and all sorts of other cool characters. Besides them there's Natasha, a woman able to seduce lower class (as in: not officers or SS-ers) enemies, so as to allow other characters to move behind their backs and slit their throat, or do something other terrible to them. The last commando, the .5, is a dog! I kid you not, Whiskey is his name, and he's able to transport a number of goods from one character to another using a dog whistle. Besides that he's able to divert the attention of enemies by barking, which allows for a number of opportunities for your mates to get away for example.
All in all there's a ton of combinations you can use to achieve your goals, although I often found myself using the Green Beret (ironically nicknamed "Tiny") to slaughter any and all enemies in the level. This might just be my morbid nature though, as the you"re rewarded for a quick succession of the mission, and trying to kill every enemy usually takes forever.

The missions:
To complete your mission the lads at Pyro Studios set out a number of tasks, varying from 'save this and that character', to 'bomb the boat' and 'halt the invasion'. Usually this demands quick yet good thinking so as not to get discovered and K.I.A or **** up and miss the opportunity which results in failing to complete a primary objective. Most of the time you'll be able to get a second chance, as long as you know what you're doing, but then again, if you know what you were doing you wouldn't have ****ed up in the first place. There are however certain occasions where you only have one chance, so you'd be wise as to do it right the first time and just get it over with. I'm not advising this because the game suffers from a severe lack of save points like numerous other games (I'm looking at you Vagrant Story...), but more because saving and loading the game are and absolute pain in the ass. Fair enough, you can save and load anywhere, and anytime you want, but actually doing it is quite the annoying thing. Why? It takes forever. I think it's because you're able to save anytime and place you want, because the game would need to remember everything that's happened at that point, so it'll take a while. However!, after a while you sort of become used to it, because in this game you will save and load a lot due to ****ing up, or quitting the game due to stress. And not only that, 90% of the time you're loading a game it's because you ****ed up, and the loading time gives you ample time to think up of another strategy! Just my two cents, but since I've looked at it that way the aggravating wait doesn't hurt so much anymore.

The graphics:
Pretty, that's all I can say really, the levels themselves look gorgeous and the characters look lively.
Every level looks distinctly different from the last one, and they all have their pretty bits. Besides that the short FMVs between levels also look great, pity there aren't more of them. The indoor graphics also look great. It might take some time getting used to "what can I use, and what can't I?", but after a level or 2 you'll know exactly how to use what.

The sound:
Sound is, to me always an important aspect of any game, sometimes even more so than graphics, since the SFX and music always plays an important role in creating a games distinct atmosphere. So how about C2? To put it bluntly; it's bloody awesome. All of the sound effects sound crystal clear, and the music is perfect for the game. There is however one major flaw regarding the music, and that's that it skips. A lot. It's pretty much the only gripe about the game, save for the save/load times, but to me it's a major one. Of course, there's always the option of turning the music off, but it's also too good to do that, so it's a bit of a dilemma.
Normally, when you're not doing much, the music plays just fine, but when you're going indoors, changing the camera angle, or do something that requires a big animation you'll immediately notice the skipping music. A shame, really.

The difficulty:
As I've said before, and as is also noticeable in the tagline of this review, the thing this game requires most of all (besides a console, TV and player), is patience. Lots and lots of patience.
As long as you have that you'll be just fine, if you don't, you might as well sell your game because there's no chance in hell you'll enjoy it even for a moment.
Is this game difficult? Yes, it is, mostly in the form of "there's about 70 enemies strolling around in every level, there's about 5 of you, and you'll die if you take more than 5 hits".
Now, this is where you come in, by taking precautions, moving around cautiously and saving a lot, you'll be able to complete pretty much every objective and mission in this game, but this too requires patience. As you've probably noticed already, this isn't Timesplitters. Hell will freeze over before anyone will be able to complete this game with 'guns a blazin'.
Other than that there's not much to say about the difficulty, it's just...there.

The extras:
In any of my games, I always like to see extras, be they in the form of artwork, character-related FMVs, jokes, secret modes or anything. Pyro Studios delivers to us, secret missions!
Fair enough, so how do we unlock these? In every level there's a number of photo fragments scattered all around the place, find every one of these, and you'll have made the photo complete, by doing this you've unlocked the special mission. However, you've only unlocked them for the difficulty you're playing on now, so you'll have to find them all again when you play on Hard or Very Hard (assuming you play on Normal, there is no easy mode...).
It's a bit little, but considering there are 10 missions (+ 2 tutorial missions), there are also 10 extra levels, and while unlike the main missions, they do look alike some of the time, they're still entertaining enough to find and unlock.

The breakdown:
Setting: 9/10, pretty, exciting and different each time.
Characters: 8/10, for everyones needs another character, though the Beret is somewhat too usable.
Missions: 9/10, same as the setting.
Graphics: 8/10, great overall but the rigid camera sort of ruins it.
Sound: 8/10, SFX are great, music is great despite the frequent skipping
Difficulty: 9/10, challenging, yet amazingly addicting at the same time. Some might find it too challenging/frustrating though.
Extras: 9/10, secret missions are entertaining enough, and I don't really know what other sort of specials could have been implemented.

Overall: 9/10, a great, frustratingly addicting, challenging game that should be given more credit than it's got (ignoring the reviews on Gamefaqs).

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/17/05