Commandos 2: Men of Courage

"How does the Strategy game fair on the xbox"

So far the game is pretty fun, its got very difficult controls to get used to. You will navigate many menus with nothing but pictures to tell you what they are. At first this is very overwhelming but I got used to most of it. The tutorials are LONG; there are 4 different ones with about 20 missions in each. The first one (general) took me about 45 minutes to complete. After a while I just got tired and started the game. The two training missions are well done; they helped me learn the basics (only after dieing hundreds of times.) The first one is pretty basic just do precisely what they tell you to do in the beginning the rest is easy. The second one there is very little strategy since you can just walk up behind any enemy and kill him with no challenge. Until you have to defeat a tank but I don’t want to ruin that. After this I was feeling pretty good about myself, I mean I just beat two missions of one of the hardest games in one night. Just wait until the 3 mission, your first non-training mission. You start off in a boat with no direction, just the knowledge that you need to meet someone. I spent about 45 minutes before I made it on land (alive). For some reason this challenge is not the frustrating “I don’t have to that again type” but instead you have fun even when you’re dieing because you can see actually what you did wrong and how to do it right. Back to controls, X=switch characters, A=conform action, Y=open menu for actions (lay mine, detonate bomb, dig hole etc) B=cancel, Left Trigger=switch from action mode to interactive mode (this basically means the in action mode you can fight, while in interaction mode you can pick up items, talk to people, or other things in the environment.) Right trigger=switches options in interaction mode like gag the person or pick up the person. Left Stick=movement of character, Right Stick=movement of camera (kind of like a mouse would do on the computer), White=crawl/stand up, black=camera (with the camera you can rotate it in 90 degree increments meaning that there are 4 set views the camera can have. You can also zoom in and out. This is much like the rotation you get a couple of set zooms. The graphics don’t seem to suffer much when zoomed in.

The graphics in the game are good. They are very clear and that’s the main thing in a game like this. While not technically impressive for the xbox. Don’t expect a halo, this is a port of a year old PC game and you can tell. The graphic s do seems a little enhanced from that version and from what I’ve heard of the PS2 version this one is a lot better. As said before everything is clear and this game uses attention to detail so that’s what’s most important. My only complaint is that you cant always tell what items are in the menu when you are selection them or which commando your selecting but in time that wont be a problem.

The Sound is ok. The music is good but I’ve only heard a few tracks. This is another game that would benefit from the burn music option. The voices so far are good, they aren’t the best I’ve heard but they could be much worse. The sound effects are just the average ones of gunfire, knife, etc. I would recommend that you turn down the sound effects and music otherwise you wont be able to hear the voices that well.

From what I read there are also bonus missions you can unlock if you collect things in the levels so this should add some replay. Also another thing I like that I thought Gunvalkyrie was missing was the ability to go back and replay levels after you beat them.

Gameplay=9/10 if you like strategy, 7/10 if you like action. (I like strategy)
Graphics=7.8/10 nothing special but they don’t hurt the game
Sound=7.6/10 suffers from lack of tracks and you cant listen to own music

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/30/02, Updated 10/30/02