Customer Reviews

Commandos 2: Men of Courage

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First of all, if you played the first two Commandos and loved them then you will absolutley love this game and buy it now. Everything that you wished you could do (because you'd be able to in real life) in Commandos has now come true...EVERYTHING! You can climb walls or poles, traverse wires, climb in/out of windows, look in/out of windwows, snipe in/out of windows, snipe from climbing up a pole, everyone can wear at least a low ranking enemy soldiers uniform, everyone can use rifles & machine guns, everyone can carry bodies, and everyone can knock a person out, everyone except Lupan (Thief) can tie people up, everyone can drive non-specialized vehicles such as trucks and cars...and so much more! Vehicles actually have realistic physics now too! It is so realistic in how you can go about things too...it is so open ended.

Every mission is greatly different from the previous and there are no reused "stock" buildings. You can go inside all buildings and pan the camera 360 degress for a better view. The animation on the guys is completely lifelike...you gotta see it to believe it. The missions are completely replayable too...not like the first Commandos where there was pretty much only one way to go about things like a puzzle piece...do things in any order you want...it's completely up to you how you go about each and every mission...steal a tank or car and do whatever....it is completely awesome! Play it on hard or very hard and you'll be there for at least 6 or 7 hours per mission and they are HUGE! It is great to have such deep gameplay and it NEVER gets BORING.

Oh and the control takes getting use to, but let me tell you this. If you played th originals you know it uses a lot of keyboard shortcuts. Take the time to learn them well and you will be rewarded...it takes a few hours to learn them all of steady playing, but once you do the interface is really just for show so you can see what objects you have. Put in the time and you will never look back....TRUST ME. I have to get back to playing now...peace out...BUY IT, you won't regret it.

This had me so caught up, I quit playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on-line for 2 weeks because I couldn't enough. Compared to the original Commandoes, this was easier, it just took longer. But don't let that fool you, this game is tough.

There are lotsa new features added to this version, so let me list a few:
1. New characters. There are 3 new characters in this one: Natasha (the beautiful distracter of men), Lupin (the thief), and a dog (that you can use to distract the enemy or transport items back and forth)
2. New battle areas such as under water, in planes, boats, and destroyed villages.
3. New enemies. This time, you have to fight nature a little bit in the form of sharks and alligators & pirahna's.
4. A new bonus map system. If you find all of the bonus pieces, you get to try a bonus map after you complete the mission you are on, and some of them are tough too. I believe mission 9 is the only that doesn't have a bonus map.

The graphics are great (except when you zoom in) and the cutscenes are awesome. They almost look real. It will take a long time to beat these missions, so be patient and be ready for the long haul of a great game that gets real intense.

Allright guys and gals, I haven't heard much about this game but about a week before its release (Sept. 25th) I began to do some research and it looked allright. I took the plunge and dished out the 50 something bucks to get it that very day of release. Boy did it pay off! This game is incredible! This is my first encounter with the Commando series and I am a WWII buff myself...all I can say is wow. All this time I was looking forward to Medal of Honor:Allied Assault and Return to Castle Wolfenstein when this game was right under my nose! The graphics are intense and realistic, the gameplay is unbelievably in depth, and the fun is addicting. You can man tanks, armored cars, mounted guns, use anti tank mines, molotov cocktails, and interact with nearly everything. The enemy AI is the best I have seen EVER and even now I regret wasting my "game time" writing this review. The night I loaded it on my computer I played it till about 4 in the morning (this was before I even understood the complexity of the game). All I can say is that you won't be sorry...unless you are the Barney-loving, teddy-bear hugging, sorry sap that takes all of the fun out of such great war games.

SUMMARY:
Overall, an excellent strategy game. This game will appeal to those who like to think and plan out their moves. Avoid this title if you are expecting a fast-paced shoot-em-up game.

Strengths:
Versatile gameplay allows many different ways of solving each mission.
Beautiful graphics.

Weaknesses:
Can be a bit tedious once you've discovered a "system" of beating the game.

GAMEPLAY:
The game involves the player controlling a team of commandos, each with his/her own unique abilities and strengths, in order to finish a total of 10 large missions. Each mission includes a list of goals that one must accomplish (e.g., contacting a prisoner, blowing up a bridge, stealing Enigma codes, etc.). There are also 10 mini "bonus" missions that can be unlocked if you do some extra exploration and find all the pieces to a picture puzzle.

The great thing about this game is its versatility. You can do a variety of things with each commando. For instance, the thief can climb up a wall and sneak into a building through a window; the green beret can take out a Nazi guard with his knife and dump the body into a river; the spy disguised as a Japanese officer can order an enemy soldier to face a wall. There's even a trained dog that can distract enemy troops with his bark while the rest of the commando unit sneaks by!

This versatility allows one to approach each mission in an infinite number of ways. At first, the game may seem dauntingly difficult (especially during the training missions), but once you get the hang of it, the game really becomes enjoyable.

The only gripe I have about the gameplay is that once you find a "system" of beating the game, it loses its challenge. For the most part, the game centers around deciding which enemy guard to neutralize next. I used a system of diversion and attack. For example, the seductress would distract an enemy guard with her beauty while the sapper came from behind and knocked out the soldier. If the seductress wasn't available, I would throw a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of wine to distract the enemy before dispatching him. This type of technique worked 90% of the time. As a result, the game can become rather tedious.

On the whole, though, the gameplay is unmatched and the missions are worth finishing to the end.

GRAPHICS:
The graphics were one of the best I've seen. Everything is drawn out in beautiful detail. You can zoom in/out and rotate the camera to get different perspectives of the environment. The characters, however, become pixelated if one zooms in too closely.

SOUND:
The sound effects were adequate. The music was quite good and added well to the ambience.

I have been playing this game for the past several weeks to release some stress and keep my mind moving.

The game playing is real-time and realistic. If you make a mistake or forget something the game will pick it up and send solders your way. It is very important to think of all the details of your attack.

The graphics on the game are detailed. The graphics on the commandos, enemy solders, tanks and landscape are ones to take example.
The characters all have their own specialty which adds even more complexity to the game. Meaning the sniper character cannot handle mines and vice-versa.

There are 10 missions and each have a bonus mission so that you can practice more on your characters and get more strips and medals. The missions get harder and cannot be played without the experience and understanding of the previous missions. Each mission utilizes some or all of the 8 characters.

I gave this game 4 stars because I found that sometimes when you found a method to handling the enemy the game was trivial and very much time consuming. Although compared to other military strategy games this comes at the top of my list.

Have fun master-mining against the Germans!

This is a great game, but....... man you have got to learn the keyboard. Not just hot keys, also key combinations. You can pretty much get your people to do anything, but you've got to know how to do it. I am not a veteran of the previous versions and I am definitely paying for it. I normally play FPS games, i.e. quake III, and thought I would stimulate my brain a little better with a strategy type game. It was a good move, but after a couple hours I am exausted mentally. I am no genius but I am an engineer so I consider myself fairly intelligent, this is a hard but challenging game. I would recommend it, but have some patience. Try to learn as much as you can about the movements commonly used and you'll enjoy it.

I am a huge fan of RTS games. Love C&C, Warcraft, Starcraft, Homeworld, but had never played a "squad" type RTS before Commando's 2. The game really intreged me, but alas, I fell prey to frustration almost immediately. I couldn't figure out how to play the game. Once I read the manual, it got better, but not a whole lot. The interface is very unintuitive, and requires the memorization of keyboard commands for virtually every action. And as realistic as the game tries to be, I wasn't impressed. You can throw a grenade and blow up 4 Germans and still (40 minutes later) the same German found not more than 50 feet away, is still smoking a cigarette and hasn't moved an inch. (You'd think the noise would have made him move). OR I hate the fact that your gun has only a 10 foot range. Now that's realistic. Top that off with the frustrating controls, and I put the game down after "training mission number 2" (which isn't a training mission), and I don't foresee picking it up again. Teaches me not to play the demo first.

Commandos 2 is a stellar game. The graphics are simply stunning, yet the game offers much more than mere eye candy. This game is definitely not for the beginner, unless he/she possess above average patience. I say this because the game can become quite difficult in many parts, and some missions may seem downright impossible. Don't let this discourage you though, because with practice you will soon be manouvering your troops through windows, up poles, in the water, around in vehicles.

Commandos 2 offers great value and replayability. For those fortunate enough to find the hidden bonuses scattered throughout each mission there are bonus missions to overcome.

All in all this is a great game that will require many hours on your part. This game is definitely worth the money, especially if you have played any of the previous commando titles. The 3D room viewing is quite helpful, and the characters are simply superb.

Enjoy bringing down the axis powers in this compelling stategy game.

Jake. M.

I remember the time when I tried my first World War 2 game. It was captivating, challenging and it had atmosphere despite the crude graphics and sound back in the old days when PC's were using terms like CGA and EGA to describe game video support and the built-in speaker generated monotones to simulate the sound of footsteps.

That game was the original Castle Wolfenstein.

I've since been looking for that same adrenaline pump that game gave me. Even the recently released "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" (RTCW) wouldn't be able to do what Commandos 2: Men of Courage does.

RTCW will always been targetted towards the action genre. It may summon the support of past Castle Wolfenstein fanatics but it could potentially be more of a marketing ploy to yet introduce another FPS game out of the hundreds and thousands out there (counting mods). I do not speak from experience but I've seen more than my fair share of games based on this engine and that engine (the Quake engine being fairly popular).

From my experience, Commandos 2 is closer in gameplay to the original Castle Wolfenstein than anything I've ever looked at.

If you have been an avid game player for as long as I have, then you will know why Castle Wolfenstein was a classic. You can also rest assured that I wouldn't compare anything else to a classic (even though it doesn't even have the words of the original title attached to it) unless it was worthy.

Commandos 2 is worthy. Click on the buy button now. You won't regret it.

Congratulations to the Eidos and Pyro teams on an excellent job. I look forward to anything else they might bring out in the Commandos series.

What a great game....one of the best RTS I have ever played! The story is great, graphics are awesome, and the AI is challenging. It takes a while to learn everything available, but it is way worth the effort. Plan on spending some serious time with this game....ADDICTION FACTOR: HUUUUUUUGE!