Commando 2 - HD Remaster

Review

It only took the Wehrmacht 6 weeks to invade Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and France in 1940. The Allied forces took severe losses and were pushed back to Dunkirk, where a significant number of troops were able to cross the English Channel (La Manche, in French) to find refuge in England. It would take 4 years for the Allied Forces to re-ignite the Western Front theatre of war. During that time, the British Army assembled several small units of specialised soldiers to take the fight deep into enemy territory. These men were fearless, and were prepared to die making sure that each mission they were deployed to would be successful. They were known as the first “Commandos”. And you are going experience what it was like to be one of these men in Commando 2 – HD Remaster.

Commando 2 – HD Remaster is Real-time strategy/tactical game developed by Yippee! Entertainment, Pyro Studios and will be published by Kalypso Media Digital on the 25th of January 2020 (official release date) on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One. It’s a remake of the original masterpiece which was published by Kalypso Media Digital back in August 2002.

The game consists of 21 missions, including a couple of tutorials and bonus missions. What a pleasure it has been to be able to replay this game. As I am writing this review, I have been playing for 14 hours and have successfully completed 5 missions, and I am probably halfway through my 6th mission.

At the start of each mission, there’ll be a small introduction which combines a narrative and your mission objectives. You’ll be instructed more than once on additional targets as you progress through each mission. If you haven’t played any games in this incredibly successful series, you must be aware that the game is extremely challenging and you’ll find yourself saving every time you manage to kill an enemy or find the correct path on the way to one of your objective. To win a mission, you must complete all main objectives, and you can choose to complete the secondary objectives if you feel to capable of doing so.

You’ll have 3 to 4 characters at the start of each mission, and each of these characters will have specific skills. For example, the diver is an accomplished swimmer (no kidding) and a sensational knife-thrower. The thief is extremely agile and an expert in pickpocketing, while the Spy can blend in with the enemy forces by disguising himself as a German officer. There are nine characters in total and I’ll let you discover them if you haven’t played the original.  The trick in this game is to figure out the enemy soldier’s movements and to make sure you can move around them without being detected, or find a way to eliminate them one by one without been seen by another soldier. It will take you time, and as I mentioned above, you’ll be saving your progress often.

To help you out, you can select the eye button on the top right corner of the screen, then when you select an enemy soldier it will show you his line of vision as two shades of green.  The light green means that the soldier can see you clearly and might be able to detect you and raise the alarm. Therefore, you’ll have two choices at hand; either kill him before he raises the alarm or move swiftly out of his vision. The dark green shade means that your character is in the soldier’s line of vision, but he is not too easy to detect.  On some occasions, you’ll truly wonder how you can move somewhere within the map as there are too many enemies in a small area. Then you might need some sort of diversion, the likes of throwing a packet of cigarettes somewhere in his light green field of vision, but slightly away from your character. That way, the soldier can go towards the object and you can move your character in position for a silent kill, or move where you want to go. Be aware, it doesn’t take too long for these soldiers to come back to their routine. So be quick.

They are plenty of objects to pick up in this game. So, make sure to check out cabinets and other furniture. You’ll find weapons, keys and ammunition on dead soldiers, but your inventory will be limited as each of your commandos has a small backpack and can’t carry too many things. The only object that will not affect your inventory when you pick them up is the bonus documents.

You’ll be rotating your character’s field of vision quite often to help you better see where you are and what to do next. One thing you must master quickly is your action keys, such as searching, getting your characters up or lying down, and of course killing the enemies. The other thing you need to be careful of is not making too much noise. So, running next to enemies’ soldiers is not really the way to go as your characters will make more noise with their heavy footsteps. Crawling will be slower, but still the way to go as long as you move in shadows and avoid their light green fields of vision.

I really like the revamped graphics and I must say that the developers have kept the feel of the original game in terms of the interface, which is one aspect that made the original game such a classic and masterpiece. It might a take a bit of time learning the controls if you are a newcomer, but apart from that, it’s great!