Game Discussion of the Week: Commandos 2: Men of Courage

I wanted to discuss this game since it's one of the games I played a lot in my childhood and it's one those games I used to watch my dad play. He got through the entire game and so did I back in the day, however, there are collectible bonuses that you can collect and there was one level that we never found them all in, and that was the second last level, Colditz Castle. When you collect all the bonuses in a level, you get a bonus level that usually introduces a new mechanic that will appear in the next normal level. So recently I just played through the entire game again and it was so much fun. I got all of the bonus levels and can now get some relief.

As for the game itself, this is a very fun strategy action stealth game. It plays out like an interactive puzzle because you cannot rush in and kill everyone at the beginning of a level. First you have to gather resources such as guns, ammo and other equipment. There are patrols moving around the map and sometimes vehicles that you have to be extra careful around. Each map has many different ways of being completed, an open canvas. I love this aspect of the game since it's so rewarding when you pull of something amazing. Clever planning is rewarded while reckless attempts are punished. The cast of characters all have their special uses, although some characters you don't want to use unless everyone else are dead. The Spy and Green Beret are my usual go-to characters since the Spy can move undetected and the Green Beret is fast and has most of the special movement abilities.

The levels are very varied and you get to see pretty much every theater in World War 2 except for Africa. Even the North Sea makes an appearance. The game is well paced, but I must say that the third level is a bit unforgiving. I remember how much I hated that level as a kid. It's the only level in the game where you have to stealth the entire the thing. You can't kill anyone. Except for that I think most of the levels are all fun, but Colditz Castle is my favorite. It has a sense of epic scale and importance. All of your characters have different starting points, and you can freely choose who you want to solve this puzzle of a level with. One by one you reach the other characters. Truly a terrific level.

This is a very fun game, but I wish its controls had aged better. It's pretty clunky compared to modern standards, but perhaps the remaster has solved these problems. 4/5

Well there's a remaster for this game on PC right now, but it's scheduled to come out on Xbox One, PS4 and the Switch. So it might be worth checking out whenever it comes out on your console of choice.

194X games are soo sweet. Loved 19XX. The Strikers 1945 games are also pretty awesome. Some consider them to be up there with the greatest shooters.

Never played The Loop Master but sounds great. now I'm going to load it up on Mame and give it a go. Thanks, dude.

Wow, time flies by super fucking quickly. I was certain I played this around Christmas, maybe some time after New Year's, however, it's already been more than a year since I replayed this and had a discussion about it. Yesterday, I was craving to play this game again and even though I wouldn't have like to pay full price, I did buy the remaster without any discount (25 USD). Since, I've got a somewhat fresh taste of the original release, I can certainly say the remaster improved the awkward controls of the original release on console. It's much easier to do many different mechanics in sequence now, however, it is far from perfect. For some reason they made aiming a lot worse. There are a ton of bugs too, which is frustrating. For some reason some characters cannot leave a vehicle after getting in, aiming some times doesn't work inside and there aren't any explosion animations. The remaster is a mixed bag, but the quality of life improvements make it better most of the time compared to the original release. I especially adore the super fast quick save and quick load feature.