2001 really is beginning to feel like quite a long time ago indeed and Commandos 2, which originally released way back in September of that year is, it has to be said, now showing its age in many ways. Pyro Studios real-time tactics effort is undoubtedly something of a classic of the genre, for sure; a deep and strategic affair that's got buckets of atmosphere and throws players into a series of enormously challenging missions across Nazi-occupied Europe. However, it's also a game whose systems feel rather antiquated in The Year of Our Lord 2020 – a feeling which is exacerbated by a lazy HD remaster that does the bare minimum while introducing plenty of new problems of its own.
For players who've already experienced the delights of the Commandos series back in the day, there's still plenty of fun to be had reliving past glories and digging into levels you'll have spent a ton of time figuring out all those years ago here, but this is an experience that's badly hampered by controls that have been poorly implemented and don't even get close to matching the comfort of a mouse and keyboard. Player movement, camera actions and object interactions in this console version are a supremely niggly, often hugely frustrating affair that lead to numerous unnecessary deaths and the constant alerting of throngs of enemy guards.
We've personally been through this game's huge and complicated levels multiple times over the years and still, with prior knowledge of enemy placements, hiding spots and little tricks to bypass sticky situations, we found ourselves having to save our progress constantly as we struggled to align our tiny little commandos in the exact way necessary to pick up or diffuse a mine, search or hide an enemy body, clamber through a window or – the absolute worst offender here – shoot our weapons accurately.
It feels buggy and unexacting in even the most simple of interactions, and it makes levels which are already rather tortuously tough, a proper pain to put up with. Even the game's opening training missions saw us succumb to the enemy on numerous occasions due to an inability on our part to reliably climb up a pole, shimmy across wires, or just shoot straight at a small number of guards without making a right pig's ear of things.
The camera controls too – which force you to hold in the right shoulder button and using the D-Pad to then move your viewing angle or zoom in and out incrementally – are unintuitive, and the default viewpoint is far too restrictive, meaning you need to constantly scroll around and bring up your game map in order to keep an eye on where enemies are at. All of this is made worse by some of the very old-school design choices of this nearly twenty-year-old adventure, with no waypoints or assistance provided in order to clue you into where you should be going next, meaning you'll spend a lot of time panning the shoddy camera around looking for clues.
In short, the controls in this console port really are a constant annoyance at all times. Is it something we can overlook on account of the obvious strength of the core underlying gameplay here? Well, when you're also dealing with myriad bugs, players getting stuck in scenery, enemies glitching through walls so you can't attack them or characters performing an action and then simply refusing to move again until you reload and repeat... well, not so much. The thing is, we expect a game from 2001 to be a bit archaic and maybe even a struggle at times, but when said game is already as challenging and intricate as Commandos 2 is, we really don't need more problems layered on top, thanks very much.
In terms of the "HD Remaster" element of this HD Remaster, well, they've done just about enough for it to qualify; the old dated and blocky graphics have been cleaned up and look much sharper, making situations much easier to parse – however, we can't help feel the game has also lost some of its old-school charm in the process. There's a new UI and an overhauled tutorial in place too, which, if we're being quite honest, don't add much to the party and we still struggled to remember which combination of buttons brought up which menu, how to create a group in order to move in unison or just simply highlight enemies and objects around us. When times get tough here and when things get heated, expect to flail wildly and fail often.
For such an old game that hasn't been hugely overhauled, there's also quite a surprising amount of slowdown going on, with the action and camera feeling as though they're being dragged through mud at points – especially in docked mode – and even the loading times are bizarrely lengthy, taking a good long while to start a level and a frustrating amount of time to restart when you quick load or die; you really will spend a long time looking at static loading screens in this one. It all just feels a bit disappointing and janky for a port which should really be delivering an age-old classic into our hands with crisp, clean controls – why on earth haven't they made use of the touchscreen? – and minimal loading times.
There's no doubting that, underneath all the problems, Commandos 2 - HD Remaster is a solid game, a brilliant one even, with ten huge levels that will test even the most experienced and patient of real-time tactical fans – and this is a genre that's sorely underserved on Nintendo Switch – but, in an age of Shadow Tactics, Desperados and the recent Partisans 1941, it feels like a supremely dated adventure. We'd love to see a proper ground-up remake of these classic games or even a brand new entry in the series, but, as far as this HD Remaster goes, it's a classic that's seen better days and one that deserved – and badly needed – a little more TLC before being delivered to a modern audience.
Conclusion
Commandos 2 - HD Remaster is a disappointingly lacklustre port of a real-time tactics classic. This is a game that's showing its age in many ways but, with the right tweaks, some decent control implementation and squashing of bugs, it could have had its moment to shine with modern audiences. As it is, the irritations and annoyances expected in revisiting a game of this vintage are exacerbated to no end with shoddy, unwieldy controls, unexpected performance problems and a general lack of care. The graphics have been updated here, but everything else remains much as it was – with the added frustration of bugs, glitches and long loading times.
Comments 32
I was happy to see this ported to Switch. Looks it turned out a damp squib. Sad!
@Little_Squee same really disapointed. mind you my wallet will be happy for a rest lol
I had some nostalgia for this one. Poor performance problems and long loading times is enough for me to keep the nostalgia whole and not muddy it with a bad remaster.
I remember always seeing this game in stores as a kid...it's one of those games that i never played but for some reason really stuck in my mind. So i was gonna try this remaster. Emphasis on "was" :/
Whatever happened to taking pride in your work? I would be embarrassed to be one of the many game devs that release such shoddy ports on Switch.
Loved these games back in the day, but O haven't played them in ages. Since the remaster is not good, I'll keep my memories for this game as they are lol.
Man. It feel like that 90% of Switch releases are shoddy this past year. Really depressing.
In all honesty, even back in 2001, I remember this being overhyped trash. It is a shame they couldn't actually do anything with it. I think I went back to the "lesser" rated Mech commander 2 for my strategy fix that year, "Pain God, ready to kill".
Ohh my lord. Will stay away from this game!
I’ve only ever played this on the PlayStation back in the day with my (now deceased) uncle.. I preordered it for pure nostalgia reasons so I could reminisce on all the great times we had together on the weekends.. my father was a great provider but my uncle got me into gaming and taught me so much about life and how being intelligent was better than being ‘tough’.. it really sucks that this game doesn’t hold up 😞 I miss my uncle and now I’m at a double loss cuz I can’t cancel my preorder or get a refund.. blah
@Anguspuss Lol. Save it for christmas.
Never ever buy german Software
They have in 90% no Idea how to optimize Software or how to implement good Controls / Interface.
Another big disappointment after Empire of Sin. In that the port and implementation was done poorly and with big issues. Dangnation.
How could they ***** this up!!
This is disappointing! I made "NO" purchases last week during the sale because I was holding off for either this game or Empire of Sin. Now it's looking like a mistake! Oh well! It's not like I don't have enough games to play already.
I had the demo back in 2001 on PC and even that was a nightmare. I think I played that demo a lot back then because I liked the graphics and at the time I was looking for something that wasn't my usual norm of PC gaming which was either Aliens vs. Predator 2 or Unreal 1. But I definitely remember being so determined to at least minimal beat the demo level and it was a nightmare.
@LEGEND_MARIOID To be fair, Commandos 2 HD and Empire of Sin aren't exactly scoring well on any system from what I'm seeing so far.
The PS4 version of Commandos 2 has 3 scores so far that I could find, two 5 out of 10's and a 3.5 out of 10, also stating its a poor console port there as well.
The PC version on metacritic is slightly better with an average score of 60 out of 100 right now, though the user reviews currently rank it at 2.3 out of 10 with a lot of complaints about how buggy it is.
I honestly feel this and Empire of Sin were pushed out way too early and needed more polishing and QA testing, but I'm guessing they wanted to have it out for the holiday season.
So glad I waited on this. Loved the series, but it was not an easy love. Shame the ports are so shoddy.
Damn, was hoping this would be alright... maybe when its on mega discount!
What a shame. I will just load up the original on my PC.
@Quantaur Fair enough. It is not just a Switch issue, it appears.
That’s a shame. I was only mildly interested in this to begin with so this is going off the wishlist.
Is this the censored liberal version or the uncensored version ?
I always preferred the first one, clearly the better game even 20 years ago. Wouldn't mind seeing that remastered. Dang... I'm old enough to remember something from 20 years ago, yikes!
Even though I know I shouldn't buy this, with it being a rather lazy port and remaster in general.. it's still Commandos on the Switch. I vastly prefer Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty, plus I've never played Commandos with a controller before, but I still have to buy this. ^^'
My apologies for supporting practices like this.
Not sure what standards they are using but watching the gameplay didn't show any problems. So how are they playing the game here?
This is the video I watched:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YasxWNEVjik
It's completely and utterly a mouse driven game. Such a strange candidate for a port.
I just played through the tutorial. Maybe the slow loading times and constant glitching happens during the larger regular missions because during the training missions it ran fine and I did not notice any super long loading times.
@mr_benn that's what i thought when I was watching the gameplay.
The 3D render of the Green Beret character almost resembles the late Sean Connery.
I bought it anyway and so far I'm having fun with it! Controls I got used to quite quick.
I pre-ordered this game and have played it a bit over the weekend. I haven't encountered any bugs but I have noticed surprisingly lengthy loading times (and I'm still only on the tutorials). Controls take a bit of time to get used to and it's obviously not as simple as the old mouse and keyboard but I haven't found them to be too tricky.
Overall I'm surprised by the 4/10 rating but I'm yet to get deep into the game. Certainly not disappointed by it yet but we'll see!
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