Better get yer cigar chompin’ mouth muscles warmed up. Second world war sabotage ’em up Commandos: Origins now has a release date, and it’s fairly soon. Good news for people who enjoy sniping fascists from across the map while commanding a barrel-armed Irishmen to simultaneously slit a throat. And equally good news for those who lament the loss of Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun developer Mimimi Games.
This reboot is coming out on April 9th, said developers Claymore Game Studios in a Steam post. “After more than four years of setting up a new studio, design and development, and the invaluable community feedback from various playtests – operation ‘Release’ is a go,” said studio director Jürgen Reusswig.
But maybe you don’t have all the requisite wrinkles to remember Commandos? They were a series of tough top-down tactics games that saw the player infiltrate axis territory during World War 2. They looked like real-time strategy games but were really all about high-stakes stealth. That, and trying to find the one good angle your sniper could actually shoot from.
This follow-up will have 10 missions in wartime locales like the North African desert and snowy Scandinavia, and you’ll be able to slink through Nazi encampments slashing necks with a pal in two-player co-op (both online or split-screen). Nic played a demo during last autumn’s Next Feast, and walked away feeling broadly positive about all the meticulously timed soldier strangling. He also dropped a wardrobe on the heads of two unsuspecting Nazis. What’s not to like?
Publisher Kalypso Media bagged the rights to the Commandos games back in 2018 and promptly got to work setting up a studio to revive the series. The resultant reboot will be flying the flag for the stealth tactics genre after the demise of Mimimi Games, who basically revived and modernised all the ideas of old-school Commandos games when they made Shadow Tactics, Desperados 3, and Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. These were all well-liked games by folks here at RPS. Sadly, the studio closed down in the summer of 2023, with the founders of the studio citing exhaustion as the main reason they were downing tools.
“We cherished every game we made and feel proud of what we were able to accomplish as a studio,” they said when announcing the closure. “At the same time, dedicating the past decade and a half of our lives working on increasingly ambitious games took a heavy personal toll on us and our families.”
It’ll be interesting to see how Claymore learn from Mimimi’s work, and what ideas of their own they’ll inject (or re-inject?) into the genre. Although Edwin has just soldier-crawled into the room wearing two stripes of boot polish on his face to pass on some intelligence. He says monastery stealth game The Stone Of Madness from the Balsphemous developers is also keeping the genre alive. This is a promising sign. Dismissed.