Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines was first introduced to the world in the much-missed era of the 1990’s, when the world made sense and films were good. Ostensibly a stealth-oriented real-time tactics game, the Commandos series has really always been about solving puzzles. You have a series of unique tools – your Commando squad, consisting of Sapper, Green Berret, Driver, etc – that must combine their individual abilities in a variety of interesting ways to crack the riddle posed by complex arrangements of Nazi and their assorted view cones. The franchise was a big-hit at the time, but despite a few remakes, has remained mostly dormant since 2006. Possibly for good reason as, after an initially promising sequel, the various follow-ups failed to deliver the winning combination of brains and brawn that the original offered.
Seeking to reverse the franchise’s fortunes is Commandos: Origins, developed by Claymore Game Studios, this a brand-new entry in the series that acts as a prequel to the 90’s original. Despite a noticeable level-up for the visuals, not much has changed for Commandos in the thirty-odd intervening years. Played from an isometric perspective, you guide your squad of up to six Commandos through a vast map, spending most of your time sneaking past sentries or garrotting them and dumping their bodies in some conveniently placed foliage. Thank goodness Nazis don’t have any kind of peripheral vision – must not have been eating their carrots – otherwise they’d definitely spot the hulking Green Beret who is crawling past their ankles, right freaking next to them. All video games take a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief, but Commandos: Origins demands a bigger dose than most.
Starting in an Allied prison, deep in Africa, the game immediately introduces us to the aforementioned Green Beret – as big and burly as ever – who is freed from his imprisonment by the Sapper, speaking with an unbelievably clipped English accent that is absolutely joyous to hear. Played from the classic top-down perspective, the two heroes make their way out of the prison complex, each helping the other to reach their objective. Stealth mechanics are perfunctory, nothing you won’t have experienced a hundred times or more, but reliable. Enemy viewing cones clearly show what your foes can see, allowing you to slip the Commandos through the gaps unnoticed.
Things get more interesting when their unique abilities are unlocked, allowing for some interesting tactics and unique takedowns. Take one of the earliest set-ups by way of an example, where the Sapper places a mantrap, whilst the Green Berret hides a radio nearby to lure the patrolling German to his snapping demise. Very welcome here is the visual depiction of sound waves, ensuring you know exactly who will be alerted once the radio is activated.
This all sounds quite promising, and it would be, if not for one enormous caveat. Commandos: Origins has amongst the worst gamepad I’ve had the misfortune to wrestle with in a console RTS. I know that transferring a game intended to be played with mouse and keyboard to work on consoles is hugely challenging, but games like Shadow Tactics prove that it can be done. Claymore Game Studios sadly didn’t take to heart any of the lessons learned by the shinobi-based RTS classic. Instead, their chosen controller implementation is fussy, finicky and, on far too many occasions, borderline unplayable.
Controlling the camera is a bad joke, squeezing triggers and wobbling thumb sticks in a desperate attempt to see what you need to see to actually play the game. It’s deeply unwieldy, and makes setting up cunning plans involving sniper rifles, dinghies and stolen jeeps a deeply frustrating, laborious and time-consuming affair. Selecting commandos, choosing their abilities, activating a takedown, everything is unintuitive and, worst of all, laggy. Far too often my elite squad was rumbled simply because the spy handles like a brick coated in baby oil, failing to get out of the enemy sightlines in time. For a turn-based game these foibles might be more forgivable, but in a real time strategy game, one in which there are numerous moving parts to manage to succeed, these controls are game-breaking.
If you are able to grin and bear it with the controls (or are playing with mouse & keyboard) there’s a lot to like about Commandos: Origins. Levels in general are humongous, intricate and complex, with a veritable army of goons to sneak past and assassinate. Most take several hours to fully complete, and not just because of save-scumming your way through tricky encounters. There’s some interesting verticality to the environment too, allowing for open and free-form strategizing, with numerous possibilities to proceed presenting themselves.
Your commandos rarely start in the same location, instead they weave and wind their way around the environments, assisting each other in intuitive and creative ways. Sniping out guards to open the path for your driver on the other side of the map, ferrying commandos to flank the enemy in an inflatable dingy, crashing lorries through checkpoints, or just pulling out the machine guns and going wild, the potential strategies are varied, and many objectives are entirely optional. These tactics are enabled, and the gamepad controls almost made bearable, by the handy ability to pause the game at any point and issue each Commando with a series of orders, then unpause and watch your perfectly plan carried out.
Visually, this is gorgeous stuff; vehicles, uniforms, and weapons are all impeccably researched and immaculately detailed, yet with the charming larger-than-life aesthetic of a Hollywood war film. There’s something akin to playing with your GI JOEs here, chunky player characters crawling under barbed wires, kicking down doors, or chocking out Nazis. Landscapes are varied and interesting, from sand coated deserts, to ancient Germanic forests, and icy-cold tundra.
Unfortunately, things are let down by some noticeable frame-rate drops, particularly when the bullets start flying, causing the game to be even harder to control than before. There’s plenty of visual glitches too, with Commandos regularly murdering the air next to an enemy, only for the untouched guard to fall-down dead anyway. Worse, lots of screen tears accompany camera movement, making that already lacklustre aspect of the game nausea-inducing to boot.