Commandos Strike Force
What was once a unique series with a lot of nice features has been turned into a clunky FPS that unfortunately drowns within the genre. A few elements from the strategy renditions of the original games carry over to Commandos Strike Force and help things out somewhat, but we're talking barebones stuff at best. To make matters worse the FPS bits here feel unpolished and downright broken at times. Strike Force is a game that isn't quite for fans of the strategy genre and not quite up to snuff enough to entice fans of the FPS. All this leads me to wonder just who this game is designed to appeal to.
Gameplay:
One of the things that the old Commandos games became known for was the inclusion of a few classes of characters. You had to make use of a sniper, spy, marine, Green Beret, sapper and driver in order to complete your mission. This time around though the amount of characters that you can use has been sliced in half and only the sniper, spy and Green Beret are available. Most wartime FPS titles squeeze you into the combat boots of one particular soldier, so getting to experience the war from a few different places on the battlefield is a nice change of pace.
In most missions in the game you'll have access to all three of the characters which can be swapped to on the fly. By simply pressing the triangle button you'll take over for your squad mate and make use of his unique abilities. This is all well and good but I do have a complaint about this particular feature. What's the point of switching to another character if the last character you just left stands there until you go back to him? At one point in the middle of a gunfight I was running around as the Green Beret and decided to change perspectives to the sniper for a better look at the field. Imagine my surprise when I hopped back to the Beret only to find that he was still standing in the exact spot that I stopped at! It just struck me as a little silly is all.
As you play as each of the characters you'll notice that's where a lot of the strength in Strike Force comes into effect. With stealth a big factor being able to snipe from a distance or sneak up behind a guard and take them out silently adds a nice element to the gameplay. Some characters are obviously better suited for the task and once you get a disguise you'll appreciate the idea behind it all. It's these moments that help Strike Force ascend to the next level but the lack of polish brings it crashing back down.
I appreciate that stealth plays a big role in the game, and for the most part it's implemented well, but there are times that I just don't get it. Sometimes you can run (not crawl) up to an enemy and take him out, other times you can get spotted from a mile away before you even poke your head around the corner. The CPU's field of vision is a tricky monster to get used to and often times it's not just the guard in front of you that you have to worry about; it's the other jackass Nazi checking his friend out.
Another big portion of the game centers on action and I wish I could come right out and say that Strike Force features some great AI and offers a real challenge, but I can't. I found that soldiers took a nosedive way too easily and more often than not the hit detection posed more of a threat. There were times when I would shoot an enemy point blank in the face only to have my bullet magically travel through him. Needless to say I shot again to correct the problem, but not before he got a shot off at me. This leads me to another topic; health.
After experiencing Call of Duty's more realistic and immersive healing system going back to the archaic health pack collecting was a real downer. This is an element in war games that I hate and it really trivializes the experience for me. It's like "Oh! I got shot five times but I found a bandaid so I'm ok now!" It's also a little funny because at times when one character dies you'll jump to the next in line and can often cover a medic so they can heal your character.
Missions are another part of Strike Force that will leave you scratching your head. Sure you're given a list of objectives, but they aren't really in any working order. You aren't even given direction most of the time so you're left to your own devices to figure out what you have to do. This usually means that you'll be walking around blindly and just killing Nazis until a direction indicator appears on your radar. Often times you'll be forced to swap between your characters just to figure out which one is right for the job at hand. It wasn't that much of a problem, but it did get kind of annoying after a while.
Overall Commandos Strike Force is a game that feels more like an effort to make money than an attempt to usher in a new age for a franchise. Several gameplay elements were handled in a way that leaves the experience a few years behind the competition. There are better wartime shooters on the market, despite the nice addition of the characters swapping. In the end this is a FPS that feels like it belonged near the dawn of the PS2, not near the end of its lifecycle.
Graphics:
Another aspect of Strike Force that dates the project is the visual nature of the game. Poor textures and a distinct lack of detail await you as you plod through WWII all over again. The pre-rendered backgrounds of the older Commandos games have been replaced with low-grade graphics and the effect is disappointing to say the least. Character models all look the same and the environments don't help bring any life to the game.
I also encountered a couple of glitches while I was playing the game. A couple of times while I was loading my save from the in game menu the entire thing froze and I had to restart my console. Also at one point the mission I was in "completed" before I killed the last Nazi. During the entire cut scene the Nazi continued to shoot at the characters that were talking. This got a sad chuckle out of me because he ended up hitting each of the characters multiple times without effect. That's a perfect example of the kind of polish that is sadly vacant from Strike Force.
Audio:
After experiencing other wartime FPS games sitting through Strike Force was significantly less exhilarating than I hoped it would have been. The soundtrack is mediocre with nothing memorable to take with you. The voice acting is palatable though nothing that will blow your socks off, but that's mostly due to some poor NPC voiceovers. Sound effects are generally decent with some oomph to them, but technically speaking there's nothing to write home about here either.
Conclusion:
You know, it's sad to say, if Commandos Strike Force came out three to four years ago it would have been a lot better. As it stands the game feels underdeveloped in just about every regard. It has a lot of nice elements and it even carries over some of the feel of the Commandos series, but when you take everything into consideration it feels dated and outclassed by the competition. That's just the nature of business I suppose. Even so diehard WWII gamers may want to rent it. Heck, fans of the Commandos series may want to give it a test run to see how it is, but everybody else can skip it entirely.