Commandos 2: Men of Courage: Web Wombat: Games

I just don't know how they managed it, those commando chaps - sneaking up on to guarded beaches, cutting through barbed wire, avoiding mines, getting by beastly sentries.

Whenever this fellow does his best to emulate them a mine explodes, blowing him into the air, sirens sound, searchlights flash and … oh, well, another restart needed of Commandos 2: Men of Courage.

The latest in the Commandos series continues the tradition of setting you absorbing, but very hard missions to complete, and you strain for hours to beat the ratbag Jerries and put Hitler and his mob back in their places.

And that’s on the easy level, where the enemy is a tad more stupid, more deaf and not so good at shooting as on the tougher levels. Having been killed almost instantly on easy by a pistol-packing corporal from 50 metres away, I dread to think how good he is when given a boost in AI.

Commandos 2: Men of Courage is set during World War 2 and your team of top-notch operatives needs to manage the impossible and complete 10 missions of chaos and destruction.

You are in charge of Sergeant Jack “Butcher” O’Hara, Thomas “Fireman” Hancock, James “Fins” Blackwood, Samuel Brooklyn, Rene “Frenchy” Duchamp, Sir Francis “Duke” Woolridge, Natasha Nikochevski, Paul Toledo and Whiskey.

They are killers, one and all, and have individual skills that may be able to see you through the missions. O’Hara is a commando par excellence and can climb, kill and maim at very close range. Hancock is an explosives expert, Blackwood can handle boats and scuba gear (plus a nifty speargun), Brooklyn is a mechanic and driver, Duchamp is a spy who kills with syringes, Woolridge is a sniper extraordinaire, Nikochevski is an assassin, and Toledo is a thief.

The newbie on the block is Whiskey, a bull terrier that will rip the throat out of any German that looks at him. His main use is to get him to carry small items - such as explosives and weapons - past guards.
Toledo can scale walls, pick locks and use a terrific little rat to distract the Germans. He is exceedingly agile and can scale phone wires, climb up walls and into windows and, not surprisingly, is a little fellow who can zip along at quite a pace.

Ice-breakers were used to, err, break ice

Keeping fairly quiet is imperative in Commandos 2 and to let you know how you are doing in the silence stakes, each sound you make sets off a radiating circle of rippling out-of-focusness. The more noise you make, the larger the circle and the more chance the guards will cotton on to.

Needless to say you need to keep quiet when dealing with inquisitive guards and so a fist (to clobber them with), or a knife (to gut them) or even a speargun (piddoing!) are excellent.

While he’s a bit of a big lug, O’Hara is the almost perfect killing machine and can use his knife to kill sentries instantly - and silently. He works very well with the rat, which can grab the guards’ attention, so that O’Hara can stick them.

Aside from knocking the enemy unconscious for a short time, you can tie them up and carry them away and hide them so they do not attract attention. When you’ve got them safely disposed of you can purloin their equipment - a bit of a necessity considering you don’t exactly start the missions armed to the teeth. More equipment is available by ransacking cupboards on your journey and by checking out crates and boxes.

Hancock is the explosives man and he is also pretty handy when it comes to using grenades and mines. He can also sweep areas for enemy mines - which is a relief because I lost count of the times I managed to get into a terrific location only to have my chappie blown sky-high by crawling over a mine.
Other little things the enemy can spring upon you are snipers - watch for crosshairs appearing over your chaps!

Your missions take you throughout most of the WW2 theatres of war with three in the jungle against the Japanese.

The game begins with a training level and - if you’re sensible - you’ll shut-up and listen as they go through all the little bizzos you need to have your characters survive and prevent massive numbers of mission restarts.

While there are only 10 missions available, it will take you some time to get through them and they are very different in look and feel, so you don’t feel somewhat miffed at a lack of variety.

Okay men - let's bathe first, then we fight!

Each begins with an explanation of how to go about winning it and it is worthwhile listening to it because it makes life so much easier. While the maps are not too big, the difficulty level in getting around them without being spotted, heard or killed, is very high. This is one game where you need to spend a lot of time checking out the area before going in.

Included in your set of tasks is taking out submarine pens at La Rochelle, stealing an enigma code machine, blowing up the bridge on the River Kwai, and even a Saving Private Ryan-style scenario. As a bonus, you can collect pieces of a puzzle in some of the scenarios and at the end you can unlock special missions.

The screen detail is absolutely gobsmacking, running at 1024x 768 and gives you the sort of resolution all strategy games should have. Mind you, the install is a whopping 1.5 gigabytes!

This is, without a doubt, one of the best looking real-time strategy games made and is only slightly shaded by Cossacks in the gorgeousness stakes. Mind you, the colourful uniforms help that game a lot, while Commandos 2 is very khaki-oriented.

The sound in Commandos 2 does not match the images and the voices of the characters tend to give you the irrits so much you want to turn your speakers off.

Multiplayer fans will love the opportunity to take missions on with their mates and it was great to see our colleague Will Barker cowering in a bush while hiding from the Krauts. Commandos 2: Men of Courage is brilliant and a must for gamers who like to have their braincells tested to the max.

Game: Commandos 2: Men of Courage
System: PC
Players: 1
Online: No
Developer: Eidos
Distributor: Gamenation

Rating: 90%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

Commandos 2: Men of Courage is on the shelves now.

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