Steam claims I’ve played 20 hours, and I’ve started mission 20, the last mission. (My code was 80kwx, if any of you want to have a look!). Talk about daunting! Then again, mission 19 was pretty daunting, but I just started stabbing the closest nazis I could get away with stabbing and pretty soon I had a way into the V2 base and a plan to blow it up.
So: If the levels look daunting, just start meticulously stabbing and hiding bodies until everything is a bit clearer ;)
Hopefully I can polish off this giant castle level and get on to the expansion, which I remember being a) much harder but at the same time b) slightly easier, as everyone could punch/knock out, and everyone had throwable cigarette distractions, which meant that the game wasn’t simply “Green Beret + supporting cast”.
game-tip re: sniper. I often complete FPS games without firing the big weapons in combat, as I’m scared of using their precious ammo. Same happens with the sniper in commandos. I’d often complete missions without him firing a single bullet! (Though I had him do the final takedown on the fleeing general in mission 17 or 18). So for mission 19 I sniped any juicy target that looked like sniping would help me, and I think doing so sped up the mission quite a lot. I didn’t have to sneak the Green Beret everywhere. I even did a joint Green Beret/Sniper barrel-takedown at one point to explode the base.
conclusion: Use the sniper whenever you feel like it, as you probably have more bullets than you think.
I’ve played 2 and 3. I didn’t find 3 as bad as the OP did and it seemed to be a bit more flexible to me in being able to set up ambushes. The games could be equal parts fun and frustration. I feel the game too often veered into that “game requires a precision the interface can’t always deliver” territory, which can be really tough in a game where seconds and millimeters make a difference. I also agree with the criticisms voiced above that sometimes the game was inconsistent with its rules; sometimes firing a pistol was the death knell for your team, and other times you could get away with it a lot.
But even with my gripes, I find the games very beautiful to look at and it can indeed be very satisfying to crack a level with patient play.
Play 1! Whilst it’s the same overall “type” of game as 2 or 3, it’s a very different sort of beast. The trend from 1->2->3 is away from “what tool do I use to kill/avoid this latest set of Jerries” and more towards generic RTS style infantry combat stuff with a bit of tool use thrown in.
I finished level 6 this morning, with 0 sniper rounds remaining. Had a couple cool moments where I was able to use multiple team members in concert for several quick kills and easier passage through an area. I had Tiny stab a guard and leave the body where a pesky 2 man patrol would eventually see it. Before the patrol came around I had the sapper leave the bear trap right next to the body. The patrol comes running as expected, the lead member hits the bear trap, then the sniper takes out the other guy before he can raise the alarm. It felt very slick, and saved me a ton of effort avoiding that patrol. as the mission continued.
Level 6 is a great mission :) (Infact I can’t think of many bad missions in this game). I think I only used 2 bullets, both towards the end of the level, when again it would have been much easier to be snipe mad. I think that mission tells you in the briefing notes (Ctrl+B, or click the folded page marker under the map) that the area in the bottom left is ok for explosions? Bit strange that you can bomb a tank and a bunch of people and have other people run over and find them… and yet not sound the alarm :P “Oh it’s OK that everyone died, as it was in the minefield. Definitely can’t be a bunch of commandos!”
It’s cool that you managed to do a takedown on a patrol. I remember when I first played Commandos, on Mission 2 or 3 (The one with the river and the patrol boat) having a war-movie style fantasy of having Tiny pick off the guard at the back of the line, one by one, until it’s just the guard commander left, begging for his life and giving you lots of info. Doesn’t happen that way in the game, though does it? ;) Instead you stab the back guy and get instantly spotted.
In general taking out patrols is really hard. You either need to take them all out at once with an explosion of some kind (barrel, grenade, bomb, tank cannon) or a rapid fire gun (Driver’s rare machine gun or mg nest). On the later levels there’s tonnes of patrols, as I think the map designers intend for them to be rather permanent annoyances, until the alarm goes off, at which point loads more spawn but you’re also free a bit more to try and shoot them like mad. Sometimes, depending on the patrol and their pattern, you can whittle them down using the man-trap, but that often results in the alarm being sounded as well. I’ve learn from the speedruns on youtube, and normalish videos done by a guy called Spek, that there’s some sort of tricky hack to taking them out using Tiny’s sound box and the Marine’s harpoon gun. I tried using it, and it never really worked and still ended up with the alarm sounding, but I feel like it’s a step too far in terms of AI exploitation. The sound box is already pretty strong in terms of pulling-power and can quite often results in 5 or 6 single sentries running over to stare at a wall whilst you stab them all from behind, with the falling bodies often “pushing” into the other guys with no ill effect.
I finished mission 11 this morning, which is significantly further than I got when the game first came out. I think older Casey is significantly more patient than younger Casey and able to just hang out and watch the patrol patterns looking for that next vulnerable guy.
I had a weird thing happen 2/3ds of the way through mission 11 where the alarm would go off as soon as I released my distraction but it wasn’t at all clear what the alarm was about. Usually it’s a specific body (or commando) but these guys just started shouting “alarm alarm” and running around a bit. I had quicksaved in that state so I was able try a few things to figure out what it was but it was easier at that point to steal an armored car and abandon stealth.
I completed the game the other day! Granted, I had a week or so’s worth of extra playtime on the rest of you. Steam isn’t telling me the overall time right now, but I know it listed something like ~24 hours, an hour or two of which might have been me alt-tabbed out watching someone do a 5m speedrun of a level that just took me an hour. So it’s one hour per level on average, but that’s a bit of nonsense as the later levels took me about 3hrs+, and the first handfull of levels being 20 to 40 minutes each? So for those of you on the fence, the first couple of missions are easily doable in a lunchbreak or something. Feel free to join me and Casey!
Young Pod must never legitimately got past more than the first few missions. I think I was always in a rush back then – I wanted the 3 stars and getting them seemed impossibly hard. Also I might not have know about quicksaving and just relied on the menus? Ironically I got the full 9 stars on a lot of the later massive levels even though I felt like I was wasting huge amounts of time as e.g. I watched all of the patrol patterns or killed guards that probably weren’t strictly necessary but made things a little bit less stressful. I think they developers are much more generous with the par-times of those missions than they are with the earlier one. (They don’t actually say what the times are though, annoyingly).
I had a weird thing happen 2/3ds of the way through mission 11 where the alarm would go off as soon as I released my distraction but it wasn’t at all clear what the alarm was about. Usually it’s a specific body (or commando) but these guys just started shouting “alarm alarm” and running around a bit. I had quicksaved in that state so I was able try a few things to figure out what it was but it was easier at that point to steal an armored car and abandon stealth.
On the mission where you blow up the boat with a torpedo, the patrols got angry at my distraction box and shot at it + called alarm. They seemed to do this on the second time they “heard” the box, but only after going over to it. I think. So perhaps something similar is happening here? Is it the second time you’ve distracted them with the box? Again, it’s annoying that this “rule” isn’t more explicit in the game. (Also, there’s a bug with the box and saving: if you save when the box is making a noise and then reload it’s still in the “on” mode but it isn’t making the noise, and anyone distracted instantly becomes undistracted).
So after completing C:BEL, I’m on Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty. Aside from crashing much more, it’s more or less the same game, but the expansion adds lots of new gadgets to everyone’s inventory. Strangely, I remember the first two missions (the lighthouse and the zoo) as being Commandos 2 missions! But they’re not. Perhaps I played some kind of BTCOD-missions-on-c2 mod? (There’s some of those available now, so they might have been back then). The first few missions aren’t that much harder than the middle-tier C:BEL missions, but in the later levels (e.g. the trainyard) things really ramp up and killing everyone isn’t feasible. You really do have to use all of these new distraction techniques to stressfully weave your way through the guards. They’re even more massive and I’m starting to hit my limits… Even the thought of just loading up the trainyard one was a bit stressfull. I would be lying if I said I didn’t now look at some of these speeds runs before the end of the mission, just for a hint or two…
I wouldn’t consider something a proper commandos mission if people didn’t react this way. But I’ve learned to just stab the nearest, loneliest looking guard and see what happens.
Sigh… I admit I just played a bit of the first mission and found little things like the sluggish mouse movement and difficulty selecting dudes and actions (probably should have studied up on the hotkeys) to be dissuading when I thought about picking it back up again.
I noticed that the game Crookz is on sale on Steam right now. Best I can tell, this is the closest thing to this style of game to come out in awhile. And bank heists, etc, are certainly a good setting for this gameplay!
Pod, thanks for picking this one. It had slipped from my memory and I was glad to rediscover it. I just got through the mini-sub mission this morning and got the briefest of starts on the next one. I do wish they had embraced the puzzle nature a little more and added some time controls, so I could pause and give orders or speed up time while I wait for an opening in a patrol pattern. I never did find a use for all the multi-window crazyness.
And yes, you need to learn the hotkeys. At least 1-6, h, and x.
I think I’m going to continue with Commandos:BTCOD until I’ve done all of the missions, and then I’ll probably play Desperados after that. I’m hoping Crookz goes on sale soon so I can scoop it up and try it out.
Overall though, I’m really glad I’ve revisited this old game genre, as it’s something you don’t see at all these days days, even in games like Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell or stealthing around in Deus Ex. I think there’s something fundamentally different about those games, if only because they’re 3d and revolve around getting silenced-pistol-headshots.
Ditto! Sometimes it’s a bit too frantic (though maybe that’s my choice of plan that’s frantic ;)) and the mutli-window stuff was more frustrating to use than not use. I think Desperados allows you to plan in a single “quick action” for everyone and have them all execute it on a single go code. So you could have one guy run over and stab whilst another fires a rifle. Though from memory that was always hard to execute. Maybe a bit of Rainbow six like planning wouldn’t go amiss :)
You should probably also check out the Hidden & Dangerous games, although the graphics probably look pretty ropey now. They’re basically 3D Commandos games.
I’ve played Hidden & Dangerous to death ;) I was actually considering H&D2 for my choice this time… I think the original was one of the first 3d games I played that was accelerated by my new Voodoo Banshee? (or the demo). I had the original experience – I fell through the floor and everything.
But both are a bit too shooty to scratch that commandos itch. They’re still great games though!
At it’s heart it’s still about sneaking round, avoiding vision cones, and stabbing people, but it’s swaying too much towards “action game” than “intricately timed puzzle”.
The commandos series has always walked a fine line between letting you stealth around using your unique set of skills and stabbing people, or just allowing you to shoot them all. The first few games heavily limited your weapons and over used infinite alarms and infinite spawns, which meant sounding the alarm was almost certain death. There were only a few places you could fire a gun and get away with it.
Commandos 2 changed this, and some missions, such as Burma, were all about the shooting. It was starting to become a quasi RTS, like Men of War etc. The shooting parts aren’t my favourite, but they were infrequent enough that they offered a nice change from simply trying to clear an entire map by slowly stabbing everyone from behind and stuffing them in a barrel.
Commandos 3 continued that trend and almost every mission was all about shooting. I think it really lost it’s way at this point.
Thankfully the other Commandos clones, such as Desperados, or the new Shadow Tactics, or that heist one I can’t remember, have kept the spirt of Commandos 1 alive.
