Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines

Sometimes you just can't afford to play by the rules. Eidos Interactive's forthcoming Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines is one such case. Your duty is to manage up to six veteran commandos who are deployed deep in German territory at the turning point of World War II to sway things in the Allies' favor. You must order each of them in real time and use stealth, weapons expertise, cunning, and maybe even a little luck to succeed at two dozen all-important missions running from Africa to Norway.


You may be outnumbered - seriously outnumbered - but you've got a few important advantages that may well lead to victory against all odds. For one thing, unlike in your typical real-time strategy game, there's no fog of war in Commandos. You'll see the enemy a mile away from a top-down high-resolution isometric perspective, and you can plan how to deal with him accordingly. Better yet, you can check out any individual enemy soldier's field of vision, represented by a colored cone. Patrolling guards will sweep the area, looking back and forth, and since you know exactly where they're looking, you can sneak around just outside their periphery and strike. On the other hand, if you just dash in with guns blazing, you won't last long at all. Sure, you might drop a German or three, but their buddies will hear the gunfire, and chances are you won't be able to handle the reinforcements. It's true that your commandos are a tough lot; they'll take a bullet for you, and with a medic around they'll even recover from it. But they're not one-man armies. You need to keep them alive.



Commandos is certainly a fresh take on a familiar genre and setting. Its detailed, colorful graphics and big missions are impressive, and its emphasis on tactics and stealth with the occasional necessity for deadly force is unique and satisfying. What remains to be seen is whether developer Pyro Studios can play up the six commandos' personalities and talents to maximum effect and whether the challenge of having to manage them all at once will be surmountable. A number of recent tactical real-time strategy games, including Myth: The Fallen Lords, Warhammer: Dark Omen, and MechCommander, all were criticized for being excessively difficult for forcing the player to micromanage his squad far too much. And as it stands, Commandos may well be destined for a similar reception, unless Pyro decides to impose a more productive friendly AI and options like speed settings or the ability to issue orders while the game is paused. But however it finally turns out, already it seems clear that Commandos stands to become one of the most original World War II-era computer games to date.