Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines is a unique game. Mechanically, it looks a lot like an RTS and controls like one, with a lot of mouse clicking and hotkeying. There's a big catch, though: you don't make anything. Nope, zilch, nada. Instead, you are supplied a limited number of men and are given the task of sabotaging the enemy's central facilities, while considerably outnumbered. Thus, the focus is not on outgunning your enemy, but rather undermining them with smart tactics, stealthy kills and careful yet quick maneuvers.
With that out of the way, why my title? To put it simply, I feel like the sequels to Behind Enemy Lines change the formula in ways that loses the appeal for me. To elaborate, I've seen parts and pieces of them through playthroughs, and they seem to tend wayyyy too much towards making all characters powerful. And that seems like a good thing on the surface, especially considering how weak some characters, notably the sapper and the driver, were in Behind Enemy Lines. But what this does is effectively undermine the puzzle aspect of the game, which in turn also starts to make the games feel more generic as you can bruteforce through far more situations than you normally could.
I don't want to give the impression that I completely disliked what I saw of those games. Commandos 2 and Commandos: Origins in particular seemed pretty cool as stealth games, and there were some neat additions to the formula, such as a tiered disguise system, as well as definitive improvements, such as making vision cones less obtuse. But they're just not the kind of game I'm looking for.
I have heard praise for Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, and I might perhaps give it a try. I'm a little wary of the game featuring some Sengoku era cliches that would irk me, but if the gameplay is good enough and captures what I liked about Behind Enemy Lines, I could overlook those. We will see.
Comments
Post a Comment