Commandos 2 HD Preview

Developers Pyro Studio’s and Yippee Entertainment and Publisher Kalypso Media Digital has brought back the famous Commandos in a new and remastered way, but does it hold up?

When I was young my dad installed a demo of Commandos 2 on a very old PC, I didn’t fully understand it back then, all I knew was it was World War 2 and the game-play was fun and unique. Commandos had you behind enemy lines during World War 2 pulling off multiple objectives to weaken the enemy threat to the world. I could never complete the demo as a kid, I usually just had fun messing around and kidnapping the Nazis and stealing all their stuff, I’d usually get caught and killed. Going back to Commandos and now fully understanding how it works and paying attention to the tutorial I can confirm that it is just as fun as it was in the past. Unfortunately I still messed up quite a bit while learning the unchanged systems but none the less once mastered it was a fulfilling experience completing whichever scenario you were stuck on or learning. Commandos 2 takes a more stealthy approach, you can go in guns blazing but stealth is a much better way to take missions on. I would kidnap Nazis again, hide them in bushes, steal there uniform and assassinate key targets that could end up in the whole army coming down on me. It was fun. That’s the most enjoyable thing about the series, it took tactical planning, it never felt like a boring go here and go there experience. This time it was a more, how the hell are you going to get from point A to B, here are a bunch of ways to do so, chose what suits your style. It’s a truly rewarding experience.

The title runs well for a HD Remaster, the only down-side to some is that it isn’t a heavy remake or a complete redesign, it’s the original game that is now available to play with a solid 60fps, it looks smoother and clearer and that’s about it. It doesn’t detract from the experience in my opinion, it still looks good enough and holds up but it just isn’t a complete rework. The audio is made clearer as-well though I found the music to be a bit intensely loud at points but this is a BETA so it is still in development, this could change.

Commandos 2 HD Remaster takes you back into the glory days of tactical strategy games and never fails to be fun. For some it will be the nostalgic re-release they wanted but I feel for others if they expect a full from the ground remake they might be slightly disappointed. I wasn’t disappointed as it was all kept as close to the original like I remembered and it ran flawlessly on my PC.