Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines (PC) - Guest Post

I'm playing Commandos!

It's a real-time tactics game that follows a fictionalised account of the actions of the real British Commandos (Wikipedia link) during World War 2!

I've been told that Commandos is really hard so I'm going to play the tutorial first. Click the pictures to see PNGs.

Green Beret tutorial, level one.

With 1 Soldier I Must... destroy a number of buildings to the North of my starting position. There's one guard patrolling the rock directly above me and a second guarding the wall between me and the buildings. When I climb this wall, I need to deal with a group of three soldiers patrolling the buildings.

Shift-clicking a person allows you to monitor their field of view. He can see quite a distance for a computer game enemy. If he sees me, he'll raise the alarm and I'll have to deal with all the enemies on the field at once.

The Green Beret's got a number of stuff. Knife, pistol, radio and shovel. I'll head down and try knifing the guy in the back when he starts walking to the top left.

"CONSIDER IT DONE!"

Here goes... and he's dead! Hoorah! One guy down, four to go.

That was mighty close. He was swinging his head all around the place and Mr. Beret sure took his time reaching the target.

I have to move over and click the Hand icon to pick up the body, then right-click to allow movement, move to the new position, then click the Hand again and then move to another location to drop the body.

That's a lot more difficult than it needs to be.

I AM NOTHING BUT A ROCK.

I wish I could keep that map in the top left open all the time. I can see all the enemies on it at once but when I move my mouse away, it folds back into the side of the screen.

You ain't seen me, right?

I don't actually have to deal with these guys at all. As long as I complete the mission objective, I win. I'm scored only on the damage I receive and the time it takes me to complete the mission.

These are the buildings I need to destroy. I don't have any explosives on me as far as I can tell. I think I need to just click on the buildings and the Beret will destroy them with magnificent brogue.

To climb the wall, I need to click just off to the side of it using the movement cursor (where it becomes a climbing pick). And then I need to click on the other side to make him climb down again.

That's confusing. Some of the things I'm able to do are context sensitive and some aren't.

That group of three men is walking in a circle around the facade on the right. I need to time my entrance exactly.

NO!

I clicked the God-damned 'Hand' tool from the backpack, not the area of grass next to it! Damn it!

Reload my quick save... Infinite quick saves and loads, by the way! Probably because this is the tutorial. I also have infinite health, so I'm going to be loading every time I'm discovered, otherwise I might have been 'killed' and not know it.

Okay, this time WAIT for THE PATROL. CLIMB the WALL. DESCEND from the WALL. USE the KNIFE. KILL the GUY. HAND the GUY. MOVE to BEHIND THE FACADE. DROP the GUY. WAIT.

We'd be more stealthy if he didn't keep shouting "Comin' over. COMIN'! I'M COMIN'!" with every click.

Eaargh! What are the chances of THAT?

This wouldn't have happened if these were real buildings!

I am not here! Leave me alone!

I decide to hide the body in the barrel... by accident. I had no idea that I could put bodies in barrels, or that these were explosive barrels. These tooltips take way too long to appear.

WAIT! Don't shoot me here! DON'T SHOOT ME...

Durn.

And that didn't count anyway because I've got to destroy both facades, which means I have to carry one of the barrels away from the building without the patrol spotting me. If I run out of barrels, it's mission over.

I'm at the bottom of this shot, behind the rock. The safe area behind the rock is barely big enough to fit me and my barrel. Worse still is that when the patrol turns corners, the men bump into each other and run around in circles for a few frames trying to maintain their formation. If I'm caught in that single frame, they'll shoot my barrel and it's game over.

The darkened part of a vision cone represents the area where it's safe to crawl, but these guys can see almost the entire screen anyway.

NO NO NO.

Try again!

I've loaded at least a dozen times so far. There's no mercy here whatsoever. One frame is all it takes.

Finally, I've managed to put a barrel behind the facade on the right.

The radio tool is something you can drop and activate remotely to attract the attention of the enemy. I've left it next to barrel on the building to the left.

Yeeees... investigate the noise box. Run up to it. It's a nice noise box. Just stand there and stare at it.

I am the best commando ever.

I've never been so happy to see that message before.

Though anybody who's played a driving game where you have to complete a bloody license test before you're allowed to play the real game will know where I'm coming from.

Let's not dwell on how many saves I had to go through to make this happen.

Next guy: The Sniper!

Given a clear line of sight, the Sniper can kill people silently across the entire length of the level. That's kind of useful.

He's got limited ammo though and a boring British voice. The pistol has infinite ammo then, I guess? So far it's been good for exploding barrels and otherwise making me instantly lose.

Oh, you silly Nazi goober. Don't run out and try to tend to the sniped guy! That's how accidents happen.

That was fun and easy.

Now for the Marine!

He's got a harpoon that can silently shoot people at short range! Beats waiting for the Green Beret to very very very slowly close the distance to he target.

Time for me to whip out the portable inflatable boat and...

No, not quite.

Eh, damn it. That's enough training for one lifetime. I'll just put the proper game on and see what happens.

Norway, February 1941. Norway has fallen under German occupation, and its King and government have been evacuated to England. Shortly after these events, the Commandos were assembled from the best of the armed forces, to infiltrate enemy territory and strike at critical targets.

For their first mission, the newly formed unit are being sent to destroy a poorly defended relay station.

I always like these archive movie clips and voiceovers between missions. Makes a game seem more finished.

There's the relay station at the top of the map. There's barrels all over the place, so I won't be short of explosives.

Where are my guys?

They're all over the place. The Green Beret is stuck below some trees at the very bottom of the map, the Driver is behind a German patrol in the bottom left. The Marine is on a little island by himself.

Miraculously, none of my men are in immediate danger, even though the Driver and the Marine are in plain sight.

"AH! DAT HURTS! GET ME OUTTA HERE!"

You damn fool! That's a sterling example of how not to sneak up on a guy right there.

Even when I'm sure I've got the guy's route down, he always seems to snag me on the very edge of his vision range as it flickers about.

Of course, the simplest solution is never the correct one.

Psst. Beret. You'd probably be able to hit him from there if you held the pistol with both hands. He doesn't even want to try to shoot.

"HUH. WISH I COULD DO DAT."

Instead of shooting me dead, the enemy ordered me to halt, so I did. And now we're a bit stuck. Looks like he's going to hold me here until reinforcements arrive. I've got some time to think, and my other guys could help... if they were anywhere near.

After much fussing about hiding behind the sandbags, trying out the distraction box, I FINALLY get the jump on him using the 'tracks in snow' gag.

Beret walks up behind the guy barely faster than he's walking.

In your own time, Green. It's not as if he's going to turn around at any moment.

I needn't have worried so much. After killing the first guy, I got spotted by an offscreen guard and killed instantly before I even made it to the road checkpoint.

Here's the lower half of the map zoomed out. I was spotted by the patrol on the right, whose vision cone is bigger than the normal-sized screen. He spotted me in a gap between some trees and the checkpoint before I'd gotten anywhere near it.

Don't mind me, I'm a house.

Well, now I'm a bit stuck. I can't sneak up on that patrol if he can see that far. There's a guy standing at the checkpoint having a smoke that I didn't even see the first time.

I can only monitor one guard at a time. You can also monitor an area and it'll lock on to the first guard that turns to look there. I really should use this every time I move anywhere.

The Driver's on the other side of the checkpoint and down the road.

The patrol's facing away! I'm gonna steal that truck and run 'em over!

"Sure thing! Okie dokie! Consider it done, boss!"

He's so enthusiastic with that Brooklyn accent of his! Go, Driver!

"This looks bad!"

That's the end of him. And the mission too: you can't complete the level if you lose a single man. It's like The Lost Vikings.

No, wait, this game isn't like The Lost Vikings, it is The Lost Vikings. Three guys, unique powers, very little chance of success. Man, if somebody had just told me that from the beginning, I could have told you and then I could've skipped the game and wouldn't have had to spend an hour on the tutorials. Baaaah!

I just noticed that the Driver has a submachine gun. That looks like a laugh, let's try that.

I fired off a couple of rounds to see how it worked and got the guys' attention. I figured I was dead anyway so I sprayed bullets everywhere. Somehow, I killed the patrol before they got a shot off. Yay, Driver!

"No problem, boss!"

So those guys are safe down there.

Where's the Marine?

Here he is. Stuck on an island far to the North of the other two. He's just under those trees. He's not that guy who's conked out next to the boat.

There's a help system in the game telling you what all the characters' abilities do and what the (fixed) key shortcuts are. I've written some down so I don't make any more stupid mistakes like in the tutorial. With these, I can react much faster and with far greater precision. As everything happens so fast in this game, I'd wager it becomes impossible to play any other way.

Unfortunately, the keys a little random and mostly different for each character.

The key combinations for the Green Beret are: X to knife, Q to drop radio, I to toggle radio, G for pistol and H for hand. XQIGH. That's the name of the alien who came up with that arrangement. (Back in the old days, we had QAOP and it sucked.)

The Marine's harpoon (J key) is really useful. Unlike the knife, you don't have to be right next to the person to use it, which means you don't have to watch your guy chase his mark for five seconds every time.

These character voices are great, the Marine's got a really sarky voice. I can turn 'em off, but where'd the fun be in that?

"Coming right over! ......... sir."

With my awesome crew reunited, we set sail for adventure.

BLAH! Where did YOU come from!?

Alright. Boat is a bad idea. How the hell would anybody ever play this game without saves?

But there are saves. And you can use them. Or not, if you like. Optional things are cool! Everybody's happy!

What does the Marine's air tank icon let me do?

Ah! He can go in water by himself and swim wherever he likes. Well, that's neat.

I'll just shimmy up to this island, hide behind the rock and harpoon this guy when he's turned around.

Yeeeeeah!

With that guy gone, I'm free to land on the island. Turns out I don't need to use the pier at all; I can land the little boat anywhere.

That pile of radio equipment in the centre is the target.

The briefing suggested I commandeer the mounted machinegun to the far left. Only the Driver's able to use these turrets, so off he goes.

...

I get ONE shot off before the patrol spins around and kills the Driver instantly.

Combat is just plain impossible because I can't pause and move the cursor while paused.

I just ignore the patrols. Work around them.

Green Beret, the only character able to pick up barrels, carries a barrel to the radio site, waits for the patrol to stand near and boom.

Maximum points for nobody getting hurt. Zero points for taking forever. Who cares! I win!

Not marked down for using saves. Which I did. A lot.

Mission two: Operation Claymore (Wikipedia link). Serious business.

The game's also given me a password. Huh, that's weird. No level select!

On this mission I've got the Green Beret, Sniper, Marine, Sapper and Driver.

I have infiltrate a Nazi fuel depot and blow up these fuel tanks, making sure not to alert the enemy forces...

As I'll be overwhelmed by infinite men from their barracks. After the objective is complete, I need to commandeer a truck and escape.

And all of this is on the opposite side of a river.

There's plenty of soldiers on both sides of the river, and there's trucks coming and going on the far side. The entire level is like an intricate clockwork machine. If I pull this off, it'll be the heist of the century. I'm going to be here forever!

Commandos doesn't screw around. It doesn't give you advice or do anything for you. It sets up these vast scenes, then steps back and asks 'You think you've got a plan that'll get everybody though this mission without a scratch? I'd really love to see that. Go right ahead.'.

If you win, it's all because of you. What more could you ask for in a game?

The interface sucks. Moving the mouse back and forth to the backpack icons is clumsy, and hitting their irregular shapes in a hurry is error-prone. The keyboard shortcuts are all over the place; pretty much every key on the keyboard is assigned to a single character's unique action.

On top of that, you've got the F Keys if you want to have split screen (you can set up these views to automatically follow patrols), numpad plus-minus to zoom in and out and Ctrl-S and Ctrl-L to quick save and load. Shift-click is monitor person/area.

If you could refine the keys to something regular like QWERTY for Knife, Pistol, Hand, Movement, Special Action, Special Weapon, it would be a lot easier to remember.

I'm still at the point where failure is amusing rather than frustrating. If I gave this level a proper shot, I'm sure that would change quickly because nothing funny happens when you mess up. You stray into a green triangle, you're dead. Don't even try to remember what the pistol key is, you're just dead.

There's a cooperative mode where multiple players can each take command of a couple of the Commandos as well. I can't imagine how ridiculous that would be in practice, but I bet it's pretty awesome when it works, never mind awesome looking.

If you're sick of wussy games and you want to be tested, play this. I can imagine there are people who started playing Commandos when it first came out and they're still working their way through it to this day.