The Commandos: Origins demo is reassuringly reverential, great fun, and très jolie, but while guiding Tiny and Fins to the mission objective – a coastal radar station in need of demolition – I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d played at least one superior Commandos demo in the past.
Almost a quarter of century old now, the Commandos 2 appetiser was a corker. Pyro let trialists have a bash at Saving Private Smith, C2’s eighth mission.
Compared to Operation Prelude’s map with its winding paths and numerous contrived barriers, Saving Private Smith’s river-riven sneak space is profoundly open-plan, experimentation friendly, and ripe for replay.
It helps that players are given four of the full game’s eight major characters to wreak havoc with (Claymore Game Studios provide just two).
While modern demo-ists get to slit throats…
wield Colt M1911s…
use diversions, and queue and synchronise actions…
carry and conceal bodies…
move and detonate explosive barrels…
and admire (but not joy-ride, sadly) beautifully detailed Kettenkrads…
their 2001 counterparts could scavenge equipment and uniforms from the bodies of slain and unconscious foes…
explore fully rotatable building interiors (exteriors in C2 were viewable from four fixed perspectives only)…
peep through keyholes and windows…
pick locks, cross streets using powerlines, and explore a downed bomber…
They could snipe…
snip barbed wire, and lift minefields and lay them…
utilise NPCs…
trash tanks, and make mischief with a trained mouse…
Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed every minute of Operation Prelude – but it did make me wonder if Commandos: Origins will be as colourful and intricate as the game that, all those years ago, let us debag Castle Colditz guards, ride elephants across the River Kwai, and spook anachronistic penguins in the Arctic.