Commandos 2 HD Remaster (Nintendo Switch) Review

By Eric Ace 15.01.2021

Review for Commandos 2 HD Remaster on Nintendo Switch

Originally a type of stealth real-time tactics title of the late's 90s and early '00s that spawned a series of other games, Commandos focused on secret British units behind enemy lines. Players would be tasked with sneaking through various levels, killing enemies, and generally remaining hidden while attempting to accomplish objectives that had some resemblance to real historical events. Sadly, this remake slightly updated the 20 year old graphics, but left a slew of issues behind.

Sometimes when games are bad, it's because a studio shot too high for its talents or budget, sometimes glitches ruin a game, or sometimes it just is not that fun. In the case of this one, it is somewhat of a sight to behold about just how bad it comes together for being a remake of what was once a functional title. Originally a type of stealth tactics game on early 2000 on the PC, this garnered fairly good reception, though it was not that popular of a game.

This Switch version takes it, updates the graphics, introduces an absolute crippling assortment of problems, and calls it good. It has been a while since a piece of software this bad came along. As stated earlier, sometimes video games just don't click - like simple products aimed at kids trying to raise ponies or something, no one expects these to really garner huge praise. But when something at least tries to be good, then falls so utterly flat, one has to wonder if the developer's intentions were that noble to begin with.

Screenshot for Commandos 2 HD Remaster on Nintendo Switch

Stated simply, this is incredibly broken. The graphics (about the only decent thing) are only upscaled, without any type of manual improvement. Controls are truly abysmal, though. A RTS on a console usually is never a good idea in the best of times, but the complete lack of any semblance of a functional control scheme destroys this. As some examples, many actions are separated by the same button either being presses, or press-and-holds which do completely different things. Want to shoot? Try to aim with the left stick while pressing the right button once, click or hold either of them and you do something completely different and get killed.

Even in the tutorial section, the difficulty of simply doing anything cramps any sort of fun. This holds a dubious distinction of how many times this reviewer had to reload simply because of dying over and over on very stupid things like minor bugs or button issues. In some regard one has to be grateful that it's possible to save after every minor action, but this does not make this fun, as you still have to reload over and over. It's hard to overstate how whimsical this is in killing you. An enemy randomly sees you, a shot doesn't actually shoot, the character doesn't pulls off its move right, and so on, even though the player does the exact same thing every single time. In the end it feels more like punishment, and nothing close to fun.

Screenshot for Commandos 2 HD Remaster on Nintendo Switch

Cubed3 Rating

3/10
Rated 3 out of 10

Bad

There is very little to recommend about Commandos 2 - HD REMASTER. The controls are absolutely horrendous, the field of view crippling, the load times unbearable, the randomness of events stifling, and the general inability to do what you want to do annoying, to name a few of the problems. This game represents a cash grab attempt to cash in on an old series, but the one behind it forgot to do much in the way of actually even improving it.

Developer

Pyro

Publisher

Kalypso Media

Genre

Strategy

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  3/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now   

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