This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Eric Dayday.

Commandos is one of Eidos’ longer running series, dating back to the original PlayStation days. However, fans of those titles may be disappointed to find that Commandos Strike Force is a far departure from that interesting action-RTS hybrid the older ones used to be. Instead, it’s now just a cookie cutter WWII-era first person shooter. Does it do anything to stand out against the sea of other WWII shooters?

Strike Force is set up in missions, each with their own primary and secondary objectives. Sounds par for the course, and it is, but they shake things up by giving you not only the freedom to accomplish your goals in any manner you see fit, there’s also the option to attack them as one of three characters. Each of the characters has a different skill set so it’ll alter how you play a mission, thus giving you a reason to play through the levels more than once. It’s a reason, but there are other reasons not to, which I’ll discuss later.

The three characters you can control are separated into three different types – a sniper, a beret, and a spy. As the sniper you’ll, of course, have your requisite long range sniper rifle as well as a set of throwing knives with which to silently kill nearby enemies. And you can always walk over a body to retrieve the knife you just threw. The beret plays like your standard foot soldier – proficient with a variety of guns. The spy presents the most interesting way to infiltrate an enemy camp as he is capable of donning enemy clothing. By doing so, you can sneak in and walk amongst the enemy like one of their own. However, catch the peeking eye of a high-ranking official and you can say goodbye to your cover.

The variety in which you can approach a mission adds tons of replay to Commandos. Unfortunately, it does a lot of other things wrong that will turn some off from playing through them all again.

Where to start – how about the graphics? Commandos Strike Force is one ugly duckling. It looks more like a PS1.5 game, or at least a first generation PS2 title at best. We’re in the waning period of the PS2’s lifetime and we get stuck with something that looks like this. A good example is the foliage that’s spread through the majority of the levels. I approached one and it was a pixilated 2D bush. I could go right up to it and see that it lacks depth. That’s the worst of it thankfully. The character models look decent, though they tend to walk in very unnatural ways. They seem robotic at times.

The voice acting is, for the most part, one of Commandos’ strong points. All of the characters sound lively and, contrary to how some are animated, natural. The only problems lie in their repetitiveness and bad synchronization. The controlled character will talk to himself during missions, which I find to be a nice addition as it draws the player into the situation. But, he’ll tend to repeat the same things when performing the same action, such as crouching to hide from a patrolling guard, or taunting a soldier he just stealth killed.

The bad synchronization plays a heavy part in the cutscenes. The voices and the lips don’t match up well at all. In the worst case scenario, sometimes the lips on the speaking character will continue to move several seconds after the dialogue clip had already ended. This turns some of the scenes into the equivalent of a badly dubbed 70s kung fu flick.

Another bothersome thing is the moronic AI. I didn’t like the fact that crouching makes you virtually invisible to a close range enemy the majority of the time. Also, since dead bodies disappear after a few moments, it ruins the realism that Strike Force intended to evoke. If there’s a dead body lying around in the open, someone is bound to notice and sound the alert. But no, all and any evidence that you sliced a Nazi throat just vanishes into thin air.

Adding to the moronic AI is the fact that the Nazi soldiers have some really bad aim. I was once caught in a 6-on-1 disadvantage and managed to escape with minimal damage. It’s like the Stormtrooper effect all over again. Thankfully, there are multiple difficulty settings, and while the hardest doesn’t quite make the enemies smart, they’re smart enough to at least pose a threat. The downside to that is now portions of the game become trial-and-error. In others words, it’s “what happens if I do this? Ok I now know not to do that, so let’s do this”. And don’t sweat having to reload an old save that’s hours back because you can save anywhere at anytime.

Lastly, there’s a serviceable online multiplayer mode. I say serviceable because while it functions well enough, there just isn’t anyone out there playing it. And those that do suffer from occasional bouts of lag and stuttering frame rates. Commandos offers your standard deathmatch and team deathmatch mode, but the third and most interesting of them is sabotage.

The goal in sabotage is to decipher the other team’s 6-digit code. Doing so awards your team points. The coolest part about it all is how you find the code. Each team has at least one spy who can interrogate fallen enemy players. Some will give up just one digit while others may give you three, depending on who it is you’ve interrogated. It’s a very fun mode and one I’d like to see implemented in other multiplayer FPS’. It’s a shame that such an awesome mechanic isn’t being experienced by more players.

Commandos Strike Force has some good points of its own merit, but when the genre is already flooded with so many other games that do it better, it has to offer more than what we’re given here. Unfortunately, because of that, it’s just another WWII-era first-person shooter.

The three different skill sets for the characters offers a nice change of pace.

We shouldn’t be seeing first-gen PS2 graphics this late in its lifetime.

The voice acting is good, but it’s repetitive and badly synched.

Different styles are great and sabotage is awesome, but nothing outside of that is engrossing.

Reasons to play single-campaigns exist, but some problems will turn you off from it. Ok online.