Commandos: Origins Review (PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, & PC)

Commandos: Origins may be set in World War II. But the only way to beat it is to sneak past guards. It’s a fully stealth game whose only ask of you is not to make a sound. And if you do, to be prepared to face a particularly hostile response. You probably remember the series from its predecessor’s trilogy launched in the course of the late ‘90s to mid-00s. After an excruciatingly long hiatus, the series returns with not just a remaster but a standalone new entry. 

Gaming has obviously made huge leaps in the real-time tactics and stealth mechanics front. Desperados III and Shadow Tactics are just a few of the masterfully crafted real-time tactics games. Meanwhile, there have been a ton of stealth games that have been a hit or miss. It’s a difficult mechanic to get right, especially with the unpredictability of enemy behavior and the precise controls you often need to get past them.

Commandos: Origins has got a few things right despite its MIA status. Being stuck in the trenches trying and retrying new ways to beat the game will come more naturally over time. Rather than grow frustrated, you’ll be continually sucked into its sneaky momentum, desperate to make every new run better than the last. Still, there are a few kinks left to iron out to truly make it a stellar choice. 

In any case, we’ve compiled our thoughts about the game in our Commandos: Origins review below.

Whole Nine Yards

Commandos: Origins tells the “origin” story of the elite squad from the series’ previous entries fighting the Nazis in World War II. Rather than scamper around scavenging the best bazookas and machine guns, you’d rather sneak and hide past enemies. It’s simply not built for in-your-face takedowns or ranged combat, for that matter. Aggression is the last option if you’re to keep breathing. 

So, how, then, do you complete your missions when hundreds of enemies stand in your way? Well, you sneak behind enemies and slit their throats, careful not to alert nearby guards to your presence. You want to avoid enemies’ line of sight or else they’ll activate alarms and call for reinforcements. You may also coordinate your squad’s team of six movements and attacks so they take out all the guards in the vicinity. 

For this, you’ll need to freeze the game at any time and plan your next moves, then watch them unfold like a masterfully crafted ballet dance. And that’s pretty much Commandos: Origins, in a nutshell. It’s not the kind of meaty story that’ll surprise you with its twists and turns. No betrayals or conspiracies here, I’m afraid. No gunplay, swordplay, or other intense fighting, either. 

On the Front Lines

Instead, your stealth prowess is tested at perhaps some of the most clever and often punishing levels. You have 14 missions, each with one or two unique objectives. Each mission has more primary and secondary side tasks that you can always return to for extra challenge and replayability. However, the core of it all is to use stealth tactfully to make your way past guards without being seen. Don’t worry. You do have sufficient tools and resources at your disposal to beat the game. 

Firstly, your squad is made up of capable commandos, each with unique skills. You’ll control Jack O’Hara, the “Green Beret,” Thomas “The Engineer” Hancock, Francis T. “The Sniper” Woolridge, Samuel “The Driver” Brooklyn, James “The Marine” Blackwood, and Rene “The Spy” Duchamp, applying them uniquely to different case scenarios. Beyond their obvious skill sets, they have unique abilities that make them ideal for certain missions. 

The Green Beret is versatile and can climb rock formations, kick down doors, and camouflage by digging underground. The Engineer can cut through barbed wire and set traps. Besides picking enemies off one by one from afar, The Sniper can throw shell casings to distract enemies. Meanwhile, The Driver, in addition to the getaway means, can mow down enemies using machine guns. The Marine can swim underwater and help the squad escape in his motorboat. And, of course, The Spy, who can wear enemy uniforms and infiltrate deep within enemy territory. 

No Man’s Land

When crouching behind enemy lines, you study the hundreds of enemies standing in your way to completing a mission. It’s up to you to figure out how to apply each squad member’s skills to particular scenarios. Your strategy needs to be efficient and make use of each soldier’s strengths. However, in some cases, you may find balancing issues where you lean on The Green Beret’s versatility, for instance, over others.Still, Commandos: Origins has done a great job of devising missions where every soldier’s skills are necessary to make it to the other side. It’s a great way to ensure that you explore all your options. Meanwhile, the environment can provide useful collectibles and enemy drops like medkits that can come in handy.

Worth noting, though, is the enemies lack an inventory system as with the previous entries. So, all you’ll find are single-item drops like medkits, uniforms for The Spy, ammunition, or none at all. While it may seem like a bummer, it does ensure a more streamlined playthrough, purely focusing on stealth rather than item management. 

So, now, you focus all your effort on carefully studying the environment. And might I add, Commandos: Origins has designed quite an intricate map spanning from the snowy plains of the Arctic to the desert plains of North Africa and the Western coastlines of Europe. It’s incredibly dense, too, with lots of ways to manipulate the environment and objects in it to your advantage. Shrubs make for a good cover, while large objects help break enemies’ line of sight. Meanwhile, you can climb telephone poles and cross over the wiring.

Bite the Bullet

It’s often a tense affair, as you can imagine. You have to carefully study enemy patrol patterns to know just the right time to move. Perhaps an enemy leaves their station to investigate a suspicious noise. Others may simply turn their heads long enough to allow you to sneak past them. Often, though, you’ll be crawling around on your bellies, avoiding detection at all costs. 

Even then, something will set the enemies off. Some missions require blowing up a key point of interest, which alerts guards to your presence. So, you need a bulletproof plan for when they come storming in. Other times, it may be your soldiers entering an enemy’s line of vision. You may leave your footsteps behind or prematurely fire your gun. Honestly, most times, it’s your own accidental misstep that fails to factor in an enemy’s patrol route, sight cone, or environmental hazard. 

The good thing is you can always fall back on a Quick Load and try again. Commandos: Origins allows you to save as many times as possible, and the Quick Load, although not instantaneous, restores your previous save files with ease. It’s no fret, too, since stealth-oriented games rely on trial and error. You may have an idea for sneaking past guards, but it doesn’t pan out due to reinforcements or an enemy you didn’t expect to spot you. No worries; you can always try again and again until you crack the puzzle.

Got Your Six

Because, in the end, it’s a puzzle that needs solving. How can you make it past hundreds of guards on high alert, avoiding their line of sight, taking out the ones you can, and make it through to the end of the mission without being seen? It requires careful planning of a series of moves and tactics that you can queue together in the Command Mode, which lets you freeze the screen and feed your commands to each soldier. 

Once it all comes together, knitting into a beautiful mosaic pattern that takes out enemies and leaves the rest none-the-wiser, it feels so damn satisfying you can’t help returning to try out more clever ideas. 

It’s a shame, then, that Commandos: Origins comes laden with bugs and optimization issues. Despite its flexible isometric camera that you can zoom in and out, it can often cause screen tearing and imprecision. Some animations and visuals look a bit choppy compared to modern counterparts, among other issues you can, fortunately, cast aside in favor of a genuinely rewarding playthrough.

Verdict

Who knew Commandos would return with a new entry two decades later? And at that, give us one of the best stealth-oriented games ever made. It already had a solid foundation to build on, controlling half-dozen soldiers past Nazis in World War II. 

Now, the maps have received more care and love, intricately detailing environmental hazards and objects you can use to your advantage. The maps and gameplay mechanics have been meticulously designed to take hours to crack the safest route to your destination, and you feel surprisingly satisfied to want to have another go at it. 

Even with the current bugs and optimization issues, a sequel may very well continue in Commandos: Origins’s stead.