Mission Two: In this mission you actually use the Spy and it is highly a tutorial mission, involving on learning the stealthy techniques of moving around, being a shadow, killing without being noticed, distracting and generally getting a first glimmer of the surroundings. What it is not explained here is that this tutorial mission is a general afterwards chapter of the major mission involving the arrival of the Green Beret in France. The opening intro movie actually shows us the way on how this major mission will be played. It is too much of a giveaway spoiler actually… but again there is a traitor in our mists. Well, in the CSF team mists, anyway.

A Courtesy Call

The game play unfortunately is too short. Both missions are stunningly superb in the eye, but they do not hint about what is to come. There is not a full mission from the campaign in the demo to actually experience something more. That is a two-edged knife for Pyrostudios. Some gamers will pass by the shortness of the demo, perhaps identifying it more like a console related game and a poor made one and move on. Some not so experienced gamers will perhaps find it a bit hard, but not as hard as the demo levels in COD 2. I am pretty sure that die-hard fans will adore and buy the game on the spot. I certainly belong into the last category. My opinion is that the game will be awesome not because it is better than anything before. No. It will be awesome because the game is so much different that anything we have played concerning FPS. This brief demo in the experienced and trained eye of a commandos’ fan -someone that really likes moving slowly, taking his time, adores applying stealth and strategy- reveals more than a simple First Person Shooter game. Believe me.

Commandos Strike Force is not “running and firing at everything that moves”. Although the first mission drags you directly into the heat of battle, if this was a different game, the best routine would be to move in, start firing at everything, taking cover a bit, moving on to next phase. That does not apply here. The enemies are too good and if you start a panic attack (just move in and start blazing everything) you are instantly dead, especially on the higher difficulty settings, as it seems that the actual damage is greater still. No. Crazy tactics will get you killed and that is no good… not if you are a true commando fan. The truth is that actual strategy elements from the series still apply. You need to make less noise as possible. Move fast and eliminate key enemy targets. Be deadly but thoughtful. Be extra prepared. Since both missions are brief and the second one being a tutorial (I will only mention things that you might miss), I’ll write down a brief walkthrough of mission one, which for clarity reasons I’ll name the Norwegian mission (NW).

White Death

At the beginning of the NW mission you start in a “delivery boat” at the dock of the German outpost. You have 6 men as a team and you control the Green Beret and the Sniper. The Germans move on to inspect the boat and… all hell breaks loose. This is a firefight that you need to win. What now? At first, by using the common techniques of gunning everything and everyone down, throwing everywhere grenades and trying to move on I discovered that more and more troops were alerted and ran into my position.