Background:
Purchased as part of a bundle from Bundle Stars. I played the first two games in the series to death back when they came out.

Impressions:
The game stands up today much as it did when it came out. It's a damn fine strategy game that's a blast to play and highly rewarding. However unlike it's predecessor this game is more of an expansion pack, with only 8 missions they instead ramped the difficulty to near frustrating levels.

While still fun and rewarding for the most part I really started to detest the 'mansion kidnap', 'rail yard' and final mission for the sheer bloody minded difficulty of sections those missions where trail and error started to get irritating.

There are some missteps for sure with elements that are seemingly only solvable in a single method and theres one right in the first mission that can leave you stranded just as you thought you were done and you have to go back a few saves or even start again.


Fixes:
As with Behind enemy lines there are a number of serious issues with the game on a modern PC that make it almost unplayable.

See the page on the 'Commandos Wikia' for 'Commandos: Beyond the call of Duty Fixes' for a collection of bug fixes to stabilise the game and make it playable.

http://commandos.wikia.com/wiki/Fixing_Commandos

The Good:
*A classic formula that stands up today for it's simplicity and functions.
*Missions can be tackled many ways.
*The settings have a historical context and introduced as such.
*Missions are huge and diverse.
*Fast save/load system makes experimentation less frustrating than you'd think.
*Huge sense of triumph from executing a plan that takes out even a single awkward guard.
*Looks pretty good considering it's age.
*New mechanics, some of which are interesting and alter your tactics.

The Bad:
*Installs ok on Steam but multi-core affinity issues requires some manual tweaking.
*Many missions have sections where there is only one practical solution.
*The difficulty level is a massive leap up upward over the original game.
*A new character only appears in a single mission.
*Cigarette packs effectively give everyone a Decoy box, messing with the balance.
*Shorter tougher campaign.

Recommended for: War, Action and isometric strategy fans and fans of the original.

Conclusion.
7/10. Once the stability issue is fixed it's a reasonable follow up to the original.

Very nostalgic real-time strategy games. Tons of content and hours of fun. Try perfecting it without using the cheats :)

This goes for steam and not for the game, steam guys, why are you sellings games that doesn't work??? I had to fix a bug problem looking on forums wich made imposible to save game, and after that the game crashes on the main menu or in the esc menu. Really, why do I need to create an account to get support if I already have my steam account, lookes like a trick to avoid giving support to your users..

Great game, one of my favourites. Awesome strategy, never gets old.

If you are now playing on 16:9 or :10 screen resolution and using WindowsOS further than Win98, better not buy it. The devs seems too lazy to fix (or perhaps, recode) the game into HD (like AoE II did) or simply do something to make it playable in compatibility mode.

Had to delete (or rename the extension) all of the clips in the videos folder or the game will end up in black screen and had to ctrl-alt-del.

I love this classic game in my old days, but Steam successfully loot my money for my childhood impression and not deliver my expectancies.

Don't buy this on Steam if you don't want to ruin your childhood memories.