When you send your Renoir nude off to the restorer for a spruce-up there’s no danger it will return with the nipples painted out because the restorer thought they might cause offence or arousal. Things work a little differently with computer games it seems. Much-loved isometric sneak-em-up Commandos 2 has come back from refurbishment missing a few aesthetic details. German flags have shed their swastikas, Hinomarus have disappeared from the wings and fuselages of Japanese aircraft, and footage of vile misery-monger Adolf Hitler has been cut from the intro cinematic. The edits plus a host of bugs and shortcomings explain the game’s less than rapturous reception and the waspish words about to waft from my word piano. (more…)

A fancied-up rerelease of a venerated WW2 squad tactics game sounds grand but the reality of Commands 2 HD Remaster is less splendid. Following its launch on Friday, many players have complained about bugs and poor performance – a surprising problem considering it doesn’t look wildly different to its original incarnation 19 years ago. The makers responded over the weekend, saying ah, yeah, whoops, we’ll try to do something about all this. They’re working on a patch, though don’t say when we should expect it.

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Kalypso Media have set up an internal studio to make a new Commandos game with the rights they bought last year. This is good news.

My two year-old brain hadn’t developed to the point where it could enjoy sneaky shooting in Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines back in ’98, or in any of its sequels, but my brain’s more advanced form did adore Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun. Tim Stone lavished his Shadow Tactics review with Commandos 2 comparisons, so I’m hoping this will be up my street.

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A double-bill of revamped Pyro Studios games are coming our way on January 24th, 2020, publishers Kalypso announced today: “HD Remasters” of Commandos 2 and Praetorians. 2001’s Commandos 2 is a proper good’un, a squad-based tactical isometric sneak-o-shooter about covert operations in World War 2 – and a huge inspiration for newer games like Shadow Tactics. Praetorians is a Roman RTS, which I don’t know but I bet Ghoastus does. The HD Remasters look worse to my eye and the originals are still sold so I’m not wholly sure what the point is, but hey, any excuse to remind people of Commandos?

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