Recent reviews by Congested_Strudel_from_Germany

Already put in some good hours into the game so far and all in hard mode (no saves). Couple of things to say here:

Good things:

1) Decent story. Keeps me engaged and it's big chilling to see the campfire interactions after every mission.
2) Fun combat, and devs did a good job in making gunfights a completely viable approach many situations. Assuming you don't attempt to shoot literally every enemy you see, you'll get enough ammo and explosives to play with.

3) Cool skill system. Makes very noticeable impact in how you decide to play the game.

Bad things (and some are really really bad):

1) Overall character control is atrocious. In a world where Commandos, Desperados, and Shadow Tactics exist, there is absolutely no excuse for how bad and clunky character control is in this game. Things that I was taking for granted in the original Commandos, RELEASED IN 1998, are somehow broken in this game. Specifically:

a) If you issue a kill command with your knife (to include zorin's knife throw) and the enemy soldier moves, your character will just walk there, sit still, and get shot. In most cases any movement from the enemy will flat out cancel your command. Your characters don't like to follow the enemy for the kill for whatever reason. It's rage inducing at times as a player and it points toward laziness from the dev side. Like, come on guys, people were getting this right 15 years ago.

b) Game does not like it when you have multiple commands going out to different characters at the same time. Works in most cases, but happens enough to be noticeable.

c) Object placement's range is a random dice roll. All those games above will give you a range indicator of how far you can place that bottle of wine away from your character, for example. This game? none of that. And worse yet, it isn't consistent. You can place a bait bottle like 2 bodies out from the bush you're in one time and can't place it outside the bush the next.

d) Your left click does waaaaaaaaay too much. You accidentally click on a body? You moving that sucker. It gets insanely obnoxious when you're playing around tight spaces or small brushes when you're trying to both hide the bodies and your own character. other games would have you held down Ctrl or something to pick them up or to inspect inventory. Simple solution, but it makes the game smooth. Not only that, some genius had the idea of packing at least 2 huge selectable buttons when you mouse over the bodies. Like, which genius UI designer was it who thought that was a good idea?

2) Moving on from the controls, the stealth/hidden system isn't very clearly defined. It's not buggy (too much), but what you do to stay not detected or not (sometimes a specific criteria for finishing a mission) is not very clear cut. If, say, you use an infantry mine to blow up a patrolling squad with a dog, as long as no one saw the soldiers dying, enemy who can hear the explosion ran there to inspect, try to find you, and then walk away. IT DOESN'T break your stealth. But, if you gun down a lone guy in a random ass corner of the map and no one else is around? You're detected. If you kill someone with a knife, ran away to the other side of map, and then the body gets spotted? You're detected. On top of that, as others have pointed out before me, they're really good at running toward you, no matter where you are. If you run sufficiently far away they'll stop after a bit so it's not that bad though.

3) Game is bug infested. Characters got stuck in the middle of trees, pathing gets messed up, etc. You name it, they got it. I got a current bug right now where Zorin wouldn't fire his rifle after a mission. Went online to look for it, and lo and behold the error was mentioned A YEAR AND A HALF AGO. None of the fixes that worked then work now either. Devs somehow managed to patch the fixes out but not the bug. Brilliant.

I love pain, so I'm still playing it, but I cannot actually recommend this game for anyone else, whether they're a fan of the genre or if they're just starting out. The competing games are just so much better.

This game is crack. Can't quit it.

The only complain I have about the game is this: the quest selection keeps going back to certain quests whenever you have to leave the screen for whatever reason. From a UI design standpoint it's the dumbest and rage-inducing thing ever. Like you select a quest, pick a squad, go to the supply screen and maybe have a change of heart, drop back to the quest select screen to maybe pick another team or go back to town to maybe upgrade the homies, and if you forget to RESELECT THE QUEST YOU WANT you gonna get the farmstead or a boss. You'll be surprised at how often you're gonna forget too. It's so dumb.

Like c'mon b it's the new decade. When you select a quest, have it stay on the same quest when you have to bounce back to it. It wouldn't be so dumb if it isn't so punishing to play a quest you weren't prepping for, but this game lights that ass up on every single small mistake you make. I'm out here doing stygian blood moon and I'm getting stressed (IN REAL LIFE TOO), losing money and losing time because the damn quest selection screen wants to have a mind on its own? Come on.