As the new title (under the name Origins) is being developed and set to release this year, I thought I'd revisit the classics. I didn't have much success with Destination Berlin as it simply crashed whenever launched, but it was fun checking out the very first episode and its expansion.

Beyond the Call of Duty was released a year after the original Commandos. How many of you remember those times? With expansion packs, not DLCs. Strategy games often had one before the sequel came out. The expansion has 8 missions and already the first one is very difficult. How many of you made the mistake of not keeping 2 sniper bullets till the end to shoot the mine? This is important otherwise we cannot secure the escape route.

What I like about the expansion pack (and this is what was continued in episode 2) is how we can use stones and cigarettes to distract enemies with pretty much each soldier. And punching them is an additional fun as you can get a pacifist rank during the evaluation if you complete the mission without any kills. Interestingly, there are now easy, medium and hard difficulty settings. Easy is already tough so imagine playing on hard with even more patrolling soldiers present.

I had no issues with running this game on Win 11 and doing just the first mission. It's a timeless classic and if you can't wait till Origins gets released pick this one up and have some fun.

When a kid playing this I couldn't even get through the opening mission, now as an full grown adult, waddaya know, I can't even get through the opening mission. 10/10