The setting of Commandos 2 is the aforementioned WW II scenario, fighting the Germans and Japanese. You are assigned a number of covert missions that take you deep behind enemy lines. Once again, there are specific classes for you to use in your quests – the sniper, the demolitions expert, a thief, seduction expert, marine and Green Beret, even a dog. There will be occasions where your team will working in conjunction with Allied forces in certain missions, making for even more variety in the gameplay. There is a multiplayer component available, where two players can cooperatively take on any mission that has already been beaten in one player mode. Coordinating your efforts with a colleague adds a lot of replayability to this title – and you can always use GameSpy to find a friend to tackle the game with.

Commandos 2 is truly one of the most beautiful games I have seen this year. Rendered in absolutely painstaking detail, all of the characters are fully three-dimensional and animated quite well. The submarines, base camps, buildings, aircraft carriers – everything looks sharp as a tack. If you can’t see something from a certain angle, no problem, just change the field perspective from four different angles covering a full 360 degrees. You can enter buildings with your team and still enjoy the 3D detail inside. Want to spy inside a building? Just sneak up to the window and peek around for the enemy.

The missions in Commandos 2 are MASSIVE. Make no mistake, this is a game which will take a lot of time to get through. There are 10 missions available, but don’t let it fool you into thinking that you’ll whip through this in no time. There are several objectives to obtain in each level, and they must be completed in sequence. Night missions have been added to Commandos 2, and look amazing. With floodlights searching for interlopers, the tension is almost unbearable.

What I liked most about Commandos 2, and where it is an improvement over the first one, is that your squad aren’t totally limited in their skill sets, and many skills. Each member still has their specialty, however. The seductress can distract the enemy with her charms, while the spy can strike up a conversation with guards as a distraction. The thief uses lockpicks to get past doors, and a rat to drop certain things in certain places (I won’t spoil it for you). Need to kill someone from long-range? Break out Mr. Sniper. Even Whiskey the dog can be used to distract guards from their posts with a well-timed bark. The control for your squad is done well, with the ability to use hot-keys to streamline the interface. If you decide that you do not want to go around killing everyone, you can sneak up and knock them out cold. I call it the “Metal Gear Solid” approach. Tie them up and you’re off to the races. The guards have a cone of approach, where just like MGS, they can see certain things within that area. The field of view is divided into a two sections: Dark Green will show standing soldiers, but not crawling ones, and Light Green, where anything’ll be spotted. You want to stay under the radar in order not to alert the guards, and Commandos 2 allows you to hug walls, for instance. The new version is much more forgiving than the original when it comes to guards – if you’re spotted from far off, you won’t be made as an enemy right away, so you have a second or two to duck out of sight. Also, if a member of your team dies, a medical kit will resurrect him with nary a scratch to show for it. Should you make a sound, however, there is a ripple effect which can alert the guards to your presence. The louder the noise, the larger the ripple.

The sound in Commandos 2 is well-done, especially the music. It draws you into the games setting beautifully, and I found myself humming certain tracks even after turning off my PC. It has lots of suspense and sets the tension exactly where it should be – just an out and out great job. The voice acting is, for the most part, so-so to good, although a couple of the accents are slightly off.

The footprint for installation is huge: at least 1.5 gigs, and the recommended HD space for installation is 2.5 gigabytes. Yow, time to upgrade. Recommended RAM specs are 128 MB, and a Pentium II 450. With the amount of graphic intensity that this game provides, I wouldn’t attempt trying to play this game with anything less than a P-300 and 64 megs, no matter what the back of the box says.

Commandos 2 is a great game, and improves on several aspects of the original that were rather irritating. It will force you to use your brain, no doubt, but you’ll have an abundance of enjoyment while it lasts. Eidos’ masterpiece packs in many, many hours of gameplay, and is one of the best deals available on the PC. If you’re patient, and like action/strategy titles, Commandos 2 is for you.