From what I understand, there's a PC title called Soldat that Crash Commando bears a striking resemblance to, but I've never played Soldat so I can't really say much on how the two games compare. Crash Commando stands up fine on it's own though, and while I can see how the game would work well on a keyboard/mouse set-up, the controls here are absolutely fine, and they're as responsive as you need them to be.

The game, at its heart, is a multiplayer title. There is a single player boot camp mode, but its pretty much just you playing against bots on the various maps, and while it's worth checking out at first to get you acquainted with the controls, the majority of the time you play will be online with the deathmatch, team deathmatch, and Objective modes. The first two are self explanatory, but the Objective mode provides two team based activities for each map. One has you either destroying or defending nine different panels spread out in areas A, B, or C across a map, while the other has you downloading or defending data from four different areas. Both modes are definitely fun provided you get a team together that realizes they need to have a good defense and doesn't plan on trying to go it alone in enemy territory, and since each round has you switching back and forth between sides, you'll need to learn a good offense and defense.

The way the game is played is that you're either assigned to the red or blue team, or you'll go it alone in regular Deathmatch. The teams are divided into six players, and there's various spawn points spread out across each map. You can pick from a variety of main weapons, like a Sniper Rifle, Grenade Launcher, the CAB (ray gun), Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, and a Machine Gun. Then you have a secondary pistol, and finally your explosives, either grenades or C4. Every time you spawn you can opt to change your gear around too, so you're never completely stuck with your decision. You have a health bar, but you can also find some armor power-ups spread out, along with a couple weapon power-ups that provide some super powerful weapons with unlimited ammo for a small amount of time. If you run out of ammo for your main gun then you'll default to your side arm (which has unlimited ammo), but there are power-ups that will refill your ammo on the maps too.

The control set up works really well, with the left stick being used for movement (which is pretty much just left and right), and the right stick controlling your aim. There's a little line that extends out from your weapon to give you an idea of distance and the arc your bullets/weapon will travel, and I found that holding the stick in the direction I wanted to fire at all times gave me more flexibility than just adjusting it on occasion. There's no actual jump, but you're equipped with a jet pack on a limited fuel supply (which auto refills), allowing you to hop over platforms and fly around the multi-leveled maps. There's a defensive roll, (which can become like a screw attack from Metroid if you get the power-up for it), and you can tap R2 to unleash your selected explosive. As you rack up kills on a single life, a small meter will fill that unlocks three different bonuses. These bonuses only stay in place as long as you live, and the meter resets after you die.

The various weapons are all pretty balanced; with each one having it's own particular strength and weakness. Take the Sniper Rifle for instance; which provides one hit kills if your opponent doesn't have body armor equipped. However, if you miss the initial shot, the firing time is pretty slow, and chances are your enemy will already start to return fire before you can get in another shot. Then there's the shotgun, which is obviously really effective at close range. The farther out your are though, you'll see the shot begin to spread out, so instead of being hit with four bullets at once, your opponent will only catch one or two. My preferred weapon, the Grenade Launcher, can seem overpowered at first, but it's hard to line up a shot considering the arc the grenades take, and it's also really easy to accidentally hit yourself with a stray shot, since the grenades will bounce off of one object before exploding on the next hit. The splash damage from the grenades isn't all that big either, so a stray shot that explodes near an enemy won't cause much in the way of damage.

Rounding out the ways to kill your fellow commandos is the use of two vehicles, the Rail Car and the Tank. Each map has certain sections with rails for both of these vehicles to travel along, but they can be taken across any type of terrain thru the use of the boosters that work just like the jet pack's the soldiers use. The vehicles can be incredibly effective in the right hands, and you can use them to simply run over soldiers provided you've picked up enough speed. They only have one weapon for each vehicle, and the Tank is pretty tough to line up and aim with, but you only need to pull off one hit. The Tank is also pretty hard to destroy unless you've lined up some C4 or you have a small group of grenade/rocket launcher equipped commandos, but the vehicles aren't entirely unbalanced. There's plenty of locations on each map that they either can't fit into, or their line of sight is partially obscured, allowing most people to find some sort of safe haven until a proper offense can be assembled. They respawn a bit after being destroyed, and anybody can make use of them, with about one to two tanks per map and a few more rail cars spread about.

To find a game simply select the option that will show you a list of game types in progress organized by ping. I never had trouble jumping into a match, even if there was only one slot open. I also experienced zero lag (only selecting games with a ping of 150 or less), and every experience was really smooth. You can jump out at any time, and there are always a number of games to select from. Trophy support is present here too, of course, and the only thing that's really lacking is some type of split screen support. You can populate a team with bots as well, if you can't find enough players to round out a given match, and the bots themselves perform pretty well. They're a bit dumb when it comes to getting out of the way of vehicles, but they generally contribute as well as an average player might.

I really have a hard time coming up with anything that I didn't like about Crash Commando. The music is solid, and while there doesn't seem to be many tracks available, what's there is good. I would like to see some DLC down the road to give me a few more maps to choose from, and I'm hoping something like that is in the works, but all in all I absolutely love this game. If you own a PS3, you should own this, since it's one of the best online experiences on the system right now. Really addictive, and perfect to play in short bursts or for extended periods, Crash Commando is easily a title that can, and should appeal to quite a few people. Give this one a go, at $10 it's almost a steal considering how much time you'll end up putting into it.

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