Commandos is one of those games I almost hesitate to recommend, because while it was acclaimed and hailed as a refreshingly challenging game, it is also a frustrating outing that's going to drive casual and hardcore gamers alike up the wall. Although advertised as primarily an RTS actioner, this is a very testing game, and probably one of the hardest games that I've ever played. While I enjoy a challenge, this game tested my patience so much, and I don't recall ever completing it as a result, in fact.

Commandos is certainly a well-crafted game but it fails to recognise that frustrating the player is not a way of ensuring repeat business, and this game left me in an angry funk several times as I was killed cheaply by not playing exactly the way that the developers wanted me to. For a game that promotes separate paths, it is surprisingly linear, in that if you don't follow one particular route, you will by all probabilities get destroyed and have to start over again.

The game's mechanics are very simple: you lead a gang of Commandos through various missions with the intention of conquering various campaigns that have been overrun by numerous villainous tyrants. You have a water expert, a demolitions expert, a stealth man and such, but the game sadly never really engages adequately in these special attributes and they feel quite shallow and pretentious as a result.

I cannot see many outside of the rabid RTS fanbase really taking a liking to this; it is far too difficult to the casual player of RTS games such as myself, and relies on cheap mechanics to make you fail, thereby making the game seem "clever" and "hard" when it's more just lazily designed.