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Derek Green
United States
Lexington
Kentucky
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In 1985, Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in "Commando", a movie which best typifies his entire career. Out of all of his movies, it is the least distinct and the quintessential generic 1980's action movie. Arnold was in some great movies like "Total Recall", he was in some terrible movies like "Jingle All The Way", and then he was in "Commando" which as I have said, is the most profoundly unremarkable movie that he ever appeared in. Luckily, for the Governator's now sullied reputation, the NES game Commando was not in fact movie-licensed but was rather a cheap 1986 unofficial cash-in on the movie by Capcom.
Like the movie that it rips off, Commando features a super soldier who runs through a never-ending horde of enemy soldiers and vehicles. Unlike the movie "Commando", where Arnold's character is seeking to rescue his daughter, the motives of the character in the game are largely unknown, but he seems to be working in some official capacity for the government so far as I can tell. Anyway, whatever the stupid story behind the action is, it is now time to delve into this delicious pile of underdeveloped underachievement.
I. Graphics
As a general rule, 8-bit games were judged to have good graphics if those graphics were smooth, even, charming, and functional. In Commando, the graphics cannot possibly be described by any of those terms. The main problem is that this game is more glitchy than early PlayStation and Saturn 3D games. Enemies suddenly vanish from right in front of you at an alarming rate. You never know which enemies will require a grenade and which ones will get sucked into a wormhole. The actual reason is most likely that the game is exceeding its technical capacity to put men on the field and that not all of them can be simultaneously rendered. Thus, the game is not smooth and not functional by any stretch of the imagination at a basic level. Vehicles are a weird tan color like molding clay and are partially transparent like bosses who are taking damage in real games. The backgrounds are ineffably bland and uninspired.
Even by the standards of the NES, the color palette is very limited. Your commando wears fairly bright blue while all enemies wear gray. Given the fact that you are vastly outnumbered by guys in gray, one gets the impression that the American Civil War broke out anew in the 1980's and you are a Union commando dropped somewhere in Alabama. It appears, in essence, to be the Lost Cause in reverse since you are outnumbered and have no chance, yet are clearly the hero since all of the bad guys are just there to die. All of the enemies except for a few green commandos with shields and grenades look exactly the same. The only difference between your blue character and their gray character is the color of the uniform. Imperial stormtroopers are more individualistic than these dudes. On the plus side, the M-16 carried by everyone in the game including you is pretty well animated and for some reason sharper than the rest of the visuals. One imagines that the NRA might have sponsored this game.
Graphics Rating- 4/20
II. Sound and Music
Lots of hurried NES games have terrible sounds and music. As a realist, I was not seeking a Castlevania audio performance, but I certainly expected something a little more impressive than this. There really aren't many sound effects to speak of, though given the ginormous number of men, ghosts, and vehicles involved, that might be a good thing and might just help keep this game from being as annoying as it could be. As for the music, that brings the annoyance hard enough to make up for the lack of sounds. The beat is extremely basic and just like every game that you have heard that wasn't very good. Much like the movie it rips off, Commando was dead-set on being generic. Unfortunately, the drum effects sound exactly like the chopper blades AND machine guns from Conflict. When one bad game reminds you of another, you know that you can't rate it very highly.
Sound and Music Rating- 7/20
III. Theme, Immersion, and Extras Rating
Well, as noted above, this game is as generic as humanly possible. At least the movie "Commando" actually had characters! This game has no heart, no soul, and no purpose. Getting immersed in the character of an anonymous commando who runs a repetitive gauntlet with only two inadequate weapons isn't possible. Were the game reasonably playable, then I would be able to know whether or not it contained any extras. Since it fails on so many other levels so profoundly, I seriously doubt that Commando has any extras worth mentioning.
Theme, Immersion, and Extras Rating- 2/20
IV. Controls
You can turn and fire your M-16 in all four directions. Like almost everyone on the map, you fire slow-moving white balls. Your white balls are slower than some of your enemies. You don't run very fast and most of your enemies are faster and move in erratic directions. This means that you die very often from unforeseeable changes of direction by your enemies. Your other weapon is the grenade, of which there is a limited but sufficient supply. The problem with the grenade is that you only throw them up-screen, so you constantly have to stay positioned beneath your opponents. On the positive side, the controls are responsive and predictable. On the considerably larger down side, your enemies have superior weapons and physical capabilities, so it doesn't really matter that your controls are responsive.
Controls Rating- 7/20
V. Gameplay
In the 8-bit and well into the 32-bit era, hit detection was a serious problem. This game is no different. Like its 8-bit rival Predator 2 from its rival console the Sega Master System, you can be killed by enemies who get too close but don't actually seem to physically act to harm you. Unlike the superior Predator 2 (I never thought that I would say that!), there is no life jar and any one hit will kill you. Like its descendant, MERCS, the game features palm trees which exercise zone of control and are impossible to pass through whatever the spatial appearances might suggest. Unlike MERCS, however, the game has a severe flaw in terms of its difficulty level.
This is a game which literally drops you into a gauntlet match from the very first second. There is no time for you to get a feel for how to deal with the fact that many of your opponents are going to disappear suddenly and for no reason. You have to die on the very first level multiple times before you learn to stick to the center of the map to avoid randomly emerging soldiers. As alluded to above, you die from any one hit. In a game with questionable hit detection, this means that we are dealing with a very difficult and frustrating game. You only start out with three lives and no continues, so if you take more than four hits, you are dead. You will restart at the nearest check point if you have any lives left. While you can earn extra lives by scoring points through killing enemies and releasing American hostages, at the end of the day, you will die quickly and horribly barring extraordinary luck and skill. All of this is all too typical of NES games.
Gameplay Rating- 6/20
VI. Conclusion
The movie "Commando" may have been average, but this game sucks. The unlicensed game Commando is to the movie it steals from what "Starship Troopers 2" is to the original "Starship Troopers"; it is a vast drain of quality from a quality well which is close to running completely dry to begin with. If you are into overhead shoot-'em-ups, try Konami's Jackal on the NES or Capcom's own MERCS on the Genesis. Both games are essentially the same concept, except well-done, fun, and surmountable.
Overall Rating- 26/100
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THE MAVERICK
Afghanistan
(Currently far from) Herald
California
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thucydides2004 wrote: The movie "Commando" may have been average, but this game sucks. The unlicensed game Commando is to the movie it steals from --snip--
I have never seen this referred to as an unlicensed game before, nor does it strike me as one now that I have reflected on your claims.
There is nothing about the action in the game that strikes me as recreating any particular part of the movie (i.e. no machetes, no float plane, no Rae Dawn Chong, etc.) The only substantial similarity between the two is that they share the same name - but it is also a generic name, after all.
You could call the game Predator [you know - that generic, unremarkable 80's action movie about hunting aliens in the jungle] and it would bear as much similarity to that movie as it does to Commando...
Finally, according to online references, the game's Japanese name is "Wolf on the Battlefield" and it was released months before the movie.
All of this seems to make it a bit of a stretch to claim that the game Commando "steals from" the Schwarzenegger movie.
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Derek Green
United States
Lexington
Kentucky
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Quote: I have never seen this referred to as an unlicensed game before, nor does it strike me as one now that I have reflected on your claims.
There is nothing about the action in the game that strikes me as recreating any particular part of the movie (i.e. no machetes, no float plane, no Rae Dawn Chong, etc.) The only substantial similarity between the two is that they share the same name - but it is also a generic name, after all.
It appears that you are almost certainly correct to say that it is not technically an unlicensed game. It doesn't strictly adhere to the movie by any means, as you point out. While it is as generic a name as one could possibly find, it still strikes me as odd that the two items came out in such close proximity with the same name.
Quote: You could call the game Predator [you know - that generic, unremarkable 80's action movie about hunting aliens in the jungle] and it would bear as much similarity to that movie as it does to Commando...
As it turns out, there was a Predator game which came out and indeed had very little to do with "Predator". Some levels involve swimming underwater and shooting bubbles, just to give an example of the deep-seated incongruities between the game and the movie. That was technically a movie-licensed game, by the way, which makes it that much worse. Calling this game Predator would actually at least mean that the game's opening stage would resemble the initial attack on the terrorists in the jungle in "Predator" the movie. As it is, this Commando doesn't really resemble anything.
While it is a bit off-topic, I must state that I actually do like the movie "Predator" and consider it one of the best movies of the 80's. Jesse Ventura's lines alone give it the edge over "Commando".
Quote: Finally, according to online references, the game's Japanese name is "Wolf on the Battlefield" and it was released months before the movie.
All of this seems to make it a bit of a stretch to claim that the game Commando "steals from" the Schwarzenegger movie.
After having reflected on it more and taken this into account, it seems to me that the game was designed without regard for the movie. However, the difference in titles between Japan and the U.S. makes me suspect that the publishers decided to change the name in order to ride Schwarzenegger's coattails. That is the only reason that I can posit for abandoning a cool title like Wolf on the Battlefield in favor of Commando.
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THE MAVERICK
Afghanistan
(Currently far from) Herald
California
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thucydides2004 wrote: it seems to me that the game was designed without regard for the movie. However, the difference in titles between Japan and the U.S. makes me suspect that the publishers decided to change the name in order to ride Schwarzenegger's coattails.
Now you might be on to something...
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Posted Fri Nov 4, 2011 5:07 am
