Commandos Ammo Pack

I've put so so many hours into this gem back then... and I don't regret a bit. It's an amazing experience, just about anyone I know who tried it loved it, so I'm surprised this type of strategy games didn't get more popular. Is the kind of games that will make you feel frustrated quite often, for being able to get past some area, but once you acchive that, and beat the level, you feel like you are on top of the world. Sure, the expansion and sequel expanded upon this concept, and are objectibely better games, the original is still very challenging and well worth your time (and money).. just... prepare to die... a LOT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDj33zSx5BA I've no idea why adding an 'm' to the filename for the .exe works - but it does. You can not play this again on Win10 :) Give the dude a like on YT - solid share

Great classics. While Behind Enemy Lines has well balanced difficulty, Beyond The Call Of Duty can be frustrating sometimes, feeling like you need to come up with exactly the solution game creators wanted, with very little room for your own ideas. BEL seems to be more flexible in this department. That said, both are still worth playing. People who've never played any commandos-like games could be surprised that all commandos are ridiculously specialized to a point where they would be entirely useless in the real world. Just think about the game as logic puzzle (although requiring some good reflex and timing too) in ww2 settings instead of tactics stealth real war game. And if you get directx errors, just use DDrawCompat (if the game crashes with the latest release of DDdrawCompat, try out previous versions) or DxWnd.

Commandos is not so much a war simulation or a tactical squad game as a puzzle game using soldiers as its pieces. You control a squad of up to 6 different soldiers in the European theatre of World War II during the infancy of commando units. The commandos at your disposal are a green beret, a sniper, a marine diver, a sapper, a driver and a spy, and your missions range from blowing up a dam or a ship to freeing an informant, kidnapping an enemy commander or stealing a bomb guidance system. The missions generally sport a high level of difficulty, requiring you to map out the patrol routes of the enemy soldiers and wait for exactly the right opportunity so that you can kill them off silently and stealthily approach your objective. A straight-forward, guns blazing approach will almost always result in a quick death and a failed mission. What makes Commandos a puzzle game rather than a tactical squad game like X-Com or Jagged Alliance is that all of your commandos are highly specialised, far beyond the point of realism. For example, only one of your soldier types knows how to fire a mounted machinegun, how to drive a car or how to row a boat. The game is limited in this way specifically to force you to approach the levels in a certain way, increasing the demands on your puzzling and coordination skills but heavily reducing the realism. Some levels are flagrant about railroading you, others are more open and allow more varied approaches. This leads to high levels of frustration from time to time, sometimes to the point that the game suffers from it, but ultimately also to a great deal of satisfaction when your plan finally comes together. The expansion pack, Beyond the Call of Duty, adds a number of abilities to your soldiers, such as being able to lure guards by throwing a pack of cigarettes on the ground, knocking them out and forcing them to do your bidding at gunpoint or let your spy steal their uniform. The new features make your soldiers more versatile as you no longer need to rely solely on the green beret to lure soldiers away from their route, now any commando can throw some smokes within the enemy's line of sight and ambush them. However, the expansion also ramps up the difficulty significantly, leading to immense amounts of frustration and possibly self-harm. The bottom line is, if you want a fast-paced action game with the emphasis on gunplay then stay away from this game. If you like puzzle games, don't mind high difficulty or a "mature" war setting and are willing to suspend your disbelief about the Green Beret flunking out of the boat-rowing class in special forces school then Commandos is definitely for you. As for the technical aspects of the game, it is an isometric sprite-based game which allows the resolutions of 512*384, 640*480, 800*600 and 1024*786. The soldier sprites could have used more detail, but overall the sprites are good and the graphics have aged well. The interface can be clunky, with the hotkeys not being reconfigurable and important acts such as running not having its own hotkey. Overall it is a functional interface, including important tools such as visualising an enemy's line of sight and allowing you to split the screen into several cameras so that you can time your actions just right. The game has hotkeys for quicksaving and quickloading (and I love them so) but due to the difficulty it is important to manually save in order to maintain several save games at different stages in the mission.

The Commandos games included in this package (Behind Enemy Lines and the stand-alone expansion Beyond the Call of Duty) are a mix of strategy and puzzle games, set during WW2. You are given a squad of soldiers, each with their own unique specialties, and are sent on missions with a variety of objectives to accomplish by using said abilities in a variety of (isometric) locales against the German menace. Not everyone on your team might be strong enough to carry and hide a dead body, or they might not be equipped with a silent weapon, but by coordinating them, you'll be able to complete all missions (assuming you can figure out the required approach, that is). Combat is possible, but usually it's only advisable if you can sneakily take out an enemy, as triggering an alarm can send a horde of nazis your direction, usually putting an end to your run (make sure to save often). The games are both great fun (although the expansion is more finnicky in design and annoying, in my opinion). Learning at least some of the hotkeys is very important, as often you'll need good timing to execute your plans, and using just the mouse can be too slow or unreliable for that. Usually, there is at least some freedom in how to complete a mission, but in some cases (again, especially in the expansion), you might have to manage your resources sparingly, or find yourself unable to cleanly finish a level. The games are focused around stealth, so you'll often need to study the situation before acting. The game gives you a lot of tools to follow enemies, check their cone of view and so on, but the UI lags a bit behind the ambitious scope of the games. Nevertheless, pulling some coordinated stunts as you take down two guards at once, or plan a careful sequence of stealth kills by distracting guards at crucial times, is incredibly satisfying. There is a good variety of objectives and the soldiers all feel unique, so if the gameplay clicks with you, you'll find the experience unforgettable.