Commandos 2 HD Remaster

Under the guise of stealth action and infiltration missions, we find a game that's mercilessly difficult to the point of putting off players less keen on multiple trial and error attempts. Its complicated controls, long loading times and punishing consequences if the mission goes south mean that Commandos 2: HD Remaster lost a chance to be a more user-friendly game, as well as to try to reach to a wider audience. Those who enjoy a cruel difficulty level, however, and who don't mind spending a lot of concentration in their missions will find something well worthy of their attention.

A proposal that could have been much better. Neither new players will like title because it is outdated, nor will veterans be happy with the censorship and general performance issues.

Commandos 2 - HD Remaster takes a classic and spruces is up, without ever making it better. While there are sharper visuals to bring this game into the modern-day, there are also incredibly unintuitive controls that make almost every action more difficult than before. While finding solutions in a level is now more obvious, reaching that solution is more difficult. For every step forward this remaster takes, it takes an equal step backwards.

Commandos 2 – HD Remaster takes a fun but difficult real-time tactics PC game and makes it less fun but more difficult on the Nintendo Switch. The celebrated core gameplay remains, but clunky controls and some annoying bugs will make you wish you’d gone with the computer version.

As much as it pains me to say, Commandos 2 is not the game I was hoping for. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by modern games that built upon this predecessor, perhaps it was the clunky translation to console, or perhaps it was simply my impatience with the frequent loading times. Whatever the reason, this legend of the genre fell well below my expectations. If you are a fan of the original game, then by all accounts this remaster does wonders for the visuals and would probably be an easy recommendation. In this case, do yourself at least the favor of avoiding it on Switch.

Commandos 2 - HD Remaster is a disappointingly lacklustre port of a real-time tactics classic. This is a game that's showing its age in many ways but, with the right tweaks, some decent control implementation and squashing of bugs, it could have had its moment to shine with modern audiences. As it is, the irritations and annoyances expected in revisiting a game of this vintage are exacerbated to no end with shoddy, unwieldy controls, unexpected performance problems and a general lack of care. The graphics have been updated here, but everything else remains much as it was – with the added frustration of bugs, glitches and long loading times.