..::My Bog::..

Gordon Freeman is back in action, with Alyx by his side, in Episode One, the first of a trio of episodes that continue the Half-Life story.

Unfortunately, Valve's storytelling remains about as cryptic as ever. The episode starts off on a wrong note, as there's an incredible cop-out to explain how Gordon and Alyx survive the explosion and how the G-Man gets knocked out of the picture, but it gets a lot better after that. Rest assured, answers are finally given, but keep in mind that new questions are raised, as well. Episode One is about the escape from City 17. Though the quisling Dr. Breen was defeated in Half-Life 2, the Combine remain on Earth, cut off from their alien dimension. Now, with the Citadel reactor on overload, it's a battle to escape the ruins of the gutted Citadel and the city itself. Of course, that's easier said than done, and you'll once again be plunged along a tightly controlled and highly scripted ride filled with a fair share of ups and downs.

Half-Life has always been a mix of combat and puzzle-solving, but the formula feels honed to a razor's edge in Episode One, as Valve seems to have designed content that's geared toward Half-Life veterans. The puzzles and battles seem even more complex and challenging. In fact, the best encounters in the game require a mix of puzzle-solving and combat as you desperately fight to stay alive long enough to figure out what you need to do next.

There's a wonderful new team dynamic at work in Episode One, thanks to the fact that Alyx battles alongside you throughout most of the episode. After playing on your own throughout Half-Life and Half-Life 2, it's refreshing to have a companion by your side, and Valve takes advantage of this by throwing you into situations where you must rely on teamwork to survive. Alyx is a capable assistant (perhaps almost too capable, since it's pretty tough to kill her off, and she seemingly has unlimited ammo), and she's often the difference between victory and defeat in many encounters, as she'll cover your back while you're busy trying to sort out the puzzle.

Alyx introduces a new team dynamic for Half-Life, such as when you have to illuminate her targets for her in the dark.

Spending so much time with Alyx has other upsides, as well. The flirtation between Alyx and Gordon continues even further, and while it's a bit strange that it's such a one-sided relationship (thanks to Gordon, again, never uttering a single word), you still get a feeling of warmth and affection. There's lots of humor, as well, as Episode One features some sharp and witty dialogue uttered by Alyx and other familiar faces. Barney and Alyx's robotic Dog are back, as well as Eli Vance (Alyx's father) and the ever-hilarious Dr. Kleiner. Valve's impressive facial animation is still incredible, and you really get the sense that you're interacting with believable characters in the game. Of course, it also helps that the voice acting remains top-notch. Robert Guillaume, Michelle Forbes, Merle Dandridge (Alyx), and the original voice cast remain the same.

This sense of familiarity has its downsides, as well. For instance, though extremely well done, the environments of the Citadel and City 17 were already explored in Half-Life 2, so you may find yourself encountering moments of deja vu as you battle through the episode. Your arsenal of weapons also remains unchanged. The versatile gravity gun gets heavy use through the episode, and it's invaluable to solving the many environmental puzzles in the game, but other than that, you're packing the same assortment of pistols, rifles, and grenades as before. It's also worth noting that there are no vehicle sequences in Episode One. That's not exactly a bad thing, though, as the vehicle sequences in Half-Life 2 felt fairly linear and dragged on for too long.

In terms of opponents, you do get glimpses of challenging new foes that are coming up in future episodes, but for the most part, the enemies remain the same from Half-Life 2, including the head crabs, zombies, Combine soldiers, striders, and so on. The Combine troops do seem to have some new abilities, such as the ability to rappel down buildings right in front of you. They're also a bit smarter, as they seemed to utilize cover better than they did in Half-Life 2, but you don't really get the sense of squad coordination that was seen in the original Half-Life. The only memorable new opponent is the zombine, a Combine zombie, and these guys quickly become your first target when they appear on the scene, thanks to the fact that their favored tactic is to charge you with a live grenade in hand.

Battles can get crazy, but with Alyx covering your back, there's nothing that you can't do.

Visually, Episode One introduces a lot of subtle improvements and enhancements in the Source engine, keeping it in line with video-card developments over the past couple of years. The new high-dynamic range lighting technology (seen only if your video card supports it) makes a big difference, as the outdoor scenes look a lot better, while indoor scenes feature impressive shadowing and atmosphere at times. Some of the textures in the game have been increased considerably, notably on Alyx and the other main characters, and the game looks incredibly sharp.

When you get down to it, the only major complaint about Episode One is that it's over so quickly. There are only four to six hours of gameplay, and veteran first-person shooter fans will definitely find themselves at the lower end of that range. Episode One does ship with the two existing Half-Life 2 multiplayer modes, but if you own Half-Life 2 already, you already have those. Finally, the game does include a developer commentary system of sorts, similar to the one used in the PC version of The Chronicles of Riddick, and that does provide some interesting insight into the development of the game (though the rehearsed nature of the developer dialogue makes it sound more like a lecture than a proper commentary track). But apart from that one unique feature, the only thing truly new in Episode One is the single-player story. Before you know it, you've escaped from City 17, the credits are rolling, and you're left wanting more. So in a way, Valve has teased us once again, though the bright side is that we don't have to wait long for the next set of answers to be found in Episode Two, which is due out around the end of the year.

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The single-player will put you up against some crazy-looking foes.

The three previous Quake games have all had very little to do with one another. The first game's story almost felt more like a retelling of Doom, dealing with inappropriately opened portals that spew out all sorts of horrific demons. Quake II ditched that storyline in favor of an Earth-versus-alien conflict that had you crash-landing on the alien homeworld in search of revenge. Quake III Arena was multiplayer focused, with no true single-player storyline other than that a wide collection of warriors--some taken from the Doom and Quake games--had been pulled out of their own timelines and into this futuristic battle arena. Quake 4 doubles back and picks up where Quake II left off. That nameless space marine from Quake II has apparently killed the Makron, the leader of the Strogg forces, and now it's up to you to get in there and try to finish the job. But, of course, things aren't quite what they seem.

In Quake 4, you play as a space marine named Matthew Kane, who has recently been assigned to Rhino Squad. In keeping with first-person shooter storyline tradition, Kane doesn't speak, but the marines around you will more than make up for the lack of chatter coming out of Kane's lips. You're the new guy, and some of the squad's even betting that you won't even survive for one day. With the Makron assumed dead, your squad is taking part in an operation to take advantage of the disarray and mop up the rest of the enemy forces on the Strogg planet. But your drop ship gets hit and comes down hard, killing a large chunk of your squadmates at the opening of the game. From there, you'll pull yourself up out of the muck and get down to business.

Eventually, your squad will get extracted back to a capital ship for reassignment. Here, you'll get to explore the ship, similar to how you could explore Voyager in Raven's Elite Force games. Then you're back out on a new mission designed to disrupt the Strogg communication network. And the story continues from there. While the story itself isn't particularly gripping, it's designed well enough to keep you interested in what's happening. There's also a potentially interesting plot twist in the game that, unfortunately, was revealed by id Software almost immediately, when the company first started talking about and showing off the game. We won't repeat it here, in case you've managed to stay away, because we have to imagine that the twist would have been a lot more interesting if you didn't see it coming. Just know that a few interesting things happen in the game, but they don't totally change the way the game is played or anything like that.

For the most part, Quake 4 is a standard, straightforward shooter in its single-player mode. While the minute-to-minute objectives might not be the most interesting thing in the world, the game's combat is generally pretty satisfying. It's almost as if Raven set out to prove that the Doom 3 engine could do more than just constantly try to surprise you, one enemy at a time. That's not to say that Quake 4's hallways are littered with angry enemies, but Quake 4 is definitely a much more hectic game than Doom 3 ever was. While you'll still deal with a lot of shadowy areas, this is less about making you jump out of your seat and more about running and gunning. When matched with the game's amazing graphical design, the single-player becomes an exciting thrill ride that, on the default difficulty setting, should take you somewhere around 10 to 15 hours to complete.

Yeah, the multiplayer looks better than Quake III did, but that's about it.

In the end, first-person shooters still come down to their armory. In Quake 4, you'll be armed with a fairly standard collection of weapons that may have originated in the Quake II universe--but that doesn't mean they're all identical. You'll start the game with only a blaster, which has infinite ammo and can be charged up for a more powerful shot. But this quickly gives way to the machine gun, which is versatile enough that you'll probably be relying on it throughout the entire game. That's mostly because the machine gun has a flashlight mounted on it. Even though the game isn't trying to spook you by having enemies jump out of the shadows, seeing better is always a good thing. Plus, lighting up some dark corners is a good way to find extra ammo and armor.

You'll eventually get a shotgun, a grenade launcher, the energy-powered hyperblaster, a rocket launcher, the railgun, a nailgun, the lightning gun, and so on, up to the game's version of the BFG, the dark matter gun. Right off the bat, most of these weapons aren't much handier than the stock machine gun. Reloading the shotgun takes too long, the nailgun has a long, chaingun-style spin-up time, and so on. Along the way, you'll run into marines who can upgrade your weapons. Your shotgun will eventually be modified to be a clip-fed weapon, making reloading a snap. The nailgun gains the ability to lock onto targets and shoot homing nails that make it behave almost identically to the needler from Halo. The lightning gun upgrade makes it chain off and attack other enemies standing near your target. The hyperblaster upgrade makes its shots bounce off of walls. And the railgun gets a power upgrade that makes it much more useful. The rocket launcher gets an auto-loader that loads up three rockets at a time, letting you fire them off in faster succession. While you'll still rely on that machine gun in a lot of situations, most of the weapons come into their own later in the game, giving you some good, tactical decisions to make as you fight.

The hovertank sequence is cool, but it's also really easy.

You'll also fight alongside some other marines at various points in the game. While they aren't perfect, they do seem to fight a lot better than you'd expect from squadmates that are completely out of your control. They also seem to take a lot more damage than you'd expect, but that doesn't mean they're invincible. If you let one of the game's key characters catch too many hot ones, they'll go down, and you'll lose as well. Incidental marines that you encounter along the way, however, are free to die without any penalty. Some marines are flagged as medics or engineers, who will heal you and repair your armor, if asked. Fighting alongside other marines brings some variety to the game, as do the game's vehicles. You'll get to pilot a hovertank and a mech, and at one point, you'll work the gun on a tram to defend it from enemy attackers. The vehicles heal themselves over time, just like the shield system in Halo, which make these sequences very easy. Still, rolling around in the game's vehicles and blasting stuff is still fun, and the sequences are short enough to not get in the way.

While the single-player doesn't feel like a throwback, firing up the multiplayer side of the game is like going on an archaeological dig. As you dig, you'll unearth a take on Quake III Arena's multiplayer for up to 16 players. While the goal was clearly to duplicate Quake III Arena's fantastic deathmatch, the feel of the game isn't quite right, which, aside from the inclusion of a few maps from previous Quake games, doesn't manage to pull off the nostalgic feel it was probably going for. Instead, it just sort of feels like a relic, delivering the barebones standard modes of deathmatch, team deathmatch, one-on-one, and two versions of capture the flag.

That's not to say that the multiplayer isn't exciting. It's fun, it's fast-moving, and deathmatch is the star of the show, but it's also nothing you haven't seen and played to death already. While all of this stuff was fantastic in 1999, it's a little stale now. The weapons from the single-player side are included here, but they're streamlined to not force you to reload your weapons. The level design is full of Quake III-style jump pads, and you'll have the same sort of air control that you had over your airborne combatant in Quake III. Even the announcer sounds virtually identical to the one from Quake III, and makes the same kind of commentary you've already heard a billion times. The frantic multiplayer has its moments, but it's disappointing how little the multiplayer has evolved.

In Doom 3, the graphics were the star of the show and basically made the game's whole theme possible. Without those high-quality lighting and shadow systems, how could hell's demons hop out at you from the darkness? Quake 4 has an entirely different theme to it, but it still makes fantastic use of the Doom 3 engine. Exploring Stroggos is exciting on its own, just because the game is full of interesting areas that look absolutely amazing. The design of the various alien areas get to be more and more breathtaking as you work your way deeper and deeper into the game. The models of the other marines on your adventure look great, too. Many of the enemies are updated takes on foes found in Quake II, but as you'd probably expect, they look a whole lot better now. It also has support for widescreen monitors, but it doesn't seem to actually support widescreen resolutions. All of this graphical prowess comes at a price; you'll need a pretty stout machine to run it well. Machines that just barely meet the game's minimum requirements will get a reduced version of the experience that runs smoothly, but the scaled-back detail detracts from the experience.

Dude! Behind you!

Quake 4 has great sound that helps highlight the experience. The weapons sound appropriately tough, which is always key for a shooter. But the game is much more than the sounds of weapons and explosions. The voice work is sharp and believable, and helps give a little more life to the marines around you. However, sometimes you'll hear different radio chatter repeat frequently, especially if you're taking your sweet time getting to that next objective. Also, sometimes you'll get radio transmissions in the middle of a fight, and the voice gets drowned out. Fortunately, that speech is never too important. The game's music is understated, but fits in with the atmosphere. There are even a few musical stabs in the game that play when you open a door and see an enemy on the other side, almost as if it's attempting to poke fun at Doom 3's constant "what's behind the next door?" scare tactics.

Overall, Quake 4 is kind of a weird case. The single-player is great fun, but the uninspired multiplayer leaves a lot to be desired. The end result feels like two different games. The single-player has a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to it that makes a great showpiece for the Doom 3 engine, while the online portion feels like it fell out of a time warp. If you're looking for Quake III Arena's deathmatch with better graphics and much higher system requirements, this is your game. But if you're looking for some new ideas from the series that made online deathmatch a big deal in the first place, you're barking up the wrong tree.

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Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Shadow of Death is a standalone expansion for the original Heroes of Might and Magic III, which was a very polished and enjoyable fantasy-themed turn-based strategy game. It includes the entire full game of Heroes III, including all of the features, units, campaigns, and scenarios of the original, as well as nearly all of the features from the Armageddon's Blade expansion. Shadow of Death also includes a handful of its own changes, and a great number of brand-new campaign and scenario maps. On the surface, Shadow of Death seems like a tremendous value for your money. Unfortunately, except for the new maps and a handful of minor gameplay changes, there's absolutely nothing in Shadow of Death that Heroes veterans haven't seen before. In fact, these gameplay changes will likely seem significant only to the most devoted Heroes fans.

If you've never played a Heroes of Might and Magic game, but you've heard tell of and are intrigued by the series' fanciful swords-and-sorcery setting, its easy-to-learn gameplay, and its simple yet engrossing turn-based resource and unit-management systems, you should by all means get Shadow of Death. It's essentially a greatly enhanced version of the original Heroes of Might and Magic III, a game that took the previous Heroes games' deep gameplay, colorful graphics, and excellent music a step further. Shadow of Death's insidiously addictive combination of accessible yet surprisingly deep gameplay, detailed and colorful graphics, and pleasant music will likely ensnare hapless neophytes now as completely and hopelessly as Heroes III did last year.

That's because Shadow of Death is extremely similar to last year's game - and to the previous expansion, Armageddon's Blade - and seasoned veterans of the Heroes series know it. Shadow of Death's graphics are as bright, colorful, and detailed as Heroes III's, and its music is just as atmospheric, because they're exactly the same graphics and music from the original game. And many of Shadow of Death's "new" features - those not included in the original Heroes III - are from Armageddon's Blade. All of Shadow of Death's "new" creatures are from the previous expansion, as are the enhanced campaign and map editors and the options to recruit both low-level and upgraded monsters from an upgraded structure and to garrison your units at mines and other holdings on the map.

Otherwise, Shadow of Death doesn't really have all that much in the way of new material to offer to Heroes fans. Shadow of Death lets you set the difficulty level on campaign games - a commonsensical but otherwise unremarkable gameplay addition that will let new players start campaigns at easier levels and veterans begin in more challenging conditions. Instead of brand-new artifacts, Shadow of Death has "combination artifacts" - set combinations of existing artifacts that grant the hero who possesses all the necessary artifacts great power, though for gameplay-balance reasons, these aren't common or easy to come by in the prepackaged scenarios. The game does include a few subtle enhancements, such as damaging moats in siege combat, a handful of slightly more balanced units, and a few new terrain types that convey bonuses and penalties to heroes who ride across them. But for the most part, these are highly specific changes that do little to improve or refresh Heroes III's overall gameplay. Finally, Shadow of Death includes force-feedback mouse support for certain magic spell effects, a rather silly and wholly extraneous feature that adds nothing at all to the game.

There's no question that Shadow of Death has an enormous amount of content. The game includes 38 all-new scenarios and seven all-new campaigns, in addition to Heroes III's original 40 prepackaged scenarios and seven campaigns. Shadow of Death also has eight distinctive playable factions - the same factions that were available in the original Heroes III. New players who are interested in the Heroes series but may have balked at the prospect of buying both the original Heroes III game and the Armageddon's Blade expansion at premium prices should get Shadow of Death without hesitation. For these players, the game will provide countless hours of blissful turn-based exploration as you capture resource mines, research upgraded units and fabulous magic spells, and engage in strategic turn-based combat. But Heroes veterans have experienced most of those hours already. For them, Shadow of Death can really only offer a scarce few subtle enhancements, a cache of new premade maps to play through, and a few new objects with which to make their own maps.

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The direct approach isn't always the best approach--this concept lies at the heart of Commandos 2 just as it did with its predecessor, the innovative 1998 real-time tactical combat game that mixed elements of stealth, action, and even puzzle-solving in a World War II setting. Spanish developer Pyro Studios' visually stunning sequel takes the core gameplay of the original, adds some of the features from the 1999 stand-alone expansion pack along with plenty of great new ideas, and ultimately provides a highly challenging, sophisticated experience that's even better than the first. But be warned--Commandos 2 can be as intimidating as its premise makes it sound: You'll command a small group of elite Allied operatives deep behind enemy lines to perform a series of important clandestine missions. At every turn, your commandos will be avoiding the patrols of German or Japanese forces. It can be a difficult game, especially at first, but Commandos 2 truly evokes the intensity of the harrowing depictions of World War II that you've probably seen in film or on television.

Your commandos will engage in multiple high-priority missions.

Actually, the game clearly alludes to the movies that inspired it--even the manual admits that the game has more in common with fictional accounts of the war than with factual ones. If you're familiar with classic World War II movies such as The Guns of Navarone, Bridge on the River Kwai, or even the more recent Saving Private Ryan, then you'll easily catch the references to these films in the game's various missions. As in these and other epic World War II movies, in Commandos 2 you'll have to do such things as rescue Allied soldiers, sabotage powerful sea vessels, assassinate key enemy officials, get your hands on important documents, and much more. The objectives are plentiful and varied and the game will take you to a wide variety of real-world settings, but the overall number of missions in Commandos 2 seems small: There are only 10 main missions in the game. You must play through them all sequentially, even though they aren't necessarily related to one another. In fact, the relative length and difficulty of each mission doesn't necessarily increase from one mission to the next, either.

Make no mistake, though--by any standards, all these missions are huge, and you'll typically spend many hours trying to accomplish the laundry list of objectives in each one. There's also good incentive to replay each mission, since a number of smaller bonus levels can be unlocked if you thoroughly explore the main missions. And the game's two higher difficulty settings noticeably affect the way enemy guards react, requiring you to take different paths to success. But before you can get into the main missions, you must first get through two "tutorial" levels, which have to be the most difficult tutorials ever put into a game. These smaller missions provide very little actual tutorial--instead, they take a sink-or-swim approach by dropping you straight into enemy territory, leaving you to learn the hard way about the intricacies of the complex gameplay of Commandos 2. This can make the first hours of play unnecessarily frustrating, so much so that some players may be quickly turned off to the game. That's too bad, because Commandos 2 is well worth the effort it takes to learn.

Each mission area is rendered in exceptional detail.

The colorful, memorable cast of characters at your disposal comes mostly from the previous Commandos games and includes a powerful Green Beret; a deadly marine; a spy capable of disguising himself as the enemy; a sapper, your demolitions expert; a mechanic who can commandeer enemy vehicles; a master sniper; and even a seductive secret agent. New additions to the roster include a fleet-footed thief and an unlikely bull terrier whose barking can distract your foes. You'll also join forces with Allied troops whom you can control in many of the missions.

In the original Commandos game, each character had a limited, very specific set of skills--for example, only the Green Beret and the spy could actually move enemy victims' bodies so that other guards wouldn't see them, which made these two the key players in most missions. In Commandos 2, for the most part, each character has a wider variety of skills and is much more versatile--for example, most everyone can now move bodies out of sight. This gives you many more strategic options during play and, for better or worse, eliminates much of the puzzlelike feel of the original game's missions. The game's sole remaining puzzle element lies in the fact that you can't choose which commandos to bring into a mission and can't choose their starting equipment--you'll just have to make do with what you get.

Though Commandos 2 has fewer situations requiring very specific solutions compared with the first game, the gameplay itself is basically similar. As you approach each mission objective, you'll have to take note of all the enemy guards standing between you and victory. There's no fog of war--you can spend lots of time just examining every square inch of the map from your godlike isometric vantage point, observing enemy patrols and looking for openings or weaknesses. Mission objectives generally aren't time sensitive, so you can afford to strategize at your leisure. And though you can take missions at your own pace, the situations always get very tense whenever you're preparing to strike. This constant buildup and release of tension is superbly maintained throughout the game, making it addictive and often exhilarating to play.

Much of the action takes place in closed, fully 3D interiors.

The key to finishing the missions lies in staying hidden while secretly eliminating guards that bar your passage. You'll see enemy guards' line of sight represented with a sweeping colored cone--using the Tab key, you can either check the line of sight of one guard at a time or place a marker anywhere on the map that will show you whether or not that point is visible to any guards. When possible, you can run, walk, and crawl about, as well as swim and drive vehicles. You can climb ladders and ledges. The thief can scale walls, the marine can remain underwater indefinitely, the sniper can take aim from telephone poles, and the Green Beret can climb hand over hand across wires. All characters can hug walls, which makes them less noticeable. You can eliminate guards in a variety of ways--the Green Beret's still adept at knifing them up close, while the marine has perfected throwing his blade, making him perhaps the most lethal of his comrades. Most characters can now punch out guards, who'll come to their senses later--good thing you can tie them up, too. This more-humane approach is rewarded at the end of each mission, where you'll be ranked in various categories based on your performance.

You can't always just maneuver behind unassuming guards and whack them. Characters like the spy come into play when there are far too many guards to handle. The spy and the seductress can divert guards by making conversation--but high-ranking officials may see through their disguises. All characters can use any cigarette packs or wine bottles they find to bait their enemies into sheepishly leaving their posts. Anyone can relieve an incapacitated guard of his firearm and any other goods he might have on him, including the shirt off his back. You'll have even more tricks at your disposal. For example, the sapper uses a wide variety of explosives, along with handy tools such as a wire cutter and a mine detector. The marine has a grappling hook and his trusty portable boat aside from his diving gear. The Green Beret still has his noise-making decoy device from Commandos and can still dig himself underground, out of sight. The thief has some lock picks and an amazing pet rat. All these characters can transfer their equipment amongst themselves, but some equipment--for instance, explosives--can be used only by a particular specialist. Still, a character like the thief might have a much easier time getting his hands on some so that the sapper can put it to good use. All of this means you'll usually have a lot of options on how to proceed, although some courses of action will be easier or more suitable than others.

The scenarios in Commandos 2 hearken to classic war movies.

Sneaking around isn't easy--expect to be detected often. Since one wrong move or one loud noise can mean you've blown your cover, loading saved games thus becomes a regular occurrence. Fortunately, loading times are pretty fast--probably in exchange for the program's whopping 2GB minimum install size. Also, it's important to note that Commandos 2, at least on the normal difficulty level, is more forgiving than the original game. For example, if one of your commandos loses all his health, one of his friends can revive him with a medical kit. And enemies usually won't recognize you as their foe right away if they happen to spot you from far off. You'll see them draw a bead on you and you'll have a few moments to duck out of sight, which makes the game considerably less frustrating and reduces how often you'll have to load saved games.

If you're identified as a foe, the alarm will usually sound and guards will swarm in, making success virtually impossible. Perhaps not entirely impossible, though--a brute-force approach can be fun and even effective, as the enemies' own weapons are even deadlier in your commandos' hands. It's a bit disappointing that guards won't fight back very intelligently and will walk straight into kill zones in droves--but the sheer number of guards you'll typically be up against means fighting head-on simply isn't viable most of the time. Even when they're not shooting at you, the guards can be fairly predictable and not altogether intelligent. This isn't really an issue--being able to roughly anticipate the outcome of your actions and the enemy's response is what makes Commandos 2 a strategy game rather than a crapshoot.

The overall difficulty of Commandos 2 is welcome--the missions are as daunting as they should be--but unfortunately, the game's learning curve is very steep, thanks to the sadistic tutorial and the sometimes awkward controls. Seemingly every keyboard key corresponds to a different action in the game. The mouse cursor is conveniently context sensitive, and there are helpful options for highlighting all enemies and objects of interest onscreen, but you'll still need to learn to use different keys for searching bodies vs. picking them up or equipping one type of gun instead of another. Exchanging items between characters is also cumbersome, although thankfully, the game pauses when you access your inventory, at least in the single-player mode.

Nighttime and other special effects all look great.

These interface issues aren't too serious--it just takes a while to come to grips with them. The game does offer clearly labeled clickable icons so that you can alternately use the mouse to choose your actions, but the keyboard is necessary if you're to be efficient. Fortunately, moving your commandos is simple--double-clicking makes them run somewhere instead of walk, and the space bar makes them lie prone. Pathfinding is pretty much perfect--they'll move where you tell them to, though you can't set waypoints, a missing feature that might have let you coordinate simultaneous actions. As it is, you'll find yourself micromanaging one character at a time, though you can move your team all at once.

As you traverse each area, you'll notice one of Commandos 2's impressive features--you can view the main mission area from four different angles, 90 degrees apart. Transitions between angles are instant, and having a choice of perspective is generally convenient but sometimes necessary, as tall buildings and other such objects can obstruct your view. But unfortunately, since there's no compass or any indicator that lets you reorient yourself, switching view angles can be very jarring, and this really takes a while to get used to. Another part of the reason it can be hard to play Commandos 2 is that the mission briefings can be pretty obtuse. Objectives are quickly mentioned in dialogue between the characters, and once the conversation's over, you can only recap by looking at a checklist that gives you a terse description of each objective and that objective's relative location on the map. Again, you'll eventually get used to this system--it's just not as straightforward or clear as it could have been, and the checklists are often convoluted and don't always register your accomplishments correctly. The game would also crash to desktop from time to time, especially while loading saved games.

Notice the Green Beret climbing hand over hand along the wire.

One thing's for sure: Commandos 2 looks incredible. The fully 3D characters are animated beautifully--everything they do looks great, and it's striking how realistically they move about. The huge prerendered mission maps are incredibly detailed. Everything is to scale--gigantic Japanese bombers, incredible aircraft carriers, impressive Allied submarines, and foreboding castles are just some of the many fascinating things you'll get to see. You can even enter into pretty much any building or other large space, where the game switches to a fully 3D depiction of the interior area. Here, you can rotate smoothly to get the perfect angle on the action, and your characters can even peek into and out of windows and doorways to find out what's ahead. The only problem with the graphics is in the zoom feature--you can get a closer look at the action if you like, but then everything becomes horribly pixelated, so the feature's not worth using. The sound in Commandos 2 is nearly as good as the visuals, except for the fact that your characters' very limited responses will quickly grow old. Otherwise, the game's ambient effects are excellent, and its musical score is simply outstanding--it sounds like it's straight out of an action film. It's intense at times and suspenseful at times, and it helps set the tone for each individual mission.

Commandos 2's multiplayer mode lets you attempt all the missions cooperatively, though the host player has to have beaten them in single-player mode first. This option lends even more replay value to a game that will take you many dozens of hours to finish on your own--thus, the GameSpy Arcade program is provided to let you easily find allies to play with.

Like its predecessor, Commandos 2 is a distinctive game with a great design and a lot of impressive features. Yet Commandos 2 is even better than the first--its design is much more focused, the missions are more involved, and the expanded options for your commandos are all excellent. As a result, the game will certainly appeal to most anyone who likes a challenge for both the mind and the reflexes. And what a challenge--you'll feel a real sense of reward and relief after finishing each of the epic missions in Commandos 2.

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