If you look at the name Commandos: Origins, you might think that we’re looking at another prequel-reboot that tries to capture nostalgia without crumbling under the weight of the past’s merits. We left our doubts behind, plunged behind enemy lines with the old guard, and are now ready to answer the question: did Origins manage to avoid disgracing the legend and is this game worth your time?
Commandos: pixelated heroes of the Second World War
Back in the day, when the words «real-time tactics» sounded as exotic to gamers as «sushi» did to a Ukrainian fisherman in the late 90s, Commandos appeared. And not just appeared, it stuck in the memory. Because it was not a game, but a stress test of your thinking, nerves, and computer mouse motor skills.
Who organized it all? Pyro Studios. The Spaniards. Yes, Pyro Studios is not German, not British, not even Yankee. Commandos are made by Spaniards who had previously created multimedia presentations and corporate videos. But in 1998, they hit it big «Behind Enemy Lines» — and to this day, someone at Eidos headquarters still brings them jamon as a sign of honor and gratitude.
To dive into the past of the Commandos series, I needed an improvised «time machine» from the closet for an authentic experience of those years.
The studio became famous instantly. Commandos sold hundreds of thousands of copies, became a cult game in the post-Soviet space (because every computer club had a pirate), and even in serious strategic gamer circles, Commandos was considered a game «for adults» — because kids were too nervous to play.
It’s important to understand that Commandos had competitors at the time. And most of them were from other genres because real-time tactics were niche at the time.
| The Game | Year | Genre | How it differed from Commandos |
| StarCraft | 1998 | RTS | Scale, base building, sci-fi, microcontrol |
| Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive | 2001 | RTT | A closer analog, but with cowboys and a sheriff |
| Sudden Strike | 2000 | An RTS with a realistic bias | More about military battles, less about stealth |
| Metal Gear Solid | 1998 | Stealth action | Solo hero, cinematography, Japaneseness |
| Command & Conquer | 1995 | RTS | The complete opposite: extras, explosions, zerg rush |
This was the game Dark Souls before Dark Souls itself appeared.
Commandos looked cool. Even very cool. At the time of release, it was a wow effect. Isometric maps were perceived as military dioramas. Everything was detailed: you could see footprints in the snow, enemies were looking at certain areas, you could swim underwater, and inside buildings you could move between rooms.
The game gave the feeling of a live battlefield where everything depends on you. Not on the script, not on the patch, not on the balance chips. It depends on you and… your nerves.
Commandos suffered a collapse when in 2006 they released Strike Force — a failed shooter without a soul. Pyro Studios disappeared into the darkness of time (now part of a Spanish media conglomerate), and the series became a legend until recently.
The return of a legend
Finally. We’ve been waiting for it. The Spanish legend of tactical stealth games, the Commandos series, is back with a prequel called Commandos: Origins. Our expectations were high: we wanted to see Green Beret in all his pixelated fury again, to hear the same voices, to see the same deadly choreography against the backdrop of the Nazi rear. And to have everything be just like it used to be. But we are adults. We knew it wouldn’t be like that.
Commandos: Origins — is a prequel that tries to explain how the team of heroes came together. It all sounds pretentious and potentially cool. The problem is that the story exists here more as a background — the plot is almost telegraphed in cutscenes between missions, and the characters… well, they are there. But they could have just as easily nodded and said «let’s go».
But the main thing is that we return to the same format: we control several specialists with different skills, make our way along carefully calibrated routes, steal uniforms, cut barbed wire, and kill silently. And at first glance, it seems like — well, that’s it, it’s the same Commandos. Until you start playing seriously.
Origins is like a movie based on a favorite childhood movie, remade 20 years later: it knows what we wanted, tries to recreate it, but still something is wrong. Everything seems familiar, but it doesn’t taste the same.
Strategic checkmate and tactical checkmate
I got acquainted with the «real-time tactics» genre much later than when I first went through the Age of Empires, StarCraft and Cossacks. So what a surprise it was when, after the large-scale RT, but Strategy, I moved, as it seemed to me, to the minor leagues. Somehow, everything is very intimate and not driving. The isometry is familiar, but the approaches are different: some six warlike men instead of swarms of zerg. How do you organize a zerg rush here?
You grab your head, make tea at eight in the evening, and slowly go to deal with the non-intuitive interface, the price of a mistake is cyclic reboots from the last save. Many times, it’s literally like a Tom Cruise movie — «Edge of Tomorrow». You can’t do anything in a hurry, so you start planning.
And when you throw a pebble to the side and distract one warehouse guard, knock out another, while a sapper plants explosives, and the one who was distracted is harpooned by a marine, you feel a kind of childlike joy.
And then, at about 5 a.m., you’ve already completed two missions and got the Steam achievement. And when you see that only 2.3% of players have gotten this achievement, it challenges you to be one of the first to complete the next mission!
The game manages to convey this long-forgotten feeling of pioneering and triumphant victory — to the player so well that it seems like some kind of special magic from David Blaine. Everything in the game works like a Swiss watch.
Every mistake is perceived as a challenge, and you are ready to move on. In total, Commandos: Origins has 14 unique missions from the Arctic to Africa, where you can spend an obscene amount of time. Because there is always room for improvisation, and after completing them, you can already see where you could have gone differently. Or even try to go through the map through continuous stealth, without killing krauts.
By the way, at the very beginning of the game, you are free to choose in the settings the visual form of displaying German symbols of those times: historically true or veiled. So that no one is offended or inadvertently let in Roman salute.
The game mechanics of the late 90s are revived with respect and love. It’s a good example of a modern reboot of a cult series, even though it’s technically a prequel to the first game. But in 2025, it has competitors, even though the game itself is quite niche. But it will definitely find its player: a nostalgic gamer or a neophyte.
If you forget about the original and give the game a chance — you can have fun. Especially when you prepare a multi-stage trap: lure the guard with a whistle, shoot him, hide his body, throw a smoke bomb at the next one, and go around the third one in an officer’s uniform. This choreography is still basking in the warmth of nostalgia.
But what is definitely lacking — is real freedom of action. Solutions that seem logical often don’t work. And you catch yourself thinking: I’m playing a puzzle, not a simulator of special forces operations. And these are different things.
Behind enemy lines
All our game adventures do not happen in the crucible of frontline battles, but many kilometers away. But that doesn’t mean there are fewer enemies. The Call of Duty style is immediately doomed to failure here: no massive group masquerades, the most individual approach. Someone in a puddle can be shocked with an electric shock, an old wardrobe can be dropped on someone’s head, or they can be talked to like a spy and put in a noose. Wait, is that Hitman?
There is a little bit of that, no doubt. But it’s more like games like «How to get a neighbor?». It’s up to the player to leave a bloody trail or, on the contrary, to quietly sneak onto the railroad and blow up an important bridge to disrupt the Nazis’ logistics.
However, during the entire Commandos: Origins campaign, you’ll only have the opportunity to team up with «avengers» a few times. In most missions, you will have three or four commandos available to you. This adds variety to your tactical decisions. However, you will still have your favorite, and most importantly effective, homebrew «billets» with combinations of skill sets from the soldiers of fortune squad.
You’ll need some luck here. The artificial intelligence doesn’t grab stars from the sky, but the way they are arranged on the chessboard in front of the player — will give you a headache. The developers know their stuff. I recommend that you complete the first mission on the recruit difficulty level, and then only the veteran level.
The maps are very well-designed, and you can collect collectibles by combing them. A set of postcards with historical information. An optional part of the program, but it’s like the «?» signs on the map of the Third Witcher. They will not give a perfectionist peace of mind.
The musical accompaniment is pretentious even at the stage of the game menu, setting the right mood. Nothing unusual or significant, but it doesn’t distract either. Which is good because you need maximum concentration here.
The commandos’ lines pay tribute to the original in both voice and intonation. When you hear Green Beret say: «Leave it to me!», — you realize that tough guys have gathered here.
Atmospherically, this is not some Guy Ritchie, and everything seems to be serious and pathos. But in some places, the game realizes that it needs to lighten the situation a bit and produces a funny dialog between team members. There’s no chemistry there, but the war stories are well received.
Graphics and optimization
The isometric look is preserved — and for that +100 to nostalgia. But the whole scene looks like it’s too polished. There is no effect of «me behind enemy lines». It feels like you’re playing a 3D puzzle with soldiers. A beautiful one, but a puzzle.
Nothing foreshadowed problems because for Commandos: Origins was based on the well-known Unreal Engine 5. It was not meant to be a graphical revolution, but it can be optimized quite well. And that’s exactly what was done. And from recent examples, this is a role-playing game Avowed which can be safely run even on GTX series cards.
There are no Fps drops during the game, but sometimes there are microfreezes when moving around the map with the buttons, if you work with the cursor, everything happens smoothly. Character animations are somewhere on the level of 2000s projects. Special effects that try to look like Hollywood blockbusters are still there. But you can’t fool the player’s eye.
Character models and NPCs are just puppets in the hands of a puppeteer. The graphics here are not trying to be realistic.
But what can really annoy you no less than pressing the F8 key repeatedly is when the game crashes at the most insidious moments. This, of course, is neither good nor bad. There are already a couple of patches: one fixes the sound problem when the game couldn’t find the source on the PC, and we heard only silence, and the other is a minor update. But the developers promise to fix the bugs in the near future.
In the meantime, we can observe abnormal lower breakdance tricks from enemies you put to sleep or sent to their ancestors. Sometimes someone or something falls through the textures.
But a very glaring problem sometimes occurs with the cursor, the tool we use to create history in the game. And sometimes it just doesn’t work and doesn’t care about your timing and miscalculations. You have to reload the game. The only panacea is to insure yourself with the left Shift and plan important commando movements in tactical pause mode.
The way the developers have finely tuned the level design for the multiplayer experience is admirable, but the overall picture is vague. Yes, it’s a familiar setting. Yes, «It’s been done before!» – as the classic suggests. But the authors failed to surprise the player with something interesting and worthwhile. There is nothing for the eye to grab hold of, but the main thing here is the game designer.
Therefore, to summarize, we can say that the project could have been released in a much better technical condition, but apparently the publisher could no longer afford the transfer, so we have what we have. Leonid again, but Makarovych.
Despite everything, the graphical component of Commandos: Origins shouldn’t scare off new players, and for old players, it will always be just a sandbox setting where imagination can paint over everything and where there’s no room for false gloss. Only old school, only hardcore.
Prices
Commandos: Origins is presented in several editions — each for its level of nostalgia, depth of interest, and readiness to expose spy archives.
- Standard Edition (UAH 1,199) — the basic version of the game, without any embellishments, but with all the missions, familiar voices, and the ability to sabotage in the style of 1998. Ideal for those who want to dive into the Commandos world for the first time.
- Deluxe Edition (1,499 UAH) — adds a digital soundtrack and Deluxe Upgrade, which includes cosmetic bonuses that freshen up the look of the elite squad.
- Deluxe Edition & Classified Archives (1,626 UAH) — the most complete digital set. In addition to all the Deluxe content, the player receives the «Classified Archives» — set, a collection of concept art, spy documents, and probably a couple of secrets that even the Green Beret doesn’t know.
Commandos: Origins is also available on Game Pass (PC and Xbox).