Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3

June 20,2008 - What has attracted so many people to arcade games throughout pizza parlors, bowling alleys and arcades across the world? For the most part, mindless-yet-enjoyable shooting at simplistic enemies who bombarded you with their heavy arsenals. Xbox Live is proud to bring some more of that joy with Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3. Very simple in nature, from the point to its controls, Commando 3 is a quick and enjoyable shooter that unfortunately comes with a steep price tag.

Loading up Commando 3 will give you two essential choices: would you like to play the game locally or through Xbox Live? There are some options to fiddle around with, and a quick guide to what’s what in the game, but its unnecessary most of the time. After choosing how to play the game, you can choose one of three characters (or be handed a character if you don’t control the online match).

There is little difference between the three choices. You start with the same weapons, get the same upgrades, and so on. Coyote, the heavy gunner, has more health than Fox or Wolf, which will end up being the biggest factor throughout the game. Speed is not the biggest necessity so we suggest choosing Coyote for most of your outings to ensure you last as long as possible.

There is a story present, but it disregards it as well as any other shoot ‘em up, or perhaps even more so. The cutscenes are devoid of dialogue and deals the game a decent blow in quality. Your attention span will quickly dwindle when you hear nothing, not even music, coming from your audio ports. You don’t need to watch these scenes more than once. When you reboot the game, promptly press A to get back into action.

Speaking of pressing buttons, you don’t have to do much of that throughout the game. You shoot with the right analog stick and move with the left. Pressing the left or right bumpers, or the right trigger, will launch a grenade. Pulling the left trigger will set off an M-crash, which puts an animation across the scene right before your character hands off a solid death blow to the area. You only have so many of these, so keep them saved for boss fights or big struggles.

You have access to vehicles at some points. Use them to your advantage because they dominate when you are in them. Your character is impervious to damage when occupying one, so it is a good time to build up your multiplier. Getting up to a 24x multiplier will earn you an achievement (and another if you can get one every level). Vehicles only last so long though, so take advantage.

Our major gripe with the game has to be the odd vision from time-to-time. Rather than being a side-scrolling shooter, Commando 3 gives you a top-down view. It is fine for the most part, but too many times (especially in multiplayer) were we lots in the fray of the battle or caught from behind from a derelict bullet. Multiplayer is by far worse, though. With constant firing and a barrage of bullets, it was hard to focus on where we were.

Finding a multiplayer match was hard enough in the first place. Our playthroughs consisted of only quick matches because, even with the low amount of options, we couldn’t find a connection. The quick matches were fine enough. Though we say matches, they aren’t versus matches. It is simply co-op play. The vision and connectivity problems were about the only ones we ran into while playing. At one point we hit a quick bit of lag, but it quickly dissipated.

We mentioned the lack of spoken dialogue in the game, but the rest of the audio is fine. All you hear is gunfire and music, so you kind of lose yourself in what is going on. Not in the trance-like way that gets you completely into the game, but in the slightly droll way. The art in the game can go either way. You’ll either find it completely generic or pretty cool. We are leaning more on the latter, but we can see how it would get old.

So, Commando 3 is a bit of a tricky call on whether or not you should download it. At 400 points, we would say go for it. But at a steep 800 points, you may want to check the demo first. However, keep in mind that if you download it now, you get access to the Super Street Fighter II HD Remix Beta (irritating to type, even worse to speak). So two games for the price of one? Not too shabby. We’ll mark it as a rental here, but check out the demo before committing to a purchase.

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