Last Week's Games: Crash Bandicoot and Commandos

After getting to the end of Spiderman last week, I felt like playing something a little bit different, so I had a go with Crash Bandicoot on the PS4. I remember playing this for a bit just after Christmas, and a more level-based platforming mentality was what I needed after clearing an open world game! What I didn’t remember is how frustratingly hard the game is. Running around and spinning in to things is fine, but the challenge of the game is very often in its precision platforming. It’s difficult enough to do this in a 2D game, but in Crash Bandicoot, which doesn’t have the openness often found in 3D games but still requires you to have some depth perception in order to place your jumps correctly, it’s very difficult. I die a lot in Crash Bandicoot, and most of the time it’s because I’ve missed a jump, or mistimed a trap. And as I play through the game, I wonder if I’m enjoying it. I guess I am – I keep coming back to it,– but am I going to want to find all the collectables after I’ve beaten the game? Given how hard it is just to get through the game – and bearing in mind that at the time of writing I’m currently stuck on the Road to Nowhere level; if you know, you know – I’m thinking probably not.

Presumably Crash Bandicoot was modelled after
whoever designed the save menu...

One thing about Crash Bandicoot I’m definitely not enjoying is the save menu. In any other game, the save and load menus are separate, right? Not in Crash. In Crash, the four save files are on one screen, and you have to press the Square button to save the game, and the X button to load it. Because of this, there have been a few times where I’ve cleared a very difficult level and gone to save my progress, only to accidently load the game at an earlier point. I’m guessing it’s kept the control scheme of the game it was remastered from, but the point of re-releasing an updated game is to address points like dodgy save menus; that was an asinine thing to leave in!

I’ve also been playing Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, an old PC game on my laptop. I remember playing and loving the demo of this in 1998, and while games have come on a bit since then, it’s still a pleasure to play now, if a little frustrating at times. If you’ve never played it, it’s a World War II game where you take a team of 2-5 commandos out on a strategic mission, usually to blow something up or assassinate a target. You command the soldiers sneaking around various environments, and have to figure out the gaps in the enemy defences so you can infiltrate and complete your objective. Each of your soldiers has a particular set of skills that they will need to employ at some point: the Sapper, for example, handles the explosives, the Sniper takes out enemies from a huge distance, and the Driver is the only one who can handle vehicles and gun nests. Your men handle some serious weapons but the emphasis is on stealth; they can’t take much damage before they die and it is necessary for all your soldiers to survive to complete the mission.

This is the bit I'm stuck on!

I’ve had a really good time with Commandos so far and it’s been an absolute pleasure to go through these missions that are tough but nonetheless fair. Unfortunately I have run in to a problem that I expect is due to compatibility; I got as far as the 6^th mission to find that the game freezes up every ten minutes or so, and the only way to exit the game at that point is to restart my laptop. Now, there is a Legacy version packed in with the purchase that I’m assuming addresses some of these issues, indeed it seems I have been playing it at some point because there are saved files within. But it looks like I’m going to have to do the fourth and fifth mission again, and given the faff it took to beat those levels, it’s not something I’m excited about doing at this point!