Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 (Xbox 360)

Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 review

Game: Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: Shooter
Developer: Backbone Entertainment

Reader review by pickhut

August 14, 2008

The Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Beta (will there ever be a day when they stop adding words to this title?) is included in Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3. I didn't purchase it for that. I actually could care less about replaying a game that came out 14 years ago which includes updated graphics and a few other tiny enhancements. Yes, believe it or not, I bought C3 to play C3. I was very curious with how it would play in comparison to the previous two games in the series.

Well, it actually turns out to be the easiest of the three. It won't seem like that at first, of course. As you land, in traditional fashion, in a helicopter on a beach, you'll almost immediately be attacked by an onslaught of soldiers; they'll rain down from the top of the screen in droves, arrive in jeeps and armored vans, and come out of tiny buildings, one by one, as if they were created on an assembly line. Don't think you'll only have to concentrate your attention to the top of screen in this overhead, run-and-gun title, however, because they'll even appear from the bottom of the screen. To me, this is a much greater threat, because they appear quicker, and seem to shoot faster, as well. You'll definitely get hit a lot during your first playthrough, trust me. To give you a good idea of how many enemies you'll be facing in this game, you'll get an achievement in the first stage for killing 200 soldiers. Let that sink in.

Thankfully, you have a wide assortment of weapons and healthpacks on the battlefield to help you survive. If you've played the second game in the series, Mercs, then all of the weapons will instantly be recognizable to you. You have your four-way shooter that fires, of all things, green balls, which is useful if you just don't feel like aiming well, grenades, which are good for reaching soldiers that are hiding behind obstacles, and then there's the mighty M-Crash, a powerful item that causes damage to everything on screen, which is great when you're in an impossible situation, but it's mostly ideal for boss fights. The rest of the weapons in the game are, sadly, either useless or a nuisance. The flamethrower, which was awesome in Mercs, will end up getting you hit a lot in C3. Soldiers won't die right away when you burn them up, because you'll have to stay on them for an extra second or so to finish them off, which, in an action-packed game like this, is a big no-no.

So, you're probably wondering (two paragraphs later...) why this game ends up being easy when I just described how you'll constantly be under attack by dozens upon dozens of enemies? The controls. You use the left analog stick to move your character, and you use the right analog stick to shoot in any direction. Once you get the hang of it, it's a great control scheme for C3, but it also makes the game much easier to play through, especially once you understand how each enemy works. Seriously, ever since I purchased the game, not once have I seen a Game Over screen. Play a higher difficulty, you say? I have, and the game is still absurdly easy. Granted, you'll get hit a lot more, but you'll still make it all the way to the final mission without much of a problem. This is really where the developers screwed up big time, because they should have tinkered with the difficulty levels a bit more. They could have made you play the hardest difficulty (Suicide Mission) with no lifebar, or just one life to work with. Hell, they could have made achievements centered around those conditions.

But nothing like that is in this title, which is a shame. Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 could have been much more, but it seems like the developers, Backbone Entertainment, just got a bit lazy in some areas of the game. Maybe Capcom realized this, and that's why they decided to include the SSF2THDRBeta to help boost sales of the title. I don't want to make you think that Commando 3 is a bad title; if you're looking for a decent run-and-gun game to fill in some quick gap in your gaming session, then here's a nice, little title for you.

Now buy 1942: Joint Strike! Because that's what Commando 3 told me after the credits finished rolling.

Rating: 6/10

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