Indie Double Bill: Going Commando!

We have been a little inactive in the past week! I have been drowning in indie games in all the best ways. It is a lot of work, but this way I get to try out all sorts of fun games I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

It is a new month, and what better way to celebrate than to feature two games! I’m juggling a lot right now between work gigs and some personal matters that take priority, but I wanted to do something a little meatier to kick off June. You know the drill by now, so grab some snacks and let’s begin.

Commandos Origins

The Commando series is back with this juicy sequel. Commandos Origins launched back in April, and it has taken me a while to get round to it. Apologies for that, Kaylpso! I did not play all that much of the franchise back in the day, but I was excited to see this announced. Despite a rough launch and some ongoing jank, I am enjoying myself with this one. It really feels like the old games but with a modern engine, and they blend together as well as toast and honey. Toast with honey is fantastic, I might add. And now I’m hungry. I’ve only played a few hours of Commandos Origins so far, so consider this an early impressions review.

It took me a while to start Origins, and that brought us to the launch. Commandos Origins was in a rough place on release, and I ran into no end of crashes and animation glitches. The tutorial mission alone I saw half a dozen crashes! I also ran into a bizarre bug when my starting characters turned invisible, and I wasn’t able to select them. That was weird. Fortunately, some patches have smoothed over the worst of the performance problems, although Commandos Origins is quite janky still.

I can say that Claymore Studios have done a good job at preserving what was memorable about the original games: tough gameplay and brutal decision making, where even the slightest decision can mess up the mission. I quite like the mission design with its large, sprawling maps that are crawling with enemy soldiers to navigate, and your own crack team of mercenaries have the tools to deal with them. The missions are rather complex, and it feels a lot like the Desperados series. That makes sense given how closely connected the two franchises are. The difficulty is definitely up there and things quickly escalate to a position of ‘I’m dead, better restart’ if you make too many mistakes, but the game gives you the opportunity to experiment with the game’s mechanics, which is nice.

I am hoping to get more time with Commandos, but after the rough first impression I am having more fun than I expected. I’m still running into the odd crash and texture bugs, but it feels better than it was at launch. Hopefully we get more updates to smooth out performance. The 50$ price tag is a tough sell with so many great games releasing around it, especially with the bugs. However, this is a solid stealth tactics game that is holding up well, and if you can get it on sale, Commandos Origins offers quite a lot.

Revenge of the Savage Planet

I remember being fond of Journey to the Savage Planet back in 2019. It was a pleasant enough experience, although I found the resource grind too much for me in the end. Regardless, it seemed to be reasonably successful and I had some good fun with it.

I was surprised to see it get a sequel, and Revenge of the Savage Planet offers more of the same for better and worse. That is no means a bad thing, as Revenge is certainly an expansion upon the Savage Planet’s formula in scope and breadth, with as much humor and a focus on more relaxed gameplay. Despite the feel and funky graphics making it feel like a No Man’s Sky Diet Coke feeling, it does not play around with survival mechanics. This helps, as nothing irritates me about exploration games than having to scarf down a burger every few minutes to avoid starving to death.

The gameplay loop of Revenge of the Savage Planet is revealed pretty quickly. Upon landing on a new planet with a very talkative robot companion, you run through the tutorial in order to reach a startup base for cataloging the planet. It is a decent tutorial if a little too long for my liking, but the environments are gorgeous to explore and teeming with life. It almost reminds me of Bugsnax with all the little critters roaming around, apart from them not being made up of edible things. That is a shame, but I find the world and lore rather solid and it is fun to explore.

When you finally arrive at the planet base, you immediately get fired by the evil corp company you originally got contracted by. Lovely! However, the job is still on so off we go! There is a lot to work out early on such as track down equipment, craft improvements to your home for the foreseeable future. Most of the gameplay stays the same throughout, and it blends together fairly well between exploration, combat, crafting and cataloging. There is a lot of dialogue between the chatty robot and listening to the TV commercials back in your home base, which can be customized to your liking. The constant humor can get a little grating especially when there is no letup.

Combat is pretty frequent in Return of the Savage Planet, so much so that I wish we will get some kind of pacifist difficulty setting to help out those more interested in the collecting. That isn’t to say the combat is bad, as the movement mechanics are solid enough and there is a lot of variety in how to defeat the rampant creatures. I just wish that I did not have to fight all the time.

Overall from my experiences so far, I only have minor gripes with the game. I can see the gameplay getting repetitive if this is more of the same on the other planets, but I am only a few hours into this one. The exploration and collectathon mechanics are the main draws for me, and the vibrant open zone areas are certainly fun to roam around in. The production value is high in this, with a lot of detail put into minor things such as the deep house customization and the many in-game commercials. I love details like this that flesh out the world, and honestly I could forget about most of the combat parts of the game to explore this sooner. Obviously, that is a different type of game altogether.

I’ll be playing more of this one, but if you liked Journey to the Savage Planet, there is enough in the sequel to warrant a look at.