Commando: Steel Disaster (DS) Review
Many games of a specific genre will borrow and trade ideas from similar contenders on the market. It’s a good idea, to explore and assess previous triumphs and failures and reconsider your game accordingly. Unfortunately in the case of Commando: Steel Disaster, developer ManaSoft has not just taken inspiration from one of the most successful side scrolling shooter series ever, but instead have attempted to blindly rip off everything about Metal Slug from graphics, sound, right down to gameplay and basic concepts. Considering this is ManaSoft’s first DS title, and with Metal Slug 7 and Contra 4 already owning the side scrolling shooter scene on the DS, this was never a good idea as Commando:Steel Disaster ends up being a maddeningly frustrating, short, poorly developed and far too familiar title.
Commando: Steel Disaster has five short stages, padded with weak dialogue against stereotypical and underdeveloped, clichd characters. Each one is extremely short, but extremely hard, so if you’re brave enough to consistently re-attempt these challenging segments, you will get about five hours of gameplay out of the game. Without the high level of difficulty it would take less than an hour to see everything the game has to offer.
If you’re familiar with side scrolling 2D shooters there’s really nothing new to the formula here. Run, gun, run and gun some more and you’ve got the general idea. A few scenes such as the opening are spiced up with vehicles but unlike Metal Slug these are concentrated, on-rails segments that eradicate all the joy of maneuvering heavy weaponry, instead requiring nothing but consistent firing with unlimited ammo.You’ll be needing some of that heavy weaponry because with the enemy attacks never letting up, Commando packs a real punch of a challenge.
The main problem with the difficulty is not in the core gameplay itself, but in the fact that you are only allowed one life and one attempt at a level. While there are health and armor packs littered around every stage, each stage must still be accomplished in one long attempt. There are plenty of health packs along the way, so even if you take multiple hits right at the start, it’s usually wiser to just keep going to the next health pack so there’s none of those “Well I’m not going to finish this level now” re-try attempts. Still, considering the difficulty of each level, completing any stage is no easy task.
Following the side scrolling shooter formula like a text book, Commando of course has a final boss segment at the end of each level. What’s really frustrating is, as expected, each boss has a unique attack pattern that must be learned and exploited. It’s really hard learning enemy boss attack patterns when you only have one life for the entire stage, because if you die, it’s time to do the level all over again. It’s not as though you get to just retry either. Dying results in a lengthy “MISSION FAILED” period prompting you back the main title screen. Is there anything wrong with a simple retry” option? If it werent for the insane difficulty, the inclusion of save files would almost be a downside considering the short stack of levels.
Perhaps if there was anything novel, intuitive or just interesting within Commando, the repeated attempts at the same five stages may be worth it. While there are a few enjoyable parts to the game, and for the most part it is technically proficient, many elements such as the attractive 2D sprites, item pickups and fast-paced action are again straight rip-offs out of Metal Slug’s 2D side scrolling text book. The most unique and interesting thing Commando has going for it is definitely within the unique variety of weapon pickups. If only the better ones were available more often.
If ManaSoft are going to so clearly rip off competitors like of Metal Slug 7 and Contra 4, then why couldn’t they at least attempt to evolve the genre by utilising the top screen? Especially in the final, and most frustrating, level of the game which involves a lot of vertical climbing. The top screen shows nothing but a static image of the world map you see when selecting a mission. Meanwhile, other side scrollers are using the top screen to expand and extend the experience. It also doesn’t help that when climbing upwards, enemies out of sight can still fire and throw grenades down that do ridiculous amounts of damage, and you can’t even fire back. Every platform that must be jumped on is often unrecognisable against the background, which makes it incredibly frustrating to try and understand where you can and can’t jump. There are also some real issues with falling and landing on platforms where there was once an invisible layer of stability, and suddenly there is no more.
Our hero, Storm, also has some severe mobility issues at times. While his lethal melee attacks and ability to dodge enemy fire with rolls add a decent variety to the combat, navigating our hero against the scenery and level design is often a confusing and difficult affair. Not just in the final level, which is one of the worst attempts at platforming I’ve seen in some time, but in the horrible mechanics for walking up and down stairs, the terrible system of automatically entering a room if you so much as walk by the door, and also in the gun use and proficiency. For some reason the standard pea gun cannot shoot diagonally upwards, while all weapon pickups can. This makes no sense at all, especially as you can’t ever aim diagonally downwards with any gun yet your enemies can.
Commando is not a complete failure. There is a nice variety of weapons to collect and the overall visual style of the game is quite well realised. It runs smooth, but again this is all just a reminder of how much better Metal Slug and Contra do it. Anything enjoyable within Commando is clearly borrowed from similar games and the game is heavily padded with extra elements of frustrating and inconsistent design. Considering the recent release of Metal Slug 7 and Contra 4 for the DS, there is little reason to consider Commando: Steel Disaster.
