Commandos: Origins review: Courageous, dutiful, glorious basterds

Back before the new millennium, a brand new type of strategy game crawled onto the scene in the form of Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines. It had players control a handful of commandos across a series of missions, completing objectives and taking down Nazis along the way. The game had a few sequels, and although they were well received, the series ultimately went dormant. That is, until now. Like one of the game’s titular commandos, Claymore Game Studios has popped up out of the shadows and delivered Commandos: Origins. It offers up the same intense, real-time stealth strategy of the originals, a rich sandbox of tools, and smooths out the rough edges while maintaining that iconic devilish difficulty.

Before they were familiar faces

Set in the 1940s during the rise of the Nazi regime, Commandos: Origins is a prequel title that tells the origin (get it?) story of the commando squad. This unit wasn’t always the closely-knitted bunch of lads that fans of the originals had come to love; they were a motley crew hand-selected by Thomas Hancock (the Sapper) in order to perform dangerous and highly classified missions.

As the familiar story of World War 2 begins, so too does the arrival of new commandos to the squad. The Sapper enlists Jack O’Hara (the Green Beret), a cantankerous expert in hand-to-hand combat that has found himself imprisoned by the British. Before long, the Sniper arrives, followed by the Marine, the Spy, and the Driver.

Because the story of World War 2 is so well known, Origins is more focused on the commandos themselves and the struggles they get into as they become a crack squad. You’ll learn pieces about the commandos as they banter while deployed, get a small briefing as a mission loads, and otherwise pickup real-world info from collectible postcards. It’s not much, but it’s just enough to set the scene and unleash the player. Despite the serious setting, the game is less about the story and more about the gameplay, and Commandos: Origins is a sandbox brimming with toys to play with.

Toy soldiers for adults

Back when I was a kid, I had all sorts of army-themed action figures and each one had a specific role in my make-believe military setting. The one with a stick of dynamite was in charge of explosives, the one with a sniper rifle sat off on a shelf overseeing the battlefield, and the one with the radio was probably the leader, issuing commands. Each one was vital to the success of the mission. Commandos: Origins makes me feel like a kid again, playing with my action figures, organizing my men, and enacting grand strategies that can be synchronized across the battlefield.

In Origins, there are six of the titular commandos to control over the course of the more than a dozen campaign missions. The game introduces them slowly, letting you control two commandos before adding more to the roster in subsequent missions. It’s this steady pace that lets you learn how each commando operates, their strengths and weaknesses, and also how it shakes up the challenge.

Out the gate, I’m introduced to the Sapper as he recruits the currently imprisoned Green Beret. If he wants to join the commandos, he’ll need to prove his worth: break out of prison, avoid the guards, and meet the Sapper by the road. It’s a brilliant opener, as the game uses this as a tutorial to teach its mechanics, of which there are many.

As a stealthy, real-time strategy game, Commandos: Origins utilizes enemy vision cones to depict which areas are safe to move through using specific stances. A commando within the solid section of an enemy’s cone of vision is spotted almost immediately whereas the lined section can be crawled through without alerting the guard (just don’t stand up).

The challenge comes from having multiple guards, overlapping cones of vision, light sources in dark missions revealing you, and an objective or door on the other side of all of these obstacles. It’s here that the sandbox element comes into play.

The Green Beret can place down remote controlled radios that, once activated, draw the attention of nearby guards, causing them to move from their station or route to investigate. Perhaps you hide in a shrub and place the radio on the ground nearby or use the Green Beret’s shovel to dig a hole to hide in and then spring up like a Fremen from Dune.

While you’re deciding what to do with the Green Beret, you might have commanded the Sapper to cut through razor wire, place a bear trap around a corner, and whistled to draw the attention of a guard. Before long I was learning to use both of their skills together, stringing a whistle into a radio lure into a bear trap, and springing up from the dirt with my knife ready. It felt like setting up dominos or a Rube Goldberg Machine and relishing the results of my efforts.

On my mark…

This sense of preparation and payoff is repeated dozens of times throughout the game’s large and lengthy missions. Every few feet you’ll encounter another group of soldiers in a slightly different configuration. A lot of time is spent analyzing the positions, movements, and viewing angles as you work out where to move your commandos and how best to either sneak past or covertly take out the Nazis – even if it’s just three guards.

Most of the time you can get away with using the real-time speed, but there are moments where the game’s Command Mode makes things easier – plus it’s kind of badass. With a press of a button, time pauses and you can assign each commando a single action. These actions can be executed all at once or you can press the corresponding button to activate them in any given order.

At one point, three Nazis were in a room talking. I had my Spy dressed in a guard’s uniform talk to one, allowing my Marine and Sniper to crawl in unnoticed and position themselves behind the other two. I paused time, assigned my Spy the task of using his silenced pistol on one, my Marine to throw his knife, and my Sniper to get all stabby with the last one. I hit the Enter key, three Nazi bodies hit the floor, and I was on my way to the next room to Inglourious Basterds my way to victory.

Sour Krauts

Commandos: Origins does a tremendous job of never feeling tedious, despite how long it can take to finish a mission. A lot of this is thanks to how diverse the missions are, the optional objectives, searching for collectibles, and the fact it’s totally up to the player how they solve a problem within the confines of the mission.

This is where that aforementioned challenge comes in, as not all of the commandos are going to be available in every mission. Where you might have relied heavily on the Green Beret’s radio to lure guards in one mission, in the next he might not be available. In this instance, you’ll need to come up with new strategies using the tools available in a manner that suits the layout of the current environment. How you handle three soldiers on the side of the road will be completely different to how you deal with them grouped around a checkpoint.

On top of that, the environments are absolutely gorgeous, with so much detail packed into inconsequential elements. The train station mission has a cargo yard with tarps flapping in the breeze, steam jetting from pressurized pipes, and birds singing in the trees. The arctic airfield is a snowy wonderland, where your footprints can be detected by the soldiers. All of these locales are punctuated by a soundtrack that adds to the atmosphere but never dominates your attention or becomes overbearing as you’re sitting there, quick-loading to try and perfect a sequence of kills.

All of it flows together to create this rich experience that is equal parts intensity and speed with thoughtful planning and stealth. Commandos: Origins lets you teeter between success and failure and leaves enough room for you to quickly balance your luck with its wealth of tools and mechanics. It’s nonstop planning and payoff, with a bit of chaos thrown into the mix.

And while Commandos: Origins sticks close to the source material, I couldn’t help but miss some of the elements that are absent. The Spy can’t tell guards to relocate, the Sniper can’t shoot from atop telephone poles, and there’s no way to transfer items between commandos, so you best think carefully about who picks up that health kit or grenade.

There were also a few hiccups with the experience with some broken animations, mislabeled mission-end results screens, and some incorrect object visuals after quick loads (like a retractable ladder resetting its visual state but still being useable). They are noteworthy problems, but not enough to severely impact my ability to play the game, and certainly not enough to reduce my enjoyment.

Setting an example

Claymore Game Studios realized what made the original Commandos games so great, retained the heart and soul, and sanded off all the prickly edges. Commandos: Origins is a love letter to the originals in everything it does. The mechanic-heavy sandbox gameplay, the unique cast of commandos, the gorgeous environments, and the level design, all of it coalesces into an experience that is contemplative and intense. It’s a brilliant and challenging strategy game. And doesn’t it feel damn good to punch Nazis?

This review is based on a Steam copy provided by the publisher. Commandos: Origins is available on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5 on April 11, 2025.

Sam Chandler

Head of Guides

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as Head of Guides. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler