Go Commando! Or Not.

Kotaku picked up on the dutch site Gamer.nl reporting that Pyro are making a new Commandos game. Blues News turns to Babelfish, which gives...

"We go certainly busy with new commandos, the time are there ripe voor" , said a spokesman of Pyro studios against Gamer.nl. the new title returns to the basis and will do think of the style of commandos 2. The game then real-time strategiegame will be, and no first-person shooter such as the last commando commandos-game, commandos: Strike Force from 2006. According to Pyro studios the overstap to 3D a bad choice was."

However, since then Pyro has denied it, saying they never said such a thing. They'd like to do one, but turning it into a quote is wishful thinking. Who to believe?

Well, whoever you wish. If a developer accidentally slipped they were working on something - which has been known to happen - the developer would deny it. Conversely, it's entirely possible a Dutch journalist speaking to developer from the Spanish team may have had some manner of communication breakdown. Personally? Well, I'd be surprised if Pyro don't have a Commandos game being worked on, in the same way that I'd have been surprised if someone told me Blizzard weren't working on Starcraft 2 before they actually announced it. It was the game which made the company. It was enormously popular, especially in Europe. Developers and publishers like making use of even their shittiest IPs. Commandos wasn't a shitty IP. It's probably being worked on.

2006's Strike Force was, of course, a bit of a disaster - though the press trip to visit Pyro to see it, where - searching for a bar - we accidentally found ourselves in a Brothel proved memorable ("Do you have any drinks?" "No. Only the fuck"). As far as I can work out, they haven't done a game since then - only Planet 51, a movie tie-in which they're currently on. So you have to hope they're working on something. You'd also have to hope that the game will be returning to its roots somewhat - which was basically a puzzle game with a WW2 theme. Would it be PC only? Strike Force going after the consoles and a more action player was its failing, and there's no behaviour after the release of it to show which way their thinking is going. Could you make this third-person game work cross-platform? An interesting question. You'd have to assume that it wouldn't be as incredibly punishing as the Commandos games.

I admit, I was never a fan. They looked beautiful and the atmosphere was spot on, but it always seemed to lean far too much to trial-and-error. Hidden & Dangerous when it appeared was often compared to a true-3D version of commandos... but that was never really true. Commandos was a puzzle game, normally with seemingly set solutions. Hidden & Dangerous was more of the freeform problem game, a design choice which always works better for me. And buggy, because you know it's a real PC game when it's incredibly buggy.

I suspect I'm in the minority here. Any commandos out here? What would you want in a sequel? What would you fear?