Kickass Commandos is pretty much everything I want in a video game. I’m a simple creature of the 90’s. Video games to me should be full of violence and not take themselves too seriously. I mean the hallmark of that generation was Doom, a game about a stopping a demon invasion on Mars. 90’s video games were nutty, and I love them for it. Kickass Commandos returns to that era of videos games of just being silly violent fun. The basic premise of the game is controlling a squad of commandos through a series of missions, which typically boils down to kill everything and everyone. This isn’t a emotional thought provoking game. This is top down shooters is all about blowing shit up, and it feels great.
The game is at it’s best when you can rescue members of your squad along the way eventually turning into a cacophony of death and violence. Sadly, not all levels are meant to be steamrolled in this fashion. Several levels feel more puzzle like resulting in you carefully planning what targets to hit and what routes to take. It’s a nice change of pace, but I prefer the all out running and gunning. As mentioned previously, some levels allow you to pick up other commandos to help you out. These bits are fun, but companions are pretty fragile especially at later stages. As you increase in character level, your sole characters is all you really need to complete levels. It would have been nice to have more durable companions as they are seem highly expendable.
That is a horrendous bathroom.
My favorite bits of the game are some of it’s more ridiculous and shocking moments. During a prison mission titled, Don’t Drop the Soap, there is a prison shower area which you can blast through complete with bars of soap and slippery floors. Other missions have crocodile enemies, crawl towards you attempting to eat you. In one level, I fought off a crocodile with a knife. Now that’s a knife! Towards the end of the game, you fight Yeti’s. Why are the Yeti’s hostile to you? Why should you kill these potentially endangered animals? Who cares? They are in the way. This is the tone of Kickass Commandoes.
Meet new species… and kill them
Kickass Commandos is a simple game from a simpler time, but is still a blast to play. It’s gameplay is a blending of several genres first it combines the strategic planning of a Hotline Miami. Then it mixes in some over the top action similar to a Broforce and adds in a splash of crassness from Duke Nukem. This game was the perfect stress reliever to me, and I just couldn’t put it down. It’s a short game only lasting 3 hours, but I enjoyed every minute of it. The game is $7.49 on Steam and I feel it’s a good price for what you get. This game seems like it could be a good fit for Steam Workshop support to expand the game’s original six campaigns, but sadly does not have at the moment. My only complaint about the game is some difficulty spikes in the last campaign and some bad companion pathing. If you like you’re videogames violent and absurd, Kickass Commandos is for you.