Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines

About Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines

Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines (1998) is Pyro Studios' stealth-driven World War II tactics game in which six specialist commandos sabotage, assassinate and rescue behind enemy lines, a surprise million-seller and Spain's biggest game hit.

Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines in Depth

The player commands Allied commandos through twenty missions across wartime Europe and Africa, each preceded by a briefing on its background, objectives and escape route, with the whole map visible for planning. Each mission provides a set of commandos, and it fails if any is killed. The Green Beret moves barrels, climbs rough surfaces, uses a lure and kills with a knife; the Marine dives, uses a harpoon gun and pilots boats; the Driver drives vehicles and operates tanks and mounted guns and can heal; the Sapper handles grenades and explosives, cuts wire and sets traps; the Sniper takes out targets and can also heal; and the Spy wears enemy uniforms to distract soldiers and kills by lethal injection. All carry pistols, but the emphasis is on stealth and careful planning, since commandos cannot survive firefights.

Enemy soldiers, sergeants and officers man posts and patrol, sometimes with tanks and armoured cars. The player can view one enemy's line of sight at a time, a green cone with a light close range where commandos are spotted and a darker long range where only standing ones are. Spotted commandos are ordered to halt, enemies investigate footprints, bodies and noises, and an alarm brings out more troops from garrisons, sometimes failing the mission outright.

Making Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines

Pyro Studios made it over about 18 months in Madrid, the last 12 full-time, with a team of around 18 producing roughly 250,000 lines of C++ and assembly; lead programmer Jon Beltran de Heredia recalled ten-hour days, seven days a week, at the end. Co-designer Ignacio Pérez Dolset put the budget at about a million dollars, and David García-Morales composed the music. Eidos published it in 1998, and it received favourable reviews, Next Generation praising its "gorgeous" graphics and "tough" and "challenging" gameplay. It was a significant and unexpected success that Suarez credited to word of mouth, selling 706,000 copies by the end of 1998, winning a Gold prize at the 1999 Milia festival for EU revenues above €16 million, and passing 1.5 million worldwide. GameSpot Spain called it Spain's biggest game hit of all time by 2001. The standalone expansion Beyond the Call of Duty followed in 1999, then Commandos 2, 3 and Strike Force.