Coming from a venerable series of isometric, top-down, warfare strategy games, Commandos: Strike Force is now a World War II first person shooter that has you playing as three different characters, one at a time, including a sharp-shooting, knife-throwing sniper; a hard-charging, machine gunning green beret; and a cool-under-pressure stealthy spy, the leader of the group. Sounds great, sounds diverse, sounds like multi-tasking warmonger heaven. Alas, it ain't.

In fact, Commandos: Strike Force proves that the only thing more frustrating than really bad enemy AI (artificial intelligence) is really bad squad mate AI, but sure enough, it seems both the good guys and the bad guys all drank from the same idiot fountain, inadvertently calling up the alternate meaning to "special forces."

Hence, unless you tuck the two characters you're not playing away in a corner where no enemies will find them, they will get shot and they will not defend themselves until they get wounded, which prompts you to assume control of them at nearly every turn, like an omnipresent babysitter looking after stupid kids toting guns they have no business toting.

Generally speaking, the graphics suck in that bland, uninspired, nineteen-shades-of-mud sort of way. Specifically speaking, the graphics suck frequently, starting with the second video sequence where the top of buddy's head goes all transcendental right through the ceiling of a cockpit followed by other video sequences of equally bizarre clips and glitches. Using your scope or binoculars is pretty much a game of guess-the-pixel-cluster wonkiness, because though you were pretty sure you were trying to zoom in on a specific target, you're immediately confronted by something else, so you guess that's a tree, no a wall… nope, it's the ground. Still, on the off chance you do manage to zoom in on exactly what you intended to zoom in on, the graphics suck, as mentioned.

The only remotely positive thing about the game is that you can choose how you to tackle the objectives and, with a few exceptions, you're not locked into any particular order. If you prefer jumping into the thick of the action with bullets whizzing by your head, choose the beret; if you like to sit back, chill and pick people off, use the sniper; and if you like to sneak around or dress up in disguises and otherwise execute stealth kills, use the spy. Feel noble about it too, as we're talking WWII era butchery of those scumbag Nazis, and nobody complains about excessive violence if you're killing Nazis, be it by bullet to brain, knife through thorax or piano wire around throat. Yeehaw! Pretty cool options were it not for all the aforementioned bad, sucky, idiot fountain festivities.