Commandos II: Men of Courage multiplayer mode glitch

Recently I have been playing Commandos II: Men of Courage, with my brother, in multiplayer mode. We have played the game in single player mode numerous times; but this was out first multiplayer experience. We found synchronizing glitches in the game.

In the following image you can see two views: one on my screen and one on my brother’s. The same enemy soldier has different positions on the two screens.

Moreover, when I killed the enemy soldier using the Green Beret my brother’s system would show that a fellow Commando has died and mission failed. The same was shown to me if he took the soldier down with the Sapper. We tried to let the game recover by continuing the game trying to get the Green Beret meet with the Sapper. Interestingly as the Green Beret was alive on my system, he showed up with the Sapper and Lupin while on my brother’s system it was only the Sapper and Lupin.

When we had encountered a similar error within a closed room, I thought it was a glitch in coordinate calculation. However, I was wrong as proved by this incident. Clearly there is a concurrency issue here.

In the mission "Is Paris Burning?", there was another glitch where an enemy soldier picks up a cigarette from a distance. Look for the 14th second and the 57th second in the video.

Commandos Strike force

This is the fifth in the Commandos series from Eidos. However, this is a first person shooter game (fps) unlike others in the series which were third person strategic games.

One of the major drawbacks of the game is the dumb enemy artificial intelligence(AI), especially while working with the spy. However, the AI was fine when the enemy dodge bullets. Despite that the game is worth playing for its unique gaming experience provided by some features pretty new in the industry. These features make the game very realistic.

The game features dynamic switching between the commandos during the game play. In the following screenshot, I am shooting with the Green Beret (a character in the Strike force team).



While I am using the Green Beret, who is positioned in the heart of action, I am also using the sniper to provide cover to the Beret.



It was really wonderful to be able to see the course of action and be involved in it from two different perspectives at the same time. Such dynamic switching between characters of a game is unprecedented and is appreciable. It makes the game worth playing just for the experience of a new style of gameplay. You can see for yourself in the following video. I am not the player here though.



Earlier we have had games with multiple characters involved in action. However, dynamic switching was not there. One of the early examples of this is the famous game Max Payne 2. There is a level in the game where Mona Sax saves Max Payne by providing sniper cover while Max's response is simulated. In the next level, Max Payne plays in the same scenario with Mona's cover simulated. The developers of Strike Force have take a step towards next generation gaming by introducing dynamic switching.

To add to the realism in the game, there is a fist-fight between a Russian soldier (below) and a Nazi soldier(above) in the following screenshot.



It helps paint the image of world war 2 times in the mind of the gamer. The following screenshot was taken after a couple of Nazi soldiers were killed while they were basking in the warmth of the fire. The rifle of a Nazi soldier fell on the drum when his body fell down.



In the next screenshot the Green Beret is feeling the sharpness of the edge of the knife.



These elements add realism to the gameplay. Its nice to see a Nazi officer, out in cold, yawning. Another interesting feature is the ability of the sniper to hold his breath during shooting to be accurate.

Cheating at Counter strike

In Counter Strike: Condition Zero, various levels are to be completed and each level has its challenges. The screenshot below shows the challenges for the map "Stadium" in "Hard" level. The names of the enemy bots are clearly mentioned and are actually well chosen so that the challenges are effective.The cheat is actually a loophole. The essence of the cheat is that if we change the bots that make the challenge effective, then the challenge becomes easier. The challenge counter, e.g. the number of enemies to be killed, remains the same however.

Let me take the help of an example to explain how the cheat works. Suppose in the above game I found that Razor being a sniper is causing me more problems than the other bots. So I went to the command line using '~' button. The Console appeared as shown below. I typed in the command
kick Razor
and the outcome was leaving of Razor and joining of Floyd.
Another time, in the next round when I did it Cooper joined the CT forces, as shown in the following screenshot. Each time a random bot was added to the CT forces and the match became 6 on 6 rather than 5 on 7.
The challenge counters that counted the number of kills by me were intact but the challenge lost meaning to some extent.