Commado is a slightly above average game that would become important to shaping the great NES games to come.  You are tasked with going in solo "Commando" and routing enemy areas until you take their base. That's it. You fight through several stages, each offering different locations and some new types of dangers. When you are through the final stage, the game continues back at stage one. There is no ending. Its a little sad that your game just repeats, but its based off an arcade game, and that was common for the time.

You are Super Joe, and have an infinite machine gun and limited grenades to throw. You traverse the stages picking up P.O.W. for points, and small tan boxes for more grenades. Your gun is pretty powerful, as it will kill most enemies in one hit. Unfortunately Super Joe forgot to get any body armor, one hit will finish you, too. You can walk and shoot in all 8 directions, throwing grenades to clear clusters of foes - and this would be key in influencing later games, which I will mention later.

The graphics are done fairly well, there are things that are done well, the helicopter that drops you off, the palm trees, the AA guns you see later, that look great.  All of the enemies have no face, but I guess that gives you no guilt when you shoot. The bad guys have a few different types, but 90% are the typical soldiers. I wish there had been more of the tough bazooka guys, or crazy trucks that barrel at you for variety, but with only a handful of stages, its alright.

Sound and addictiveness are about average. If you can get the hang of the controls you might be more inclined to continue. The fact there is only 4 stages hurts the replay factor, but there are hidden rooms to uncover with your grenades that could make replaying a bit more fun.
The hidden rooms contain some P.O.W. or power ups for your gun or other goodies, and while not essential, are nice to see. Often you can find the rooms by tossing grenades at sandbag encampments. The bad part is you can go through the whole game and never see these secrets, they aren't important. The inclusion of secret rooms were new and novel to the NES, the arcade original I do not think features these. 

The difficulty lies in the design of the game with random enemies, as foes often come at you from all sides of the screen at all times, and tend to chase after you while firing haphazardly. Sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming if you're focusing on kills alone. The goal isn't so much to kill every grey coat as to keep pushing forward unobstructed. Advancing the screen and getting to the end of the stage, there you will be required to kill numerous soldiers to pass.

What makes Commando important is how it influenced later, better games. Ikari Warriors took this model and added two-player and tanks. Gun.Smoke took the idea of the marching screen and put it in a wild-west setting. The fun NES games Jackal and Guerrilla War made a great two player battle games based off these controls. And lastly, Bionic Commando, one of the best NES games, not only features a Commando-like bonus round between stages, it also features Commando's Super Joe for you to rescue as a main plot element!

So you see, Commando is not a footnote of gaming, despite not being outstanding. I see this game like a proud grandparent, whose pedigree allowed future games to take its legacy and evolve the play style -and above all for a game, made the new games a blast of fun and unforgettable. At ease, Commando Super Joe, thank you for your service.

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This is the second review that I've read from you, and you've been pretty consistent, fair and balanced with your reviews, and I encourage you to keep doing that! Another thing to thank you: THANK YOU for reviewing games that have little to no reviews in them!!! It is refreshing to see that there are members who are willing to contribute on different things instead of continually doing the typical pokemon games!!! Something that I think you can improve upon is that you can turn your writing to be more free form while still being organized, instead of sticking with the robotic structure by following each category one paragraph at a time.