Undercover

I don't even want to know how many hours I spent in the sequel, Men of Courage . The concept of the Commandos-series, sneaking through enemy-infested bases with a small squad of soldiers from an iso-perspective, meticulously planning every step and then setting off the alarm because of some striped cone of sight, was as frustrating as it was gripping. Especially if, like me, you make it even more difficult for yourself and instead of killing anyone, only stunned them.

As the genre was treated far too neglected for a long time, I always felt a little nostalgic when I thought back to the series. Fortunately, games like Desperados and Shadow Tactics have brought a breath of fresh air. And although I haven't played Behind Enemy Lines I can imagine that the missions were no less exciting. This puzzle logic simply has a timeless flavor and is, at least for me, a lot of fun.

As good as the actual game may be, the score unfortunately misses the mark in comparison to its successor. As we, or rather I, have had to realize several times now, usually a series' founders around and especially before the turn of the millennium always fall a little short musically in comparison to their successors. David García-Morales Inés doesn't manage to conjure up anything really worth listening to that navigates past the quality filters to the feel-good center.

Instead, we get almost irrelevant background music, which presumably complements the stealth gameplay well, but apart from that is essentially boring. A little drumming, a little drama, which is probably intended to create a feeling of anxiety. Plus a few more melodic pieces such as the Credits-theme, which is reminiscent of the melody of Oh my darling Clamentine - that's basically it. And the length of 25 tracks is also rather cheated because of the tracks from number 13 onwards, some of which are only a few seconds long.

Now you might think that this judgment is too harsh, after all, the stealth genre leaves the composer little creative leeway! Here are my two cents on this: Something great can be distilled from every score, and the fact that this can also work with games like Commandos is shown not least by the other spin-offs. All in all, Behind Enemy Lines really is behind expectations, making you want to crawl away rather than lie in wait.