Junkman
Dec 13 2004, 05:08 AM
Game: Commander Stan 2: Wendy's Revenge
Creator: Stanster
Genre: Platformer
Description: Satan and Damien have kidnapped Stan! Help Wendy fight her way to Hell in order to destroy the evildoers and save her (former) man.

Rating: 56%

Review: Commander Stan 1 really was the king of basic platformers back in the old-school days of South Park Gaming. It might have used the default platform engine, the graphics were standard at its best but damn it was a fun, fast and furious game. All the action was there, the levels were interesting plus it had some nice boss battles to boot, like Evil Stan. Who didn't get stuck on this peculiar character? Anyway, it's now time to embark into some more adventures and enemy-capping action with Commander Stan 2, but the ride is far from being as pleasant.

An interesting fact about Commander Stan 2 would be that you don't even get to play as Stan within the game at all. Instead, you get to play as Wendy, who's trying to save Stan from the wretched hands of Satan, seeing he's not been too happy when Stan ruined all of his plans (alongside Damien's ones). Your role is to guide Wendy through an array of places that feature a city, some rooftops and a hot desert in order to reach the depths of Hell, where Satan and his evil minions wait for you in order to stop you from reaching and freeing Stan.

Things have changed since Commander Stan 1, unfortunately there's a vast array of the changed details that haven't been changed for the better. The game now uses a custom engine, but for the most part it's quite messy. For starters, Wendy moves slowly, and I mean really slowly. A large part of the levels are quite large and getting anywhere takes forever. She also sometimes goes through platforms when she leaps on them, which is quite a nuisance when you're trying to climb up; you need to have perfect-timed jumps in order to hop on them. There are also some instances of the game when you have to execute these pixel-perfect jumps and given Wendy's speed, these gaps were actually scary for me to jump across. The engine is not devoid of good things though; unlike in CS1, Wendy now can actually always fire either left or right without having her fire direction affected by her jumping. When you're standing on the edge of platforms, the lose of balance can make you shoot in diagonal. Whilst it's useful at times, there are some occasions where this ability actually is frustrating, especially in the Hell levels. Given the many small rocks in the level, you'll end up being out of balance often and not being able to shoot in a straight line, thus spelling impendent doom.

What about the levels and enemies now? There are quite a good number of opponents to be found in the game depending on your location. In the early stages you battle alien bugs, which either are melee combattants or sharp shooters, then you battle sandworms (them being the less interesting critters of the game, and the desert level that makes their home aren't interesting neither) and finally hellish enemies such as cacodemons and zombies. The first levels aren't really that interesting and they're almost a chore to play through, the slow pace of gameplay and basic enemies don't help the gameplay factor. If it weren't for the Hell levels, my interest in the game wouldn't have stayed. This is the most interesting part of the game without any doubt, it has quite interesting critters and it has a couple of memorable boss battles, such as Robostan, Evil Stan and Evil Kyle (who has trouble waving a gun over his head). However, the final boss appears unfinished. In it, you have to battle Satan who'll occasionally fire bursts of energy in a chaotic fashion. Once he's dead, you need to fight Damien but he seems to get stuck on a fireball shooting mode all the time, rendering his hunt impossible. Luckly, you don't need to beat this battle to see the ending, there's a password that allow you to skip straight to the ending.

The graphics fare better than in Commander Stan 1, though. Wendy and the enemy characters actually show animation this time around, although some of the enemies are ripped from other sources such as the TGF libraries and Doom. A lot of the in-game graphics also show clear sign of having being taken somewhere else, although there's some original graphics there and there. Interaction is a little bit more active this time around, there are some computers scattered in some levels in which a character will speak to you. Most of the time, it will be Satan taunting Wendy, telling her that she doesn't stand a chance at freeing Stan and beating his minions and it results in Wendy telling Satan to fuck off. Storyline isn't quite the game's strongest point, but it does have one, at least. It's mostly the standard "Don't save me because you'll die, you must save yourself..." "Never I'll save you!" storyline that were the rage in games that featured Stan and Wendy. Music is mostly ripped from the Rise of the Triad and Doom II book, although it also features some original songs from Stanster himself, which made it one of the first SPGs to feature original music.

It's not bad by all means, but Commander Stan 2 definitely classifies as Stanster's lowest achievement of his SPG career. It just doesn't compare well to the original, which I still believe was one of the best platformers around that used the default platfo... alright! I'll stop praising CS1 right now and stay with the subject! If anything, this game feels more like a work in progress than an actual game. There's some fun to be found there and there, but the long waiting moments between these moments of gun-shooting action are a real pain to deal with and will certain not warrant much replay-ability. In the end, I'm just dissapointed in this being the sequel of Commander Stan 1; the game has the right idea, but it lacks in the execution. This game is worth checking out if you're interested in seeing how Stanster's clicking skills fared at that era and how they've improved in the years, but anyone who want a good game featuring Wendy should look toward South Park: Omega Project instead. It shows out all of the elements of CS2 being implemented in the right way. Consider this as being a transition game that was needed for SP:OP to be the really nice game it ended up being.