The Royal Marines Commando is an ancient game from 2008. It's a whopping 17 years old at the time of this review. The game hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on modern gaming PCs. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an ancient game. This seems to have been put on Steam as a nostalgia gouge, or just a cash grab to try profit from abandonware.
There's certainly nothing wrong with the premise for the game. Take on the role of one of the Royal Commandos in WW2, storm a German research facility and blow stuff up to ensure the victory of the Allies. This is accomplished by a bunch of close quarters FPS gunplay action as you progress through various, fairly linear FPS levels. Simple fun is the goal. What's not to love?
Of course even for new this was never AAA; it's rough around the edges and is neither realistic nor arcadey... still, I feel a little badly about this because it's really something that deserves a proper remaster. Sure, this Steam version has 4K support and a few other things, but it still comes across as unpolished and janky where it shouldn't be.
On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers.
The game doesn't correctly account for modern PC displays, UI scaling isn't handled correctly. As a result of this unfortunate decision, text and UI elements don't display at a reasonable size, it's too small to be legible on most modern gaming PCs, and there's no in-game controls or options to correct this. This can render the game unplayable for many.
The game is very badly optimised, with low framerates and janky gameplay even on a high end rig. Developers must take the time and polish their games and ensure they are optimised and will play well on any potential customers system.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 9 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 110,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam?
The Royal Marines Commando is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $5 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again. Even when it was new, this was never a triple-A game. This is the kind of game that went almost directly from the warehouse into the cheap bargain bins at the front of the shop. Now, on Steam, without any modernisation? This is impossible to recommend.
For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Don't Starve Together", "Portal 2" or "Just Cause 3". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
