Commandos 2: Destination Paris is a Game Mod based on the engine and gameplay of Commandos 2: Men of Courage. The first version dates back to 2004, and it is still regularly updated.
Originally, it only added extra difficulty to Men of Courage, but it has since expanded to include all of the missions from the original Commandos games, Behind Enemy Lines, Beyond the Call of Duty and Destination Berlin. The latter's gameplay was heavily criticized for being nowhere near as practical as that of Men of Courage, and this mod fixes this. A huge number of original missions were added, bringing the total of missions to 245 as of 2018.
Commandos 2: Destination Paris provides examples of:
- Artistic License – History: Overlaps with Artistic License – Geography. Some missions Japanese soldiers in Europe and others put German soldiers in Asia.
- Adapted Out: Due to the game's graphic limitations, some of the other vehicles and weapon emplacements in the Behind Enemy Lines, 'Beyond the Call of Duty and "Destination Berlin" missions are absent and they are being replaced with the Men of Courage'' vehicles and weapon emplacements such as the Sd Kfz 251 in the mission "Chase of the Wolves" is being replaced with Sd Kfz 231 Armored Car.
- Blatant Item Placement: A lot items can be found in places where they don't make sense, usually lying on the floor (inside, outside, or underwater). Like an unloaded Bazooka on the floor near one exit of a Japanese bunker, a German sub-machine gun in the middle of a river in the Thailand jungle, winter clothes and a fully functional rifle in the sea under the pack ice, a British flamethrower on the pack ice just behind a German destroyer, sleeping pills and wine under the sea in the Pacific Ocean, etc.
- Elite Mooks: The mod adds elite snipers and machine gunners with an increased range and damages.
- Fan Sequel: Counts as this since the series' last original installment with a Real-Time Strategy gameplay, Destination Berlin, came out in 2003.
- Infinite Supplies: The unlimited ammunition feature of the standard allied handgun and the harpoon have been deleted, but most recent versions of the mod features missions with hidden special versions of handguns/rifles/submachineguns, with unlimited ammunition.
- Misplaced Wildlife: There are crocodiles in a Norman town's sewers. There are no crocodiles in France outside of zoos.
- Parodied in the C3 Stalingrad levels as there are also now Penguins on the inaccessible frozen river.
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Nintendo Hard: This mod is much harder than the original game, which, while the easiest of the original real time strategy games, is still by no means an easy game. - Remixed Level: Some missions are remakes of the main campaign missions in which German soldiers are completely replaced by Japanese soldiers, and vice versa.
- The Commandos 3 levels are noticebly more heavily altered than the C2 Levels, some to account for the differences in gameplay (Such as Tripod LMGS being replaced with the C2 Machine guns due to them not existing or enemies with SMG's replacing the enemies wielding the C3 exclusive Assault Rifle.) but also entirely new sections (Like C3's Kill the Sniper mission turning into a mission involving the Thief/Driver somewhere presumably nearby) or dramatically altered Commando's avaliable (such as Storm the Beach changing from just the Green Beret and allied forces to including the Sniper, Driver, Diver and the Sapper as well.)
- Save Scumming: Well, it's based on Commandos... A former French version of the mod lampshaded it by replacing the "Empty slot" text of the saving menu by something like "True gamers don't use this option".
- Timed Mission: A number of missions are timed.
- The Colditz mission from Men of Courage has a one hour timer which starts when the alarm is set — it's didn't have any in the original game. When it reaches 00:00, the Thief is executed and Germans destroy the classified documents that the commandos intended to steal.
- The train mission from Destination Berlin has a timer now, it didn't have one in the original game.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: The Burma mission was possibly this in older versions of the mod when playing in higher difficulties. In this mission, Natasha is waiting in a corner of the map. The problem was, because of the added Japanese patrols, they could be seen and attacked by crocodiles, which triggers the alarm and sends other patrols in remote corners... So, if the player is not fast enough, the Japanese find Natasha and kill her, which triggers an automatic defeat in the "Difficult" and "Realistic" difficulty modes (not in "Normal" mode). This problem was corrected in more recent versions of the mod, in which the crocodiles of this level have been removed from the surface areas and only appear underwater.
- Universal Ammunition: The allied gun (.45ACP) use the same ammunition as the German (9mm) and Japanese (8mm) ones.
- Video Game Remake: The missions from Behind Enemy Lines, Beyond the Call of Duty and Destination Berlin have been remade here with the gameplay of Men of Courage. Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty missions have also been given a graphical overhaul to make them closer in quality to Men of Courage and Destination Berlin. Some levels from a different mod (for Behind Enemy Lines), Strike In Narrow Path, have even made it into Destination Paris.
