Awesome Music: Most of the post-Behind Enemy Lines soundtracks deliver in the "Military heroes brass" department.
The Fanfarebriefing theme of "Thor's Hammer" in Beyond the Call of Duty. It's perhaps the most heroic of the game outside of the main theme, and it gets reprised in the theme of the 1945 victory ending cinematic on a more cheerful tone, for obvious reasons.
The epic brass pieces from Men of Courage really stand out.
Even Better Sequel: While Behind Enemy Lines is a well regarded game and Beyond The Call Of Duty gives a new challenge for those who are veterans of the former while adding new features, Men Of Courage is considered to be the best game in the series, as it balances out both the difficulty and abilities of the commandos, while still providing a decent challenge even on the easiest difficulty setting.
Game-Breaker: In Men Of Courage, once the Spy finds an officer uniform he is able to order enemy soldiers to move elsewhere. You can only send them to places they can see, and they go back to their normal standing spot once you order to Spy to do something else, but the system can be abused by cancelling the action, then immediately giving another order before the soldier is back to his place... Obviously, being able to send most of the mooksnote NCOs can't be ordered to move, and officers can't be messed with at all since they recognize the Spy if he goes too close, but basic soldiers are by far the most common enemies mostly anywhere allows to send them in places where their comrades are unable to spot them (and unable to witness them being knocked out or murdered...), and to safely dispose of most of the hostile forces, one by one. If you're feeling particularly nasty, you can even order enemy soldiers to walk into dug pits, mines, or your Bear Trap.
Good Bad Bugs: In Behind Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty, there are two ways to cross water: swimming with a scuba gear (only available to the Marine) or using an inflatable boat (carried and driven by the Marine). Swimming underwater allows to be unnoticed, in opposite to using a boat. A bug allows the Marine to pick up his inflatable boat even if other commandos boarded it... yes, you read it correctly, the Marine of Behind Enemy Lines can carry half of the team into his backpack and even cross rivers with this burden.
A smaller one in Men Of Courage and Destination Berlin occurs when you tie up a knocked out enemy and then perform another action while tying them up, such as searching the body. Your commando will stop tying up the enemy, but the animation of the enemy soldier being tied up will still continue, causing the soldier to tie himself up. This provides the added benefit of your commando no longer being in the standing position if he was prone, making it harder for an enemy to spot him tie up his buddy.
Ditching a uniform from the Spy's inventory while wearing it allows him to still make use of it without it taking up space in his inventory.
Growing the Beard: Many fans of the series consider Men Of Courage to be the best game in the series, due to its balance of features and difficulty.
With the Spy, we have a Frenchman who specializes in getting behind enemy lines, Dressing as the Enemy... and who predates Team Fortress 2 by nearly a decade.
In 2001, some French retail versions of Men of Couragecontained an ad for the DVD release of Enemy at the Gates about the battle of Stalingrad; both works were unrelated beside being two World War II-themed fictions released the same year. Two years later, Commandos: Destination Berlin series had a Sniper Duel mission in Stalingrad that was blatantly inspired by Enemy at the Gates.
Polished Port: While they does have their own control issues, the original PS2 and Xbox versions of Men Of Courage actually have expanded tutorials to help players understand the game more and at least a few tweaks to missions to make Unwinnable by Mistake situations give a game over which the remastered version (PC or Console) did not implement.
Porting Disaster: The PS2 port of Men Of Courage. Didn't help that this a series meant to be played with a mouse.
There is an amateur port of Behind Enemy Lines for... Sega Genesis.
Commandos 2 HD Remaster has various visual/gameplay glitches that hinder the gameplay, molotovs not landing where they're supposed, vision cones being broken in certain areas/not rendering over water and being unable to booby trap the Driver's wire with a grenade with the Sapper, some of these have gotten fixed but not all of them. The console versions are even worse due to, as with the PS2 version, the controls being extremely ill suited to the gameplay and have been reported to suffer from some jarring input lag, while almost all of the issues have been fixed nowadays, sounds still sometimes won't play properly/at all.
In Destination Berlin, the commandos consume medikits instantly when injured. Now try to imagine when it's because of a German machine-gunner... Not only that, only a small amount of health is healed per medikit dose this way and you've ended up using multiple medikits in one go... doesn't help it's possible for it to glitch out and remove ALL of your medkits when picking medkits up when injured if you have none/when you get shot once, thankfully Rookie Mode in the remaster fixes this.
The reduction of Cover Mode range in Destination Berlin. It doesn't make sense with the much more action-focused levels and it accounts for most of the fake difficulty since, even with a rifle, your men laying down on the ground can be outshot by officers with handguns if they're alerted. Your range DOES increase when "alerted"... if your men are already automatically firing on a target, so if an alerted enemy stumbles on someone who isn't firing already, your men can't defend themselves. It outright makes certain additions like machine guns useless since they have the range of handguns for some reason, meaning again, officers with sidearms can outshoot your men who are using light machine guns, once again, Rookie mode somewhat fixes this. ("Short range" weapons like the Pistol/MP 40/MG 42 are uneffected but the various Rifles/Grenades have increased range.)
The remasters have the Molotov Cocktail censored with it functioning exactly like grenades, enemies no longer run on fire when hit but more importantly the Molotov was originally silent (enabling you to silently kill groups as long as if the enemies were out of sight) while the remaster Molotov causes the alarm to be raised like an explosion.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: Men Of Courage is noticeably easier than the previous installments (though, by no means a cakewalk). Notably, the Commandos' firing range are roughly equivalent to the enemies', powerful weapons are much easier to obtain (every Commando can fire rifles, which offers One-Hit Kill) thanks to the new ability to loot corpses (and they are very common), and the ambush feature (Commandos' AI automatically attacks the enemies), which make combat an actual viable option in most of the missions (especially since the aforementioned rifles can be used in ambush mode). Also, the Spy's officer disguise allows to order soldiers to move absolutely anywhere, making very easy to set up traps in missions featuring the Spy. In addition, there are groups of soldiers who go patrolling once the alarm is triggered, but they can be picked off before the alarm goes off instead of having to deal with them coming out of a tiny garrison building and then dealing with them while they're alerted, and they're not always equipped with deadly machine guns (especially in the Japanese missions).
Sequel Difficulty Spike: Destination Berlin, thanks to its action missions coupled with nerfed/unadapted gameplay with its few alterations actually making combat less viable than in Men of Courage, then asking you to do even more combat-heavy focused missions than before.
"Operation Valhalla", the final mission of the first game (and also a Final Exam Finale). The hardest part is to clean the ramparts and the castle's Northern section with the Green Beret without being seen.
"Dying Light" from Beyond The Call Of Duty. The commandos are tasked with destroying a lighthouse on a small island. Getting onto the island is a huge challenge to begin with, seeing as how your small boat can be easily spotted by riflemen in elevated positions and your options for fighting back are restricted to the Sniper and his very limited ammunition supply. Once on the island, the whole mission is in an incredibly tight space, meaning that getting spotted or blowing up the objectives too soon will get you quickly swarmed with submachinegunners from the Clown Car Bases on the island. Oh, and there are Sea Mines surrounding the island, so better hope you held back a couple of rounds for the Sniper Rifle or you won't be leaving. Did I mention this is the first mission?
"Thor's Hammer" in Beyond The Call Of Duty. Simply put, it's the map of the original two games with the most soldiers per square meter.
"Guess Who's Coming Tonight" from Beyond The Call Of Duty involves getting into The Wolf's Lair and capturing an SS Colonel. If the alarm goes off, the Colonel flees to a nearby Kubelwagen and gets out. The Spy is available, but you have to bust him out of prison, which is deep inside the complex to begin with and given that two of the other commandos you have are the Driver and the Sniper, the Green Beret will end up doing most of the work in a long and arduous infiltration.
Bonus Mission 4 from Men Of Courage (which is essentially the second part of "Saving Private Smith") involves fighting off waves of enemies. Setting up ambushes is simply not enough, because at least a quarter of the enemies are grenadiers that will wipe out swathes of your men in one go.
The second Stalingrad mission in Destination Berlin is effectively a straight fight with the Green Beret, Sniper, and Sapper against waves of enemies. The game's nerfed medkits and effective ranges definitely don't help.
The Destination Berlin mission where the Green Beret (who's alone) has to catch the train, but not before killing every German on the map in fifteen minutes (including a tank) without setting off the alarm and moving a truck out of the way. Commandos players who are used to take their time on missions tend to suffer a great deal on that one.
The removal of hotkeys from Men of Courage to this one was quite controversial among fans. Some fans made mods to remedy this, most famously Commandos 2: Destination Paris. One of the selling points for the 2022 remaster is that the hotkeys have been put back in.
The removal of several team members. This meant no armored vehicle could be taken over and driven/fired by the commandos due to the absence of the Driver, there was no more ways to carry additional equipment across the map due to the absence of the dog (ammunitions and bombs especially), and the fanservice got removed with the Seductress' absence.
Commandos 2's HD remaster took much flak from gamers:
It plays the No Swastikas trope straight (in a series which had averted it thus far) and includes other forms of censorship as well (things that were removed include Japanese emblems, Adolf Hitler in the opening cutscene — which was merely a montage of Newsreel archives from the World War II era — etc.), removing a great deal of immersion in an era where such things were ubiquitous.
It altered some of the controls and mechanics, the most glaring of which is removing the ability to home in on a different commando by double tapping their assigned number or double clicking on the commando themselves. This is now done on the portraits of the team members on the top left of the screen, but the game doesn't bother telling you this.
The remaster also removed the rank and medal system from the game, offering little incentive to score high merit points.
Tough Act to Follow: Men of Courage is still considered the best game of the series. Destination Berlin didn't reach that standard, mostly due to a clumsly attempt at making it more "actionized" without the fluidity and practical hotkeys of Men of Courage, not to mention the ugly and pretty useless 3D modelization inside buildings.
Men of Courage new features mentioned in promotional materials include night missions (which alters how enemies' field of view work) and weather (the commandos will die outside in cold areas after some time unless they wear special warm clothes). Out of the twenty-one missions of the campaignnote two mandatory tutorial missions, ten proper official missions, and nine hidden bonus missions, there are exactly two night missions (including a hidden one) and one winter mission.
Destination Berlin is arguably even worse, Dogs and sleeping pills are only in one mission, the Diver is only in one mission, the AT Gun is only usuable in the second level (Where it's easy to blow it up without knowing the Green Beret can use them.) and the Thief's Garrote is barely usable. (more so since the demo version of one of the levels that didn't have it included it.)
Beyond The Call Of Duty adds hostile (to both the commandos and the Germans) animals, such as ostriches and lions, and a non soldier disguise for the Spy in the form of a zoo guard. These are only implemented in "The Asphalt Jungle", though the idea of hostile animals makes its way into Men Of Courage in the form of crocodiles, walruses, sharks, and piranhas.
Strike Force
Breather Level: The "Checkmate" mission of Strike Force. It is in the last tier of the game, but it is easier and shorter than most of the others. It is a small map featuring two courtyards (one with the truck that has to be stolen to flee and a few enemies, the other with a lot of enemies - which can't be stealthy eliminated - and the NPC that must be killed) and a medium building above them. Stealth elimination of the enemies in the first courtyard and in the building is piece of cake (the first enemy that can be killed gives you an officer uniform); after the courtyard of the truck is cleaned, the assassination target leaves the crowed courtyard by himself to reach a car, falling into an ambush which is easy to set and doesn't alert the enemy if properly executed. Raising the alarm doesn't trigger a defeat and cleaning all enemy presence from the level isn't required.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: Likely due to the Genre Shift, Strike Force is a lot more forgiving than the rest of the series. For starters, the medpack appears to be bottomless and disguise mechanic is heavily simplified.
The Green Beret isn't played in many missions (and only a single one actually allows him to engage in stealth), which also means the Kar98K rifle can't be used often as the Spy/Sniper can't use it.
The M1 Garand only appears in one mission, and is missing entirely in at least the PS2 Version. It's also the only time the Rifle Grenades attachment is available, in addition a few other weapons like the shotgun are only available in a single mission, the STG44 in particular is never actually used by German soldiers and can only be found hidden away in a single Green Beret mission, it's even more absurd with the portable MG42, where playing on Hard/Commando difficulty removes all of it's spawn points from the game.
Despite the focus on switching between members of the team (and the map screen having room for all 3 Commandos photographs), there's not a single level using all 3 members of the team at once and the two missions that do have all 3 commandos playable at some point (but not at the same time.) all under-utilize the Green Beret with him at best being playable for a quarter of the mission while the Spy/Sniper get way more play-time.
Vindicated by History: While still controversial, there are some fans who think the concept of Strike Force if more polished up would be a fun idea and think the game itself isn't without merrit.
of "Thor's Hammer" in Beyond the Call of Duty. It's perhaps the most heroic of the game outside of the main theme, and it gets reprised in the theme