Commando Jack breathes new life into tower defense games. While there’s nothing wrong with strategy games where players build up defenses and artillery and essentially watch their creation come to life in front of them, TD games make for a relatively passive experience. Unless the player has to do some major repairs to their fortifications, there’s simply not much to do once the game gets going.
Commando Jack offers up a first person shooter element that changes the tower defense genre big time. Players still get to lay out defense and artillery wherever they want, just like a normal strategy game, but now they have a new weapon at their disposal as they attempt to defeat their alien enemies – themselves. Players can pilot a turret and jump into a first person mode where they control when to fire or hold back.
Essentially, Commando Jack has layered on a mini-first person shooter over its strategy game. As a first person shooter, Commando Jack is a little dull and slow, at least when compared to nearly any next gen console shooting game. But compared to most laborious tower defense games, Commando Jack stands alone.
Genre purists might complain, and those looking for an entirely new experience might complain that Commando Jack doesn’t go far enough in as a first person shooter, but this hybrid game is an interesting experiment in delivering a little more action to a genre that is sorely in need of it.
