And considering there are more Portuguese speakers in Brazil than Portugal, why not show the Brazil flag for Portuguese (if you’re being consistent with the use of the US flag).

Or… just don’t use flags to illustrate language. Ever.

The second is that like many a good action film, it’s quite dumb. Many levels require you slaughtering respawning enemies over and over again while you wait for a helicopter or a timer to countdown. This gets really painful and chore-like after you fail two or three times. If only there was a little more strategy to the levels: working out how to solve a difficult level is rewarding when there’s some strategy involved. When it’s a bit of luck after the upteemth attempt, it’s just anticlimactic.

Online strategy game Evony has already made a reputation for itself with its wildly inappropriate and inaccurate banner ads.

I played Evony once, for about ten minutes… not long, however I played enough to be sure it’s not a Leisure Suit Larry-style game set in Middle Earth (although maybe there’s some mileage in that concept).

Previously the blatant cleavage shot of a buxom stock photo model was a favourite Evony ad, but I think this new one takes the cake. What does this haute couture model have to do with a medieval strategy game? Sex sells I guess.

Some more on the wonderful Evony banner ads at Tokyito and Coding Horror.

One part of the game that stood out this time around is the subtle yet brutal level of cruelty available to the player. I’ll gloss over the ability to shoot penguins and seals, as I think the options available with captured German and Japanese soliders is far greater.

There are a total of eight commandos: each with different abilities. There’s the thief, the sniper, the spy and the diver… it’s all fairly obvious what each one does. Using their bare hands or objects like wine bottles, it’s quite simple to walk up behind an enemy soldier and knock them out. Once that’s done, you can tie them up and steal their equipment — and uniforms.

But what do you do with a bunch of gagged, bound and naked enemy soldiers? Well, the possibilities are endless it seems.

You can use the nifty Kübelwagen to run them over (or tanks, Jeeps and trucks).

Or, just burn a bunch of German officers with a firebomb.

I think The Weinstein Company could’ve easily rebranded Commandos 2 as ‘Inglourious Basterds‘ and made a fortune flogging it as merchandise. It’s a great game with wonderfully illustrated settings, and as illustrated, a wonderful freedom that allows you to do awful, awful things to people. That is if you’re that way inclined: the game itself encourages you to sneak around and do as little killing as possible and evade detection, but it’s entirely possible to go at it like a Tarantino film.

However you want to play, Commandos lets you. And that’s what really makes it great, even if you can do unspeakable things to a bunch of defenceless German or Japanese soldiers. If you really want too. Just leave the penguins be.