Cold War Commander is a platform game set in the 1980’s. Gorbachev has invaded the United States of Freedom and has stole all the Jellybeans. You play the part of Regan who must go through each level and collect the jellybeans. Seriously, I am not making this up!
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Graphics are a kind of hand drawn art style which works OK, although it can sometimes look a little bland with too much grey on the screen. The music is a drum beat which does get a little repetitive after a while though. Sound effects are minimal and apart from when your character jumps they are rarely heard.
The game sees Regan traveling through locations including cities, forests, countrysides and caves on his quest to recover the jellybeans. The variety is good and adds a sense of progress in the game. The game has some puzzle elements where you must navigate platforms and hit switches to open doors in order to progress. There are also obstacles to overcome such as moving platforms over lava and falling stalactites in the cave levels. The game is not overly puzzle based but it breaks up the time spent avoiding the enemies.
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The level designs seem to be fairly well designed, you can choose to collect all the jellybeans on the level but it appears it makes no difference if you just make it to the end of the level and miss them. I would have liked to have the exit locked until you collect all the jellybeans as it would have added more of a challenge to the game.
You have a number of lives at your disposal but there is also a save game option where you can save your level at any time, which kind of makes the lives redundant. Hitting an enemy or an object will cause you to lose some health which cant be replenished. Also when hitting something it will cause your character to jump back which I found to be sometimes very annoying, a good example is when your are on a higher platform and hitting a falling missile will result in your character jumping backwards and missing the platform, usually falling back to the lower level.
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Enemies and deadly obstacles come in a variety of forms, the main enemy are the soldiers who you must avoid. It seems Regan is a pacifist as he has no weapons or hand to hand combat. Instead you must avoid them by jumping over them, this makes the game a little more challenging as sometimes enemies can be on platforms that you need to wait on for a moving platform for example. Obstacles include tractors which travel on the ground and missiles which repeatedly fall from the air, the missiles in particular are a good addition as you will often need to time your jumps to platforms to bypass them.
Apart from your character jumping backwards when hit, it is a fairly good platform game. The balance of platform navigation and puzzles are just right. I am not sure how many levels there are but it seems there is quite a few as I played for some time and did not reach the end. Cold War Commander costs 80 :MSPoints: which is a good price, if you want to spend a hour or two on a platform game this would be a good choice.
You can find out more about Cold War Commander and download the trial or purchase the full game here.
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