By Ned Jordan

In some ways Crash Commando is a classic side-scrolling shooter along the lines of games like Metal Slug. Lots of weapons, explosions, and small soldiers dying digital deaths. No objectives or goals beyond trying to wipe out as many enemy soldiers as possible while keeping your own deaths to a minimum. Nothing but classic quick reflex arcade gameplay. Spend a little time with Crash Commando and you'll find that a few extras have been added to the classic formula - not enough to lose that classic arcade feel, but enough to add a little extra mayhem to the mix.

First of all, you pick your weapon each time you spawn and your selection will affect your style of play. Do you select the rapid fire assault rifle and spray bullets everywhere, or do you go with the much more deadly but slower to aim and fire sniper rifle? Or is the splash damage of a grenade launcher more your style?

Next you have the jet packs. These give each player a limited boost capability that can be used to hover, long jump, or to reach higher platforms and power-ups. Enemy players don't just run up to each other and start shooting until one is dead - duels become wild fights of arcing jumps and aerial loops.

Next up are the vehicles and weapons emplacements. The vehicles range from jeeps that perform jumps with a press of the same button used for jet pack boosts to tanks that travel along mag-rails that go from horizontal to vertical to inverted. The gun emplacements will switch you from the standard third-person view to a first-person firing view. It's a lot of fun to man an AA cannon and pick off unsuspecting players using their jetpacks.

Lastly there are the well-designed maps in the game. The maps are expansive, provide room to spread the fighting vertically, and are actually two levels in one with 'caves' and 'tunnels' providing the means to move back and forth between them. You can even take some shots at enemies on the other level by using the gun emplacements - and they won't be able to fire back.

The supported game types are pretty basic: deathmatch, team deathmatch, and a capture the flag clone that has players attempting to download information from the enemy computer and then uploading it to their own. The game can be played offline in a series of battles that are the same as those found online, but these battles should be looked at as training for the online game rather than a compelling single player experience. There is a lot of fun and classic shooter style mayhem to be found against real players online, but the single player game just can't capture that with the computer controlling your opponents.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 75%. Classic side-scrolling shooting best enjoyed with friends.