With all of the defensive upgrades and new weapons, you might guess that Going Commando is easy going. Not so! You’ll find that you’ll need all of the extra health and firepower that the game gives you as the enemies are stronger, numerous, and often have multiple attacks that they can unleash in your direction. Going Commando is certainly more challenging than the first game, but not frustratingly so. The developers have done a good job of matching the increased difficulty to your greater strength, keeping the game playable and fun.

The new spherical worlds put a 360 twist on things.

The levels in Going Commando are even bigger and more beautiful than in the first game, and a new type of spherical world makes its debut as well. The spherical worlds place you on the surface of stations or asteroids and feature a complete 360 degree world. Run in a straight line in any direction and you’ll eventually end up back where you started. As you head in any direction, features will appear on the horizon ahead of you and drop out of view behind you. Finding your way around is easy thanks to the game’s fully 3D, rotatable maps of the spherical worlds. These will let you get your bearings or locate new features with a simple click of the R3 button.

Mini-games are also a part of Going Commando. Fast and exciting hoverbike races ala Star Wars: The Phantom Menace will challenge your racing skills against skilled opponents with a penchant for cheating. The Battle Arena is a blast, as you are dropped into a stadium and must face attacks by killer robots and bloodthirsty aliens all for the entertainment of a TV audience. Your task is made even more challenging by the various traps and pitfalls that are activated during the battles, but the rewards for victory are definitely worth the effort. Even the journey between planets has been turned into a mini-game. What served as essentially a load screen in the original game can now turn into a space battle when you are intercepted by enemy ships. All of the mini-games are a good change of pace from the regular gameplay – in many platform games the mini-games are annoyances that prevent you from getting on with the main game, but in Going Commando you’ll find yourself enjoying them and wishing that they would last longer. And that’s in spite of the fact that the regular gameplay is so much fun.

Fans of the original game will be happy to see that Going Commando matches it in the story and character departments. You’ll meet more colorful and humorous characters than ever, full of personality and brought to life with top quality voice acting. Fizzwidget is particularly entertaining, and you’ll find yourself looking forward to his next appearance to see how he’ll butcher the English language next with his non-stop stream of malapropisms. The only thing disappointing in the story is that Clank gets far less game time this time out. He spends a good portion of the game absent as a kidnapping victim and there aren’t enough opportunities to take control of him in the game (without ruining the surprise, I will just say that one of these chances is well worth the wait).

If there is anything to complain about in Going Commando it is that the camera will sometimes wander into a bad position, leaving you firing blindly at off-screen enemies. Even in open areas it won’t automatically track behind you and the game is missing a one-click camera positioning button. While this can be annoying, it is a minor annoyance when weighed against all of the gaming goodness in Going Commando.
 

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 95%.  Going Commando is the best platform game available on the PS2, and is among the most enjoyable video games out there. You can’t go wrong by picking up this game and going commando yourself.

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