izigame.me

Commando, released in 1985, was Capcom's biggest arcade hit yet and enjoyed worldwide popularity. Much like 1942, time has been cruel to this oldie, though its achievements make it historically significant.
Capcom's very first foray into run 'n gun territory, Commando, despite the title and obvious similarities, has nothing to do with the popular movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which was released months after the game. It is however a playable militaristic action flick as the name implies.
The presentation suffers from the limitations of the era. The protagonist Joe advances through jungles, trenches and enemy forts, but the aesthetic is incredibly bland and with similar brownish palette throughout the whole game, making progression feel monotonous. There are also precious few enemy types, most of which can be avoided and ignored. There are no bosses, but mini gauntlets at the end of each area spawning a trillion common soldier enemies.
The gameplay is kind of terrible to me. Your infinite machine gun has way less range than the enemies' weapons, and you have to move to aim in one of the eight direction, so controlling your shots while not crashing into the ever moving enemies is a real challenge (I heard this problem also plagues Ikari Warriors, though I didn't play that yet). You get grenades that are always lobbed straight ahead at a fixed distance. In theory, you should use them to dispatch multiple enemies at once, or hiding enemies and vehicles, but: 1 - the range of the blasts feels microscopic and I never got more than one soldier with them, and 2 - the game clearly incentivises moving forward as fast as possible, which is also the safest option to minimize the amount of sh1t thrown your way, but by doing so you mostly not engage with enemies at all aside from sporadic exceptions.
Overall, this does not make you feel like a badass soldier (I'm sure it did for arcade players at the time!), but more like a desperate office worker trying to get to the office on time while dodging obstacles. It's not fun and not very fair either. An interesting experience, but once again, a primitive one.