Eye of the Command
o is what happens when you take Contra and combine it with turned-based dungeon crawling and a twist of rougelite. It has most of the mechanics you’d expect from a platformer, translated into a turn-based, linear roguelike. If that sounds like a good time to you, then read on.
EotC
is one gigantic 80s action flick stereotype. The player takes on the role of a shirtless commando with a huge gun as he single-handedly wipes out entire armies on the way to the evil leader’s volcano hideout. The five classes and three default guns give a bit of variety on the tactics you’ll need to kill everything in sight. Since the game is in Early Access, not quite everything is in yet, and there’s another class on the way.
You get your pick from five different classes and three separate primary guns, which govern your playstyle. Class perks include things like the additional weapon attachment slots or more health. Meanwhile, there’s a standard, long-range rifle of middling damage, a shorter-range gun that fires twice per round and lets you turn without it costing an actual turn, and a close-range shotgun type that can hit multiple enemies. Weapon range plays the biggest role in difficulty; the closer you have to be to shoot something, the less time you have to move. If all else fails, you have your handy commando knife, which can either be thrown at an enemy to stun or finish them off, or used to roll out of the way of oncoming fire. Tossing your knife means you need to retrieve it, while rolling has a cooldown. There’s also a chance to dodge oncoming fire, which can be increased with certain kinds of gear.
Movement is grid-based, and each move (including turning) takes a turn. Targeting is done with the mouse cursor, and you can shoot anyone you can see from your position, so long as they’re in range. Since you’re a badass hero, you get a hitscan gun that never runs out of ammo, while everyone else fires some kind of projectile or grenade that moves across the world with each turn. This is where things get tactical, as every turn you take brings the little balls of death closer to you, forcing you to plan out when to fire and when to move. When things got hot, I had to check where the bad guys were, where the current projectiles were, and where I was hopefully going to end up without getting pumped full of holes. Most of the time, it worked out; I only died twice in the time I played.
You don’t need a shirt, but you do need gear. How good it is, then, that all these bad guys have left loads of crates and safes lying around full of stuff to help you kill them. Cool sunglasses, boots, and other various wearables await to provide you with bonuses during your killing spree. Benefits include increasing your dodge rate, removing the turn cost for turning, and taking less damage. Some loot is random, some isn’t. You’ll also stumble across (or purchase) proofs of strength, which are little goodies that permanently increase your total health. For me, the stuff that removed the cost for turning was a no-brainer, as was the dodge-enhancing gear. If you play your cards right, you can get your dodge rate high enough that most shots go right through you. There are also some ninja bad guys (because of course there are) who fire extra-fast projectiles that are hard to keep away from.
Aside from wearables, there are also weapon attachments to get your guns more gunning: handy little devices that let you hit enemies on both sides of your targets, attachments that do more damage in general, and all kinds of stuff like that. Gear level is color-graded, with grey being basic and gold being the tippy-top (I think). You don't level up, but you can increase your weapon damage by finding or buying gunpower. You can also buy duct tape at various shops to increase the number of weapon attachment slots available to you.
Shooting stuff with your regular gun is nice and all, but sometimes you need more gun, and that’s where subweapons come in. These wonderful weapons of mass destruction require their own special kind of ammo but provide life-saving destructive benefits in return. You can get the first one in the tutorial, a flamethrower that torches everything in front of you in an arc. Other subweapons include a beam cannon and an area effect grenade launcher. In my runs, I was never low on subweapon ammo, and I could have abused their amazing power a lot more to make my life easier. All subweapons scale off of your main gun’s damage, so there are some additional tactics in choosing to bring the short-range, big shooter with you to maximize subweapon damage.
An action game without things to shoot is like a Terminator movie without Arnold—hint: they sucked—so EotC has throngs of generic bad guys to put holes in, and some of them do a little more than move around and fire at you. There are bad guys who shoot lots of bullets, bad guys who throw grenades that blow up in a radius after a few turns, and even bad guys who don’t shoot at all, but rather temporarily make their friends invulnerable, which is very annoying.
There are a few more bad guy types than that, though most are dedicated to the “shooting projectiles that fly across the screen towards you” category. Enemies are rolled out as levels progress, introducing you to them before they become commonplace. They all synergize pretty well to keep you on your toes. Also, some of the movies with Arnold still sucked.
The soundtrack is made up of totally radical chiptunes that get the blood flowing, but don’t take my word for it.
The grimy, oozy sewers of level 4:
The boiling, evil fortress of level 6:
EotC
features six linear levels, and then it's over. With no procedural level generation, it doesn’t take long to figure out the layout and speed along to victory. I had a good time, but my problem is trying to figure out who exactly the game is for. It’s short and trivialized in difficulty, and I’m not sure what Adventurepro still intends to do to branch out. It has every quality of a standard roguelike except level structure and length. I feel like the game has something of an identity crisis. If it’s meant to be a coffee-breaker, then 15 bucks is a bit much to ask. If it’s a competitive game to see who can finish it in the fewest turns, then it’s not going to attract too many people. Otherwise, it feels like a roguelike that’s cutting itself off from a lot of potential by staying linear.
I want to make it clear that I really enjoyed Eye of the Commando. The game is a blast, and it does a great job with its concepts, but I feel like it could be much more than what it is, and, as I've said, I'm not sure where exactly the developer intends to take it. Anyone interested in EotC should be aware that updates are sporadic, the game isn’t very hard once the loop is understood, and it’s very short. Otherwise, it’s a lot of fun.
