YMMV / Commando 2

• Anticlimax Boss: Warlord Samurai, the final phase of the final boss in the second game. To recap: The first rocket section fires out a stream of tricky-to-avoid homing missiles, the second phase has an UNAVOIDABLE Wave-Motion Gun that is VERY damaging (and easily spammed) alongside Flak cannons, the first part of the third section takes Macross Missile Massacre up to eleven while the second uses Attack Drone Beam Spam. Then, you get to Warlord Samurai, who only fires out a huge laser once, destroying the floating platform you are on and forcing you to jump onto his head. You then keep firing downwards and dodge his easy-to-avoid Spread Shot of fireballs.
  • The third and final phase of Commando 3's final boss also counts. The second phase has a pathetically easy-to-avoid laser, but its other two attacks are those two attacks that do massive damage and he can floor you AND combo you with them! In contrast, the third phase's attacks aren't even a quarter as painful and are not as hard to avoid if one knows the strategy. The fireballs might hit you a lot of times, but it takes a lot of them to kill you, and the boss doesn't have enough health to survive trading blows if you did well in the previous phases.
• Awesome Music: Especially the latter missions are accompanied by tremendous scores.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: There's a little-known tactic called the "Ultimate Destruction" used in the sequel games, where players, while attacking a tough enemy (preferably a boss), holds on the fire button while scrolling the mouse. Explosive-based weapons have a pause between firing each round; using this tactic gets rid of the pause and allows the player to basically spam whatever attacks they have, shredding entire chunks of health from their targets.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: Except for the penultimate stage in the third game, most of your deaths will be against the bosses.
• Even Better Sequel: There's a reason the troper that created this page went with Commando 2 and not Commando (Miniclip) or something else that would include the first game.
• Game-Breaker: The Dragon Destructor. It shoots out huge bullets that are a One-Hit Kill on ANY normal Mook (elite ones included), and can kill a boss in seconds. Its only drawback is the long firing interval.
  • It has only 10 ammo, making it a waste against everything but bosses.
  • A better example would be the Kee-jerk Terminator. As told by Futurehero: The Kee-Jerk Terminator is last(?) weapon you will get. It's a double barreled machine gun with an underslung rocket launcher. Think of it as the Big Lester and the P25-Maisto combined into one super powerful gun, but because it has infinite ammo it makes carrying other weapons other than the Dragon Destructor pointless which is why i don't like it that much (that and it looks very ugly and boring for an Ultimate Weapon).
• Goddamned Bats: Sniper soldiers. They appear off-screen (so you cannot kill them off the bat) and cause a crosshair to follow you around. If said crosshair gets you, you will be hit with a huge amount of unavoidable damage. Worse still, these tend to appear with Elite Mooks, forcing you to jump around a lot.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: The fourth level in the third game. It is partially underwater, and you will be swarmed by foes. The parts that aren't underwater are the worst, with hazards that can combo you to death, small platforms and tough minions ON the platforms. The boss is a mechanical dragon with only one phase (the previous and next boss have three), which fires easy to avoid torpedoes and has a strong but also easy to avoid bite. And you get a submarine with unlimited rockets, which also functions as an extra life.
• Nintendo Hard:
  • The first game of the series has you be barely able to take a few hits, and you can't aim with the mouse, so it's no easier than the arcades that inspired it.
  • Normal Mode and above in the second game. You take a lot more damage than usual.
  • The fourth and fifth stages of the third game, especially in Hard mode, are ruthless, with several dangerous hazards and enemies.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Healing items give health over time instead of instantly, and will be completely cancelled out if you take damage. This means that they're pretty much useless in the fights where you need them most.
• That One Boss:
  • Crabocalypse, who gives out LOADS of hard-to-avoid, painful bullet spam once its health gets below half its maximum. On top of that, it's part of a Sequential Boss fight, with highly inadequate healing items in-between.
  • The third game has the mechanical pyramid that functions as the third boss. While you have a tank to help you, you will need it, because the boss has three full bars of health you have to empty, once for each phase, and uses a lot of homing ammunition against you, which must be shot down.
• That One Attack: The Final Boss of Commando 3 has one in its second phase has two:
  • It lifts the claw nearest to you for 1.5 seconds then slams it to create a Shockwave Stomp that explodes the floor, doing HEAVY damage if you don't jump exactly, and knocks you down to the other claw. This does about a third of your maximum health on Normal.
  • Its other attack to watch out is a very painful pincer attack, which can only be avoided by staying to the far end of the arena. This also does about a third of your maximum health on Normal. Problem is, if you just got hit by the first attack, chances are that you'll still be getting back up from it, and are thus unable to avoid this. The result is a HELL of a lot of pain.