If you come across one in the midst of a battle, you can choose to drive around in either a buggy or a tank. While the tank is obviously the more powerful of the two, both feel a bit overpowered. Driving a vehicle, you can literally plow through opposing players, absorbing hits seemingly without end. The vehicles are destructible, but unless you happen to have some C4 on you, it can be a bit of a feat. And if you wrack up enough of those kills, you’ll be given access to three temporary combat enhancers. Overall though, I felt these enhancements were a bit inconsequential. I never noticed much of a difference in the way I played when I had one active.

Weapon controls are a bit troublesome at first. Aiming a gun in Crash Commando takes some getting used to, and even after you’ve mastered it, you’re still inevitably going to find yourself having frustrating moments where you just can’t seem to hit a thing. Beyond aiming though, the controls are very easy to pick up. There is a nice help section that clearly labels everything, but you won’t really need it. A few minutes of tinkering is more than enough to figure out Crash Commando’s control scheme, and even with the oft-frustrating aiming mechanics, it’s a fun game to play. Using your character’s jet pack in particular is enjoyable on its own even without the rampant violence.

Aesthetically, Crash Commando isn’t going to earn many accolades. It isn’t a poor looking game, but it isn’t anything special. The graphics are colorful, but generic. Your character is small and lacks detail. In fact, the various soldiers trying to kill each other at any given time would never be distinguishable if your name wasn’t plastered above your head. The various environments are also rather bland, but they do the job. Much the same can be said about the sound. Most of the sound effects and music could have been ripped from any violent game with guns.

If I have one major complaint about Crash Commando, it is simply that it is yet another shooter in a market already flooded with them. It scores some points for the fact that its 2D view is far different from the typical FPS fair that has come to such prominence in this generation, but at the end of the day, it relies on many of the same conventions, though using them in ways that are far more shallow than many of the feature length games on the market. Gamers who find Crash Commando to be of interest probably already have a worthy shooter on their shelves that does more, better. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun, but even for just ten dollars, it lacks the kind of depth that a lot of other downloadable games are trying to offer nowadays, and there are probably more than a few gamers who will lose interest after a few days, if not even a few hours.