Review by: Brian Clair

Time Commando places you in the future, or is it the past? Time flows differently for you in this game when after arriving for your night shift at the Historical Tactical Center, something unthinkable happens. An infiltrator infects the super computer with a virus, which sets off a chain reaction no one thought possible. A rupture in time engulfs the super computer and all who were unlucky enough to be manning the consoles. Playing your favorite computer game you are interrupted by the alarm, signalling a major disaster. Immediately you grab your gear and run to the main computer room. Opening the door you are blinded by the light of the rupture, a pulsating half sphere of energy encapsulating the main computer. Walking closer you touch the rupture and watch it’s surface ripple like water, only to be pulled inside!

So begins your journey through time, back to the beginning of man in prehistoric earth. Now you must fight your way through time, gathering uninfected computer chips to fend off the virus and gathering what weapons you can to survive. You will travel through 9 periods of time, from the ancient building of Rome, to the harsh Medieval world, and even far into the future. If you survive the journey you will have to fight the virus itself to have any hope of shutting down the main computer and restoring things to their proper order. You must hurry though, if the virus takes over the computer’s memory entirely, it will cause the world’s destruction.

You begin Time Commando by viewing a very well done movie that relates, in much more detail, what I described in the first paragraph. You then choose some other settings and you appear back in prehistoric times. Along your way you’ll find not only weapons but memory chips. These memory chips are essential because if the virus manages to corrupt all of the super computer’s memory, the game is over. To prevent this, you can upload these memory chips at Memory Upload Terminals. There are also other items in the game for you to collect such as life cubes, energy batteries (which extend your total life points) and extra lives (which keep you from having to restart from the last Memory Upload Terminal you passed). There is, as always, much more to this game but I will tell you right now that Time Commando is the most incredible game you will play this year. Nothing I have ever played before can even come close to the level of detail or gameplay as this. It is a game unlike any other.