Commando was a classic twentieth century shoot em up game where you played as a soldier out to kill terrorist. It was a great game at the time that was really fun to play, and it has now been remade and put online as a flash game called Soldier that you can play for free. Once again you are a soldier, and your three missions across three levels are to fight and kill the terrorists in Chechnya, to stop the evil North Korean regime from developing nuclear weapons technology, and then thirdly to find the secret base of a group of Iraqi insurgents.

It is formatted as an upwards scrolling shoot em up game where you use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move around, the space bar to shoot your gun straight ahead of you, and the control key to throw grenades when you have them. Your main gun has unlimited ammo, but them as you go along through the levels there are various icons dotted around the scenary that you can collect which give you new primary weapons, such as a flamethrower, rocket launcher and so on which have limited ammo. You can also get new grenades and health boosters like this.

As well as you normal movement you can also double tap any of the arrow keys to do a quick commando roll, which you need to get through tough bits and also to dodge incoming fire from the enemies that you attack, because the fact that you can only shoot forwards means that you have to run right into the line of their fire, shoot them, and move out of the way again before they shoot you.

You have to be quick and you have to have nimble fingers to do well as soldier, true to the original commando game, is really quite difficult considering it has such simple gameplay elements. There are definitely places where you're almost certain to get killed until you've been there a few times and worked it out and know what to expect when you get there the next time.

Considering it is a remake of an old game the graphics are actually pretty decent, with some nice satisfying touches like the bloody splatter when you hit someone with a rocket or they get blown up by a grenade. (there should be a picture at the top right of the page).

As a modern flash game I would probaly give this one a rating of 7.5 out of ten, as it is actually better than most of the shooting games made now specifically as free flash games, but with the added nostalgia value that it will have for anyone who played the original version of this game I would put that up to 9 out of 10 - it really is nice to see these classic games revitalized and brought back for people to play again.

PLAY SOLDIER HERE