Changes have certainly been afoot since we met the Commandos franchise last. Traditionally an isometric-perspective, strategy-come-puzzle game, the franchise has made the switch to first-person, and it's made a far better fist of it than we'd anticipated. Certainly those who shudder at the mere mention of the first-person Command & Conquer: Renegade have little to fear here.

That said, they don't have an awful lot to set their pulses racing either. For Commandos sticks to its formula of having, in this case, three differing troops you can switch between at the touch of the space bar, each of whom has different skills.

Want brute force and firepower? Enter the Green Beret. Need someone to sneak around unnoticed? That's the Spy. Looking for some long range cover? Meet the Sniper. Using the combined skills of all these three, replete with regular switching between them, you tackle a variety of missions that have a pleasant, puzzle-like element to them.

So what's the problem them, you may wonder? In this case, it's the fact that as a first-person shooter it's quite good, as a sniper game it's quite good, and as a stealth game it's quite good. Add them all together, and you have a well-packaged hybrid of game genres that just about glue together. The catch? In every one of the genres it tackles - sniping, action and stealth - it's some distance behind the respective market leaders.

And yet in another cunning review twist, reminiscent of an unproductive day in the '24' storylining department, we're still edging you towards buying it. Not because it's any great moment in gaming history, but more because it's a nice, tidy and enjoyable first-person action adventure, which may lack special tricks but doesn't fall short when it comes to a damned good challenge.

What's more, even if you were a fan of Commandos in its previous livery, with the isometric intense real-time strategy that's not harmed Eidos' bank account over the past few years, you'll find this a respectful migration to a new perspective.

True, it's been simplified a fair bit, but the thinking and plotting behind Commandos has remained intact. And, in fact, moving to first-person mode appears to have liberated the game designers, who are nowhere near as insistent as they used to be on you tackling certain things in certain orders, with little variation. Good on 'em.

So buy it, we say. If not now, then when you meet again on the budget shelves, remember this moment. Commandos: Strike Force may not need much a mantelpiece to keep its awards on, but it'd not go without a bit of love in your very own home.

A just-about-successful switch to a new perspective for the Commandos franchise, which neatly straddles old and new.