The running around and killing things part of this is kind of obvious, so let’s go on to the important stuff. You have 5 different weapons (standart) as well as one exchangeable 5th weapon which can be found during a level. The pistol (uses no ammo), a mashine gun for rapid fire, a sniper rifle and a grenade thrower (anti-armor), as well as a meele attack and the earlier named optional weapon. Your greatest weapon however is the squad itself. There are plenty of tactical positions which partly have to been blown free by explosives first. These can be for granades, sniping and anti armor. The player is set in control of an elite commando, the leader of a squad of the four earlier mentioned members. They all resemble a different aspect of a single person. You can give them multiple tactical orders as well as positioning them on certain spots for special movements. The tactical orders are Seek and Destroy (default), Form up (They stay behind you), and Guard position, as well as cancelling all current orders apart from guard position (aka cancel a sniper manoeuvre). Concerning the difficulty, it really is a hard and easy game at the same time. Depending on your aim, there is however 3 difficulty levels determining how many hits you can take. These are Easy, Medium and Hard. Only rarely you will encounter an open battlefield with friendly clone troopers.
Plot: There is a rough storyline, by mainly you are following current orders to complete different missions, split all over Geonosis (the waste planet of “Clone wars”), RAS Prosecutor (Republic Assault Ship, ghost ship) and Kashyyyk (the wookiee homeworld). The story is told 90% in game as well as 10% trough a prologue before each “act”. Usually missions are something along the lines of Infiltrate X, Assassinate X or investigate X, or in other words;
[you] ------ [*******s] -------- [where you want to be], “kill they arse”. As simple as it sounds, it works out perfectly.
As a mission start you tend to have one main Objective, as you complete this or get as close as possible you tend to receive a message from your operator that you are needed somewhere nearby or that they now can track another nearby objective of high priority. Thereby the game connects missions flawlessly.
Conclusion:
There’s several things one may notice when one is playing a fighting games. Among these are fright, joy, fun, confusion, frustration and satisfaction. This game is sure to give you all of these. I’ve had the game roughly a year and Christ knows I’ve played trough it a lot. But as in any good game it will bring a few dismays to you as well as the incredible joy. Among things here is the enemies AI. While being ridiculously stupid regarding movement, they have a tendency to shot you exactly when you do not want them to do so. Well, in general you do not want to be shot, but there are occasions during which you especially do not want to get shot, like disarming a mine or planting a bomb. Their aim in general is pitiful as 80-90% of the shots go a few feet over your heads.
Then there is granades... these are on one side way too strong and on the other way to easy to avoid for your opponent. Take it you throw one at him, he then has a chance of kicking it back at you. At this point thought the grenade is about to go off. Ergo; You’re getting it straight up your bum.
Lastly I want to criticise what I am criticising about any good shooting games ; the length. I do not mind game developers making shorter games, as long as they manage to keep them coming. This one has so much potential for true greatness if just a few changes where made. It is sadly a 6 hours game that could have been made into a 30 hour game with some more missions, a few more weapons and more kinds of enemies to nuke into Yoda’s general direction. One of the worst things is that is pretty much has an open ending. There is no sequel and there were no planned. They could and really should have made this into more.
Star Wars: Republic Commando
