Star Wars: Republic Commando

The Good
If you need your games to run on steroids, Star Wars: Republic Commando (SWRC) will most probably appeal to you.
After a short intro sequence, you're plunged straight into the action, and before the game ends, you'll be taking your finger off the fire-button only on extremely rare occasions, most of which will be either when you're pressing the USE key to hack into a console or plant a charge or some such or when you're in the process of loading a savegame. Other than that, there's almost a constant supply of enemies, similar to the way it was in the old school FPS'es like the original Doom or in the more recent Serious Sam titles.
As a Star Wars (SW) fan, you'll meet some familiar faces, but you really shouldn't expect too much from those encounters, as I'll elaborate in the section below. The simplified squad control actually works, despite the game's frantic pace, and sometimes the comments of your mates actually border the funny. The fact that they lack any real personality whatsoever is probably minor, since ... well, since they're anonymous members of a clone army, anyways.

The Bad
Unfortunately, this game is heavily lacking in the atmosphere department. Like the clone troopers whose exploits it portraits, it lacks any distinctiveness whatsoever. There are some things which have been in every single Star Wars game I have ever played, and over the years that's quite an amount.
Thing's that sometimes have no real impact in gameplay terms, but that have been a traditional part of SW-games nonetheless.

For example, somewhere in the intro, you'd have a story synopsis scrolling by in the classical SW-way, like in the beginning of the movies. Not in SWRC.

An the soundtrack. Many of the games featured the usual suspects when it comes to SW-themed songs, such as the main theme or the cantina song, but some introduced more or less original music, all of which fit into what you'd expect from such music. Not so in SWRC.

In the average SW game, folks from the movies (or the universe, to use a bit more general term) have been utilized to great effect as a vessel to make you feel "at home" in the world of SW. SWRC utterly fails in this department.

Sure, you and your team are clonetroopers. Sure, your adversaries are battle droids and Geonosians. Sure, you encounter others, like Wookies, for example, along the way. Sure, you're employing a arsenal of weapons from the SW franchise, but - unlike, for example, in the Jedi Knight series - none of those actually "feel" like SW weapons - and this includes the blaster rifle thingy. None of these things actually impact gameplay. Heck, in the event of your team sabotaging a ship, you don't even blow up it's reactor core. Is this Star Wars? :D

Seriously, never would it have been so easy for a game to be turned into a game with no resemblance at all to a SW title. Exchange the models of everybody, switch the sound of the laser blasters, modify in-game briefings a little bit, nobody would notice this used to be a SW game. Crying shame, as far as I'm concerned. To be fair, a part (albeit a small one) of the reason for this lack of impact is the frantic pace of the game. It's like driving down the freeway at more than a hundred miles per hour - you're not very likely to really get a glimpse of many details along the road. But since a good story has almost been guaranteed if a title had the words "Star Wars" on the box in the past, I think it's even more of a letdown when the game miserably fails to deliver in this department.

The Bottom Line
At times, I thought the fact that I failed to get a grasp of the game's atmosphere was related to the fact that the game takes place in the "new" movies, i.e. in the prequel trilogy, as opposed to the original trilogy from the late seventies, which I happen to like a lot better. But then I remembered the fairly recent Battlegrounds. Flawed as that game might be in it's own right, I think it did a very good job on capturing the feel of the armed forces participating in the battles between droids and the clone army. Down to the armament used by the infantry.

Sadly, SWRC fails to accomplish the same. Everything has a generic feel to it, and for a Star Wars title, this is just very disappointing. Never before have I played a SW game about which I can honestly say that, if you just ignore all parts of story that the game presents you, you're not missing out ANYTHING.

Still, when all is said and done, SWRC ain't no bad game. It's a solid title, IF you don't expect it to deliver a dose of Star Wars feeling to you. It's fun for most of the pretty short time it lasts, you'll have no time breaking your head about stuff like a storyline, anyway. Still, I'd recommend everybody with an itch to play SWRC to wait until it hits the bargain bin.

The Good
It was very different from all other Star Wars games since its the story from the Comando's point of view. The graphics and sound were amazing and brought the game to life. The weapons were numerous and well layed out. The plot made the game fun to play through. Enemies in the game were well done with vivid detail that were smart and made them hard to kill (excluding the infantry droids). Melee was cool, when you killed a bug with a finishing melee move, the blood would spurt on to your visor and a white line went across the screen to clean it up. Also, jango fett is the voice actor for the leader of your squadron (aka you).

The Bad
Weapon choosing with the d-pad was ok but it left you stranded when you already have 4 weapons and you need a fifth. There was no co-op feature. It would have been awsome if they had online co-op. You die WAY to easily on Xbox live and in multi-player combat. Also, one of the weapons was too powerful since it could take down a person in less than ten shots. Some parts of the story line are IMPOSSIBLE to get past.

The Bottom Line
Its for the people who want to get into the military scene of Star Wars without the Jedi and Sith.

The Good
Crossing tactical strategy and FPS action is perhaps the unique way to put to some flavour in a game. Even better, playing as a clone and not just any clone, but a commando clone, really sets the stage for the game. The way you command your squad mates works a lot like Brothers in Arms, only these clones have a decent AI to act on their own, to save your from all the heavy lifting. And the commando clones can revive each other, so you have no fear of casualties. To break up the shooting you have a variety of tasks like defusing mines, breaching doors and setting traps. Some of the time you will have to go solo or with fewer squad members, and you're going full commando style. It's also nice that there's quicksave and autosave in the game for the challenges ahead.

The assortment of weapons are extremely interesting and go for something very different. In addition to the self-recharging pistol (which is more useful than it looks), you also have a standard battle rifle that has multiple attachments, a strong melee attack, different kinds of grenades, and a weapon some wouldn't expect in the Star Wars universe, the shotgun. The best weapon in the game is the walker, but sadly you only use it for a short time and don't drive around in it.

The game is set straight after the second episode film, showing a great deal of the clones' action to win the battle of Geonosis. This is followed by two epic storyline missions that put all four commando clones in the thick of battle. There's a nice mix of John Williams' and Jesse Harlin's composition to accompany all the action. Each individual clone displays unique a personality and skill orientation. It's a pity that we don't get to see their faces under the helmets. Among the great graphic detail, the game adds neat little notable details such as the helmet electronically wiping off the blood smears, engine oil and slime when you kill an enemy up close.

The extras are incredibly rewarding, which show some of the best behind the scenes in a Star Wars game, particularly the choreography of the animation, which was aided by a real life special ops veteran, showing just how much effort LucasArts went to deliver quality to this game.

The Bad
Where there is action packing, there is also confusion in the mix. For one, the team members can be fidgety or unreliable at times. The more experience you have at coordinating them, the less likely this happens. But this doesn't bode well for certain missions that have countdowns, since you can't afford to take your time and have to take a ton of damage and losses, while you plough through turret entrenched areas. Allies such as the Wookies also have a tendency to get themselves killed and you have no real control over them to better preserve them.

It's annoying how often you need to backtrack in order to heal yourself and your team members if you don't know where to find a bacta charging station. And then there are times when you want to place a bomb, use a turret or some other action but you end up sending one of your squad members to do it instead because you have to stand in a very specific spot to take control. And the awkward thing about the sniper attached is that you can't comfortably control the zoom mode.

Some of the enemies can really do a number on you even in the easiest difficulty level, especially the incessant, pesky scavenger droids. And talking of enemies, the one thing that this game lacks like most FPS games are the presence of bosses, which is is a standard, but doesn't affect this game in any way. All in all game, only a handful of issues but nothing that ruins the gameplay.

The Bottom Line
This one of the most symbolic titles among the Star Wars video games collection. This predated both the 2009 Clone Wars TV series and the Bad Batch. It would've been nice to see the Delta Squad make guest appearances in the any of the LucasFilm animated series. They would have done Rex (CT-7567) proud. And then this game got a remaster for the newer consoles. The game may not have aged well, but it earned its place with Star Wars fans and casual game players alike. A superb experience if you ever tried it.