Star Wars Republic Commando

"An outstanding acheivement in single player first person shooter genre, but subpar multiplayer"

Star Wars:Republic Commando puts you in the armored boots of an elite Clone Trooper. You are "38", leader of Delta Squad. With you too complete your objectives are three other colorful commandos, "07" aka Sev. He's the sniper of the squad. Deadly efficient, and has all the charm of a rancor but you gotta love him anyways. "62" aka Scorch is your demolition expert and squad clown. He's always cracking a joke about one thing or another, whether it be "07"'s borderline psychotic want to kill and hurt things, or enemies getting blasted into the air by explosives. "40" aka Fixer fills out the rank with his straight laced, by the book personality that completely clashes with "07" and "62" but is nice to have someone else to help keep them in line. Fixer is your squad's slicer. He'll be the one you turn to to hack systems when you have to help keep the swarms of enemies from overtaking your position.

Republic Commando is one of the finest licences of the Star Wars franchise to date. With a slick control interface that makes giving commands simple and intuitive, graphics that rival most other games out today, and the classic Star Wars sounds that we all know and love. It does have it's drawbacks though. Namely a very short campaign that is so engaging and thrilling it actually makes me feel bad for complaining about it. The other ones are a horrible multiplayer with nothing new added to the works, and sometimes shoddy squad controls. But lets get to that later for starters, the graphics

Gameplay-10/10
The gameplay for Republic Commando is the best I have seen for a tactical/action game. The action never stops unless you want it too which you will after several of the engagements you get into. Your squad can be controlled to do a number of things, from manning a turret, to sniping from cover, to slicing and terminal, and so on. And they all do it with skill that befits their commando title. There isn't any lackeys in this bunch holding you down, each is a lethal killing machine and you will need to use each of them in a smart manner if you want to succeed. The areas vary greatly and include a geonosian hive, a separatist core-ship, and in a city in the trees of Kashyykk, the wookie homeworld. As I said the campaign is rather short, only around ten to twelve hours tops to finish it, which saddened me because I just downright didn't want it to end. But when you have this much fun in a game you will want to play through it again. There also is no actual storyline for the game. Which I feel helps the game immensely as there is no distractions from the gameplay.

Graphics-10/10
Never before has the Star Wars universe been more alive then in this game. You will need a powerful rig to run it in all of its glory, but surprisingly it runs well with everything except anti-aliasing turned all the way up even without a top of the line rig. The animation for each character is completely smooth. All types of Battle Droids we've seen in Episode 1 and 2 look and move exactly as they did in the movies. Its really incredible. The game has a modest physics engine in place so there are ragdoll effects, and when you shoot enemies pieces of them will fly off. One in particular is when you shoot the Super Battle Droids in the chest and they're armor pops off revealing their wires underneath, or if you shoot their head and expose their sensor cluster.

Sound-10/10
The sounds of Star Wars just come pouring through your speakers during you time in the campaign. The sounds from the movies are spot on and are exactly like they were in the films, and thanks to Foley artists the original sounds are realistic and fit with the objects making them. The classic Star Wars score is back of course, but it wouldn't be Star Wars without John Williams' classic themes. A new choral track was made for the game which, even though it wasn't done by Williams, fits nicely into the Star Wars universe.

Multiplay-4/10
Here is the games major disappointment though. Given the nature of the game when I first heard about it I was expecting a multiplayer with classes for different duties. Instead we are left with what seems like a rushed together job. There are three modes; Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and Assault. Now your probably thinking I miscounted but I didn't. Capture the Flag and Assault are simply the same game, with the same maps, using the same "flag" but instead of running to get the "flag" and return it to your base you pick it up at your base and run it to theirs. You even pick the "flag" up and drop it off at the same places the flags in CTF are located. But at least we have Star Wars:Battlefront to quench our thirst for good Star Wars multiplayer action.

Controls-8/10
For the most part the controls are good. No problem with your character controlls at all. Everything in that essence is fluid and quick. The problems comes from ordering your units. You will need to have the other two do a task if you want one of them for a specific job. So if you have a terminal that needs to be cracked, you need to make sure 07 and 62 and doing another task if you want 40 to do it. I also had a problem with one of my guys getting stuck in a loop trying to bacta which crashed the game. But that only happened one time.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/15/05