Phineas's Review of

Star Wars: Republic Commando [Lucas Arts][XBOX]

Campaign only

I am by no means a huge Star Wars fan. I have seen the movies, and I did enjoy them. However, you won’t find any action figures or other Star Wars paraphernalia at my place. Over the years, I have dabbled in other Star Wars games, but I’ve never walked away feeling wowed from them. That has changed with the release of Star Wars: Republic Commando.

Star Wars: Republic Commando puts you in the armor of Delta 38, the squad leader of a highly trained unit of Clone Troopers tasked with completing high risk endeavors that are above the abilities of your lesser clone brethren. You are accompanied by squad mates Sev (a ferocious hunter), Scorch (a quirky heavy ordinance commando) and Fixer (your systems specialist) as you blast your way through legions of the Republic’s enemies. Each of your teammates has their own unique personality and armor even though you all stem from the same base DNA of feared galactic bounty hunter Jango Fett. For a FPS, the characters are fleshed out fairly well. As the game progresses, you see a definite personality and way of thinking come through in each of your squad mates through the chatter that comes through you com.

As far as gameplay goes, Star Wars: Republic Commando excels greatly with very few hang-ups. You and your squad are modeled after real world Spec-ops soldiers. You will see your squad enter, exit, and clear a room of enemies with lethal precision. They will do even better based on how you command them. That is the core of the gameplay. You are their commander, and by your orders they will succeed or die. You can tell your squad to form up, search and destroy, take up sniping positions, and eliminate specific targets just to name a few commands. What’s greater is that commanding is done with simplistic one button commands. All in all, your squad behaves fairly intelligently and obeys your commands absolutely. My only complaint with the command system is that occasionally your squad doesn’t respond to your orders with the immediacy that you would like them to. Now and then I would order my squad to focus attack on a specific enemy and find myself taking the brunt of the attack for a few seconds before they would join in.

Your weapon set is very believable in this game. Unlike other FPS where you have what seems like an entire armory unto yourself, Star Wars: Republic Commando simplifies your weapons. You are armed with a basic Republic blaster rifle that can be modded into either a sniper rifle or an anti-armor weapon with the touch of a button and back again. You can also hold one fallen enemy weapon, and are also armed with a blaster pistol for emergencies. You also get a melee blade weapon that can deal instant death to most adversaries (this was actually my favorite weapon in the game, I love chopping off droid heads ^_^). At first I was bothered by the lack of weapon choices in this game, but as I played it more I grew to see the idea behind it. The game is designed to be military based FPS set in a fictional world. I could see the similarities between our military and theirs. In our military, soldiers are generally only outfitted with a rifle of some sort, a sidearm, and a knife. You won’t see a soldier dragging around 15 different guns into battle. The team at LucasArts made note of this in their design. Throughout the game you will battle the likes of battle droids, super-battle droids, droidekas, Trandoshans, and Trade Federation assassin droids. Another small problem I felt the game had was that there are very few different types of enemies you will encounter. I must have killed a few hundred droids by the time I finished the game. It would have been nice to visit a few more locales as well so that I could encounter more enemies. Speaking of locales, the ones presented in the game are nice. You’ll fight in Trandoshan caves, in space, and on the Wookie home of Kashyyyk. Again, a few more locales would have been nice.

The team at Lucas Arts also did a very nice job of working the sound for the game. For much of the games sound effects Foley (a technique used in which live sound effects are created in studio as opposed to generating sound artificially on a computer) was incorporated. This gives a nice sense of immersion and realism to the sound you will encounter throughout the game. The voice acting between squad mates is also well done, with one particular gem in the squadmate Sev. He really sounds like an elite soldier that one would not want to have fighting against them. He seems to take real pleasure in war and exacting his lust for fighting against his enemy.

The graphics are very well done, and are very fitting within the medium of the Star Wars universe. My only real problem with the game however is in the graphical/presentation department. The level design is strictly linear with no real explorative elements whatsoever. Also, some of the rooms are repeated a few times during certain missions. This doesn't hurt the experience, but it makes me wonder if the team at LucasArts was running dry on creativity at certain points in the game.

Finally, the storyline was fairly good for a FPS, if not a bit sparse. Aside from being given your mission objectives at the start of an encounter – you are never really told why what you are doing is really important or vital. You are somewhat informed of the level of what you have done at the end of the game, but again only very basely. This is probably due to the fact that the game takes place between episodes II and III, and that the team at LucasArts didn’t want to spoil too much for episode III. Also, there is a story element at the end of the game that feels fairly tacked on. But hey – who plays FPS for the story anyway? The game has some nice DVD-like extras and is easily beatable if you decide to rent instead of buy, because the game will only take you between 10-15 hours to beat based on how fast you go through and how close you pay attention to the game itself.

Overall, I can find very few things wrong with this title, and even lesser major issues. It is a great take on a different view of the Star Wars universe that is devoid of lightsabers, the Force, or Jedi. If you like FPS, play this game. If you like Star Wars, play this game. If you like both, then why don’t you have this game yet?

If I have learned anything from this game, it’s that I’d rather take a squad of Republic Commandos into battle instead of a lightsaber any day.

I give Star Wars: Republic Commando an A-.