Republic Commando is a Star Wars game unlike any other. There's no Jedi, no "Force Powers" and no nostalgic spaceships from the movies. Instead of using those conventional trappings, Republic Commando places you in the role of an elite Delta Commando clone in the Republic's army during the Clone Wars. You're the point man of a 4-man team sort of like a special ops unit for the Republic. During the game's three mini campaigns, you'll battle Geonosians (with their droids buddies), investigate a "ghost ship" and rescue a Wookie chieftain from Trandoshan slavers (and their droid buddies). It's a fairly fun ride, but it's marred by a smallish campaign and some odd design decisions.
Clone Wars: The Short, Hard Version
Running your team of commandos is made extremely easy, and perhaps a bit too simple, because the game practically tells you what you should do with them during the game. If you stumble upon a blocked door, an icon appears telling you that you need to blow up the door to advance the game. Republic Commando is the kind of game that leads you by the nose, telling you pretty much exactly what you have to do to complete a mission and it's disappointing that while you are technically the leader of this elite team, you are very limited in what orders you can actually give your troopers. It may appear that your troopers have incredible AI, but instead they're just following a script. On the plus side, your teammates really can take care of themselves, and the game does a fantastic job of providing a true co-op feeling when playing. It's just that you rarely feel like the team's leader.
This rigid feel is compounded by the highly scripted mission design. Everything occurs the way the developer wants it to; the experience of playing the game for one person is likely to be almost exactly the same for another person and while not every game should be an open-ended Grand Theft Auto-like design, just a bit of freelancing during the missions would have went a long way.
It's also worth noting that the campaign is not terribly long about eight hours of gameplay in all. What stretches things out is the incredible difficulty of completing a mission without reloading the game several times in orders to get it right. Thankfully, the game allows you to save your progress when are where you like it and is not tied strictly to "save points" which can be the downfall of many console shooters ported to the PC. The game is tough because of its on a rail gameplay. Limiting a specific kind of ammo, surprise attacks, or simply overwhelming your forces it's not hard because of any kind of ruthless AI, rather just due to the way the missions are designed.
What alleviates some of the difficulty is the Unit Heal. When you get blasted and lose all of your health you are not truly dead until all of your squad mates are out of commission as well. You and your teammates have the ability to revive each other with a shot of Bacta (a heal all substance). So if a turret gun blasts a hole in you, one of your buddies can bring you back to life at half-health. If not for this little feature the game would be impossible to complete it's that tough in spots.
The Force Is With It
Sort Of
While all of this make it sound like the game is a total washout, that's really not the case. Despite the scripted design and rigid feel, the game provides a lot of fun moments. The weapons in the game, while not phenomenal, are very much in line with the setting the weapons scream Star Wars. Manning a turret or hopping into a Walker inside a hanger and blowing tough armored droids to bits is admittedly a lot of fun. You just get the feeling that the game could have been so much more than it is.
Another plus is the graphics and the overall atmosphere. It's a dark game (not DOOM 3 dark as in you can't see anything) but on some of the missions you truly get a since of dread particularly in the second mini campaign on the abandoned spaceship. The sound effects are spot on brilliant. From the witty chatter of your clone-mates do the sometimes haunting musical score, the sound is exceptionally well done. The graphics are better than in the Xbox version mainly because you can ramp up the resolution. There are some wonderful explosions in some of the missions and the overall look of the game definitely has that Star Wars flavor although it's a bit grittier than the usual game set in this world.
In the end, Republic Commando provides eight to ten hours of streamlined, yet predictable gameplay. It's not a revolutionary title by any stretch of the imagination and it's vastly overpriced at $50, but it's worth recommending for a Star Wars action fan with money to burn and time to kill.
