Cheap Star Wars Republic Commando - PC

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Republic Commando is a fun, albeit short, game. When I heard it was being developed, I really wasn't interested -the premise didn't enthuse me. But after trying the demo, I was very impressed. The squad-based play is simple, but effective, and the AI is very well done. Aside from a few instances where I thought the AI should be behaving differently, your computer-controlled squadmates are very capable and realistic for non-human players. In fact, during the few sequences in the game in which you are seperated from them, I felt...alone. The lack of their presence was really felt in the flow of the game. Very well done. The gameplay is fast paced and exciting (though a bit short), the voice acting is superb, and I was surprised by how long into the game I was before dialog from the squadmates repeated -there's enough of it that you'll play awhile before hearing a line repeated. There's also a fair amount of humor in the game. And the characters of your squadmates are also well done -they each have a distinct personallity, which makes the game more enjoyable. I finished the game tonight and am ready to start playing through it again. A lot of fun.

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Given Lucasarts' hit-and-miss record with the Star Wars games and this game's positioning as a tie-in for Episode III, I was prepared to be disappointed with another rushed throwaway like Star Wars: Battlefront.

I was pleasantly surprised!

The graphics are not fall-down-and-die-oh-my-god, Half Life 2 "great" but the visuals and animation are excellent. There is a problem early in the game where they are trying to simulate the ground shaking and it ends up looking like a graphics glitch. But, the problem is only in the first part of the first mission and is mostly just annoying.

The sound is among the best I've heard in a game. It completely immerses you in the battle. Some of the effects (like footsteps) are subtle but lend great atmosphere. The voice acting is good and the dialogue is very witty. The game had me laughing out loud at some points. The music perfectly sets the tone of each area, ranging from known symphonic pieces from previous Star Wars titles to haunting choral-and-strings songs reminiscent of Duel of the Fates.

The weapons are well-rounded and the placement of ammo and health keeps the game moving without making the game too easy.

The system for giving orders to your squad is simple -in a few cases it's too simple -but it works pretty well. The squad AI is pretty good. They use cover intelligently and move with you (and each other) as if you were a group of trained commandos. They will follow your orders but will not do so to the exclusion of all other threats. For instance, if you order a squaddie to snipe from behind a wall and an enemy unit gets behind him, he won't just continue to snipe. He will turn, deal with the immediate threat and then resume his task. There are a few more commands I would like to have seen, especially one to specify cover fire for a squad member (while he plants a bomb or hacks a computer).

The game does have a few shortcomings. First, the single player game is very short. You get three multi-objective missions totaling about 10 hours of play time. I finished wanting more and I hope there will be an expansion pack at some point. The game is enough fun that you will want to replay it.

The multiplayer is nothing to cheer about. It has the basic game modes you usually expect (Deathmatch, CTF, etc.) but if you want to play these multiplayer games you'd have more fun playing them in Unreal Tournament 2004. A glaring omission from multiplayer is the squad play from the single player. It would have been great, instead of simple deathmatch or CTF, to give each player a squad of 4 to compete against other players squads.

Even with its few faults, Republic Commando is a wild and exciting ride through the Clone Wars. If you're a Star Wars fan, you shouldn't miss this game.

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This game produced the most enjoyable experience since Half Life 2.

I generally play first-person-shooter once or twice, then never play again; not this game. I only bought it becase it seemed similar to "Brothers in Arms" with its squad-leader element. I was not expecting much as I normally enjoy WWII-style games (I also loathed the latest three Star Wars films) but was very suprised how good it really was.

From the beginning, I could sense the high production values. The story line, dialogue, and voice acting were excellent, especially for a video game. I felt I got to know my squadmates in Republic Commando much better than in Brothers in Arms. There were lots of little touches and polish that made it enjoyable to play through many times. Music, top-notch. I don't know if the music is from the films, but it shares the same epic quality. Graphics and effects were well done and ran very well with no stutters, crashes, or lag, even on the highest graphics settings.

Gameplay also excellent. The action is consistent and challenging, but there are few if any frustrating spots that require saving and reloading every couple of seconds that is so common with many FPS games. The maps were playtested well so storyline triggers work when they should and there are no places where you can get stuck clipping into a wall. The weapons are balenced well in that there is always at least two effective ways to deal with any target.

The squad commands were easy to learn and worked well with the environment. Your squaddies do not just walk into enemy fire. They move tacticly as a squad, taking cover and suppressing while other squaddies advance. Usually it is you that get killed before they do. With effective use of the squad commands, you can direct your squad to eliminate targets without you having to fire a shot. (although thats part of the fun)

The AI of your squaddies seem to be written well. They deal with immediate threats first, switch weapons when necessary, revive squadmates (including you), and heal themselves all on their own for the most part.

My only gripe is that the game is too short, which is a common complaint of most recent FPS games. There seems to be no modding community as of yet, so you are stuck with all the elements of a superb game and only a few levels to actually play. It is built on the Unreal engine, so modding should not be too difficult.

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By the time video games started coming out more and more often, Star Wars was always included. You could probably make an entire genre off of all the Star Wars games that have been released. I do not mind all the Star Wars games, but what I do mind is that so many games of Star Wars out there are all games that focus more on the force, and it gets kind of annoying after several years. Do not take me wrong, almost every single one of those games that you play as a Jedi, or Sith, are good, very good to be exact. But there is so few games that let you grab a sniper rifle, or repeating blaster and shoot your enemies, and in first person there is a HUGE lack. I bet the first thing that you could respond about the previous sentance is that you can play Battlefront or Battlefront 2 in first person, and that is true, but Lucasarts and Pandemenic do not really try to focus on the game in first person, they just put it in there, they do not really work on it. And you can easily tell that the game is made for third person. Once again do not get me wrong I like the Battlefront series too.

What I have been talking about for the past paragraph is only one, only one, of the reasons I would like to thank Tim Longo for creating one of the best Star Wars games available: Star Wars Republic Commando.

The game is a First Person Shooter that shows you the darker side of the clone wars, through the view of the best clones in the galaxy, the darkest and deadliest four clones: Delta Squad. You go through three campaigns playing as the knuckle grinding squad leader Delta R.C. 01/138, in number his nickname is "BOSS". You and your three squadmates: Delta R.C. 01/140 or "FIXER", Delta R.C. 01/1207, my favorite, "SEV", and the last one Delta R.C. 01/1262, "SCORCH", the four of you sabatoge, blow up, assisinate, hunt, rescue, and go through other covert op missions one by one, killing off lots of droids and trandos (I'll tell you about them later).

The farther into the game the more you will learn about the brotherhood of Republic Commandos, and how important you are to each other. You and your squad mates will talk together, bleed together, fight together, and kill together.

Okay, now that you have a basic idea of what you do in the game let us go on with the advanced stuff of the game.

I'll start with the thing that really brings a large part of this game together: TacticsThis is a Tactical First Person Shooter, which means you are going to be leading men, to be exact: Delta Squad. The way you lead your men is actually quite simple, but you can use it in advanced ways. A cool thing that makes this tacticalness real is you H.U.D. or Heads up Display. Normally I do not go that much into the H.U.D. of a game but this game is unique. If you choose to you can view the entire game through your hemet which I would recommend because it is pretty fun, but if you do not want to you can turn it off but the H.U.D. will be there. So the H.U.D. I am explaining is with the helmet. In the very bottom of the helmet there will be colored bars, they will start out at green and the more you are injured the more the number of bars will decrease and the color will go from green to yellow to red, these are your health bars. At the top of your health bars on both sides of your helmet are two blue bars, one on each side. These are your shields and they recharge automatically. In the bottom right hand side of your helmet you will start out seeing a red sphere, this is a Thermal Detonator, or grenade. That grenade will be thrown if you press the button to throw the grenade. Above the grenade will be a number telling you how many grenades of that type you have left. In the bottom left hand side of the screen you will have three boxes, or circles that start out at green. Above each of them will be the numbers 07, 40, and 62. These are the short numbered names of your squadmates and the boxes below them represent where they are, by the arrow around the circle inside the boxes, their health status, by the color of the circle, and what they are doing, by the symbol on the circle. At the top of your H.U.D. is your mission objective and if you have Subtitles on, they will appear there. Now that you know what the H.U.D. should look like the tactics. Lucasarts uses a one touch command system which allows you to give commands to your squadmates with the touch of one button: The "USE" button. On areas where you could take cover from fire there will be little icons mainly sniper and anti-armor. If you press the "USE" button while looking at the object with that icon a squad mate will go over and obey that command. You can also do this with computers for slicing and demolitions to blow up objects, and alike. Overall squad commands will determine what your squad is doing when they are not fulfulling a maneuver such as "snipe". There are three of these: Search and Destroy, Form Up, and Secure Position. Search and Destroy is best used when in hallways and door to door combat is taking place, it is NOT good in open areas. When this command is given, the squad will proceed to the next area on their own as long as you are not far away. Form Up: This is best used when outdoors, so your squad will not wander away from you, and they will follow you where ever you go, you will take lead. Secure Position: This is best used when you are either defending a position or if you are trying to set up a good base of fire. When this command is issued any squadmate not doing a maneuver will stay around the area you have pointed to and a large circle will appear on the ground to know where your men are supposed to be.

GameplayThe overall gameplay is quite intense, especially when you get S.P.D. (Supre Battle Droid) dispensers thrown at you. But this intensity is very fun because you are constantly changing orders making your men leave their areas and go do something else while you get another man replace the empty spot and alike. So instead of loud, gunfire intensity, you get crazy tactic giving intensity, which is a very cool feeling. The variety of missions in this game are pretty good, you go from assaulting positions to saving wookies to blowing up Trando camps, to defending your area, and stuff like that keeps you going. One whole campaign takes place on an abandoned Republic Starship that has been taken over by Trandoshans, or Trandos, a nasty, wet, lizzard like species that are really fun to kill, especially with their shotgun. Most games allow you to bash an enemies face with the stock, or butt, end of your gun. But not in Republic Commando, you are a Clone Commando, and inside the top part of your gauntlet (glove) is an ejectable vibroblade (a very deadly knife). When you press the mele button you will most likely stab your enemy which most of the time results in a cool blood splatter onto your visor and this really cool electronic window wiper built into your helmet wipes the blood off. Some weapons you will not use your vibroblade but most of the time you do.

Weapons, or Tools of TradeI very, very, rarely do an entire section on the weapons of a game, but this game really has a cool twist to the weapons. Sadly, as cool as all these weapons look they are not all that powerfull, especially the very weak Trando Repeater. But there is the vibroblade which I mentioned just earlier, the pistol, which is fun but nothing that special, the D.C.-17 Blaster Rifle system (I will tell you most about that one), Trando Shotgun, grenades, (I will name them in a second) Wookie Weapons, and some more. There is not that many but I will first name the four grenade types. They all work best against certain enemies, Thermal Detonator, a standerd grenade, Sonic Grenades, E.C.D. (Electro-Static Charge Detonator or Electrical grenade), and the flashbangs. Now for the D.C.-17, it is the standard Republic Commando blaster rifle which is three guns in one, a repeating plasma blaster, best used against battle droids, the sniper rifle with two times zoom, and my favorite, the anti-armor attachment. You will be using these three attachments the most in this game because you can only carry one other weapon besides your pistol.

MusicNormally I do not go far into music either just because I can not describe it that good. But in this game it is easier to describe: Very Good. The main menu music is probably my favorite any song in the game that has people singing WILL contain the native clone language of Mandalorian and it is very fun to listen too, in fact I am listening to the main menu music right now as I type this review and it is helping me give you a good review, I hope.

CharacterI have given you the names of the four main characters to this game and a game like this would normally have overlooked characters, but they are so fun to listen to what they say to each other, this goes especially for Sev and Scorch. Even though they are all clones, Republic Commandos actually have personallities because the only differance between being a clone and a human for them is that they all look the same. Fixer and Boss are more by the book, but Scorch is actually funny, and deep voiced Sev is a funny hunter like clone. Some of the jokes in this game are really funny. And the characters will mention Republic Commando rules like Sev's favorite, "Rule #17: Always Make Sure They're Dead." And sometimes Scorch would reply, "This one looks dead to me," and Sev says, "It is now." These jokes give the game some very funny comedy in the battles.

SoundThe game uses Lucasart's own sound, and they got a lot of help from the Foley sound recording facility. Foley uses everyday objects to create lots of the sounds in games and movies. For the sound of Trandoshan footsteps, a squash was cut in half and used as feet. You may not notice this sound that often but if you turn down the music, and if you want to the voices, and leave sound on it is pretty fun to find the greatness in this sound.

GraphicsThe game has pretty cool graphics, even though this review is a year older than when I should have written it, the graphics were pretty good for the time of March 2005. And a cool thing is that the requirements are not too high, I have an ATI Radeon 9600 and I can run this game with almost everything on high, and I'm still getting something around 40 to 50 frames per second. So if you want EVERYTHING running perfect on this game when it comes to graphics you probably just need an ATI Radeon 9800. Overall, when it comes this game with graphics they are, interesting. They have excellantly done bloom effects, which just look gorgeous, and the graphics in the dark are splendid too. The shadowing of figures is done nicely and well just like almost the entire game, interesting.

ComplaintsMost of the complaints said about this game are most likely reasonable. There has been problems where your squad mates would get stuck on objects and you could not use them until the end of the level. Most would complain about the length of the game being too short, which is VERY reasonable, the game does not take very long at all. Some include it being too easy, and more. One final complaint of mine is the fact that the problems have not been fixed by any patches abailable. One patch was released but did not FIX any bugs, it just gave you another multiplayer map, and there has not been any fixes since then. These complaints bring the rating down to four and half instead of five stars.

I left the possibly most amazing part of this game for last: A.I. Gameinformer Online said that Star Wars Republic Commando has "Impressive visuals and perhaps the smartest squad A.I. ever seen!" Characters in this game, both good and bad but mainly good, have just extroardinary A.I. They will enter rooms tactically, they shoot tactically, and they move tactically. If they are trying to go from one place during combat to another safe spot they will even move under your gunshots so you do not acidentilly shoot them. They lean out of walls a different way than normal, the game has just amazing A.I.

So in the end Tim Longo and all the people at Lucasarts have created one of the best First Person Star Wars Shooter ever. And the game truly is worth five stars, but because of unfixed bugs, and lack of patches that will fix the minor problems in the game, I bring the game down to four and half stars.

Rule#1: Kill em' before they kill you.

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I know what most people will probably think, does realistic style commando combat work with Star Wars? The answer is yes my friends, a big three letter word YES. For those who have wanted to play in the shoes of a commando trooper instead of a jedi knight, now is your chance.

Set after Episode 2, but before Episode 3, Republic Commando follows the adventures of Delta Squad, and elite commando unit of the republic. You are 38, with Sev, Scorch, and Fixer as your teammates. They'll work with you, setting up sniper positions, setting up traps, and aid you in combat. The commandos themselves are great to listen to, as you can't help but laugh at many of the one liners they deliver. You'll fight on Geonosis, on a Republic Assault Ship (Early star destroyer), and on the wookie homeworld as well. The game is very replayable, as I found myself playing it again and again. The story is fairly short though, if you've played games like this before, you can beat it in 2 to 3 days. However, it's still a great game. Plus everytime you complete a campaign, you get extras to boot. You'll see the making of Republic Commando, production art, voice actors, sound effects specials, and so forth.

The game isn't completely perfect, being a store release. It has a few bugs (As noted by PCGamer), but this doesn't stop the game from being entertaining. As with most store released games, they'll eventually be patched over time. It's also important to note that, from the story, a possible sequal may be coming up. But that's all I'll say.

If you love Star Wars, but also love commando style combat where tactical combat is your partake, along with lots of shooting, action, and some great one liner comedy, Star Wars: Republic Commando is for you!