So you like the Star Wars Triology and can't wait for the Episode III (Revenge of the Sith) to come to the theaters. Here is the common fix for your impatience. This time you even get to be right in it, but not as one of the famous characters. You will be thrown in to do the dirty work.


EPISODE 2.5

Nestled right between Episode II and III, the main function of Star Wars: Republic Commando (SWRC) may be an interactive trailer to the upcoming movie (Episode III) ... an expensive preview. Franchise games are usually somewhat thrown together and SWRC manages to escape this image almost completely. Nevertheless, it seems stifled by the movie plot and in order to not give away too much, considerably short scripted single player of 3 worlds with 4 missions each.

So here you are, a group leader of an elite Republic Commando unit on missions that take you to the planet Geonosis, the interiors of a Separatist battleship, the lower jungles and tree cities of the Wookiee home planet of Kashyyyk and more. It's all about team play and the best way to succeed is by directing you team right and take care of them when they're down. Each member will react to your commands and the situation at hand (whichever takes priority) and giving commands is as simple as pressing F1, F2 or F3 ('One Touch Squad Control System'). Holograms are used to 'preview' a formation at (predefined) strategic points to achieve objectives, provided you have enough time to actually study it (so do it early in the section).

Unlike Call of Duty, you're actually in charge of commanding your team and the overall squad behaviour feels very close to SWAT or Rainbow Six. There is no strategic planning as in Ghost Recon.

The advertised inside look at Episode 3's key locations and new enemies is hard to judge without having seen the movie yet, but it appears to be no more than a trailer would be able to convey. After all, this seems to be the main purpose of the game: Get you interested in the movie. At least it's fun to step into that marketing trap.


HOW DOES IT PLAY?

Graphics: Great! This may not be ground-breaking but the particle effects (especially smoke) and the holograms are top-notch and worth a second look. In fact, the first couple times I saw the holograms (i.e. mission briefing), I was quite amazed. Textures are well done, though not as awe inspiring as in Doom III or Half-Life2 (provided you have 256MB of video memory or more). Cool is the helmet graphics which reflects the beating you're taking and holds all the HUD in an innovative way.
Rating: ****-

Violence: Sure, it's all about killing aliens, and their blood splatters upon impact, but at least it's not red and body disintegration is less theatralic than some other recent games. Friendly fire is discouraged as your team mates will die from your hand if you get confused. However, it will not terminate your mission. In fact, in one case I kind of lost orientation myself since my team was mixed up with the enemy and hard to distinguish. Firing on my own squad eventually made them return the fire.
Rating: ****-

Controls: Typical PC controls (WASD) using the keyboard and the mouse, overall this follows most typical conventions and learning phase is relatively short. Only the mouse sensitivity was initially set too jumpy which made it hard to move and aim precisely. Further, moving QuickSave to F9 and QuickLoad to F12 may result in some confusion since most games use F5 and F9 respectively. The First Person view fits FPS games perfectly (i.m.h.o.).
Rating: ****-

Physics: Not stellar, but basic and good enough for the genre. There are no physics puzzles and dedicated objects can be destroyed, but reaction of others are relatively minimal.
Rating: ***--

Interaction: There is no controlled movement of objects a la Half-Life2, but things can be blown up and some objects moved out of the way in order to proceed. Some things are hard to discover as the on-screen feedback does not give it away or the massive use of holograms gets sometimes confusing.
Rating: **---

Sound: Nothing much to complain here either. The music overall is authentic but old-fashioned. Voice acting is good, despite the cheesy comments with which your team mates seem to compete in a comedy contest. The helmet has static which adds realism but initially made me wonder if there is something wrong with the audio driver.
Rating: ****-

Animation: Good effort and most animations look okay. In some cases you will find team members and enemies alike to do the 'electric glide' (bad syncronization between progress and feet movement). However, some details are nice like the team members move differently depending on their health, which allows you to watch out for them (in addition to the colored 'glow').
Rating: ****-

Weapons: A dozen of 'authentic' weapons overall fit the genre but at the very least the pump gun will make you wonder where the sophistication of the space age went? Quantity is not everything and most weapons are terribly underpowered. Especially in difficulty 'Hard' the reload time and overall power feels imbalanced in favor of the enemy. It is also confusing to run around and find ammunition with a hologram popping up, but if you don't hold the right weapon for it, it won't be picked up. (You can only carry a limited number of weapons at a time.)
Rating: ***--

AI: The artificial intelligence on both sides is somewhat of a surprise since sometimes it's amazingly accurate and other times incredibly dumb. It appears that the AI was written with a few assumptions and works fine if you follow those, but gets lost if you don't. Overall, the team experience is good, and enemies are at least not dumber than Halo. Enemies, however, are no match for FarCry, Doom 3 or Half-Life2.
Rating: ***--

Progress: Nothing to complain here since both check points as well as quicksave are available. However, the visual feedback is missing that gives you the assurance that the save indeed happened.
Rating: ****-

Difficulty: Starting in 'Medium' the game feels about right and by no means easy. Fortunately, the developers allow to change difficulty in the game and one might even try the 'Hard' level and in especially hard cases switch to a less demanding level. Main reason for the difficulty is the sheer number of enemies and the relatively ineffective weapons at your disposal.
Rating: ****-

Longevity: The 3 worlds are not the longest and one better tries the highest difficulty to preserve the fun for some time. Running through the game in 'Easy' will practically destroy your 'investment' in a few hours. The multiplay is more of an add-on and hard-core gamers may not be satisfied with it. I don't care much about it anyway, and it was no biggie for me. Multiplayer game modes include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag.
Rating: **---


HARDWARE

My system plays SWRC smoothly in 1600x1200 pixel resolution with all effects turned to maximum. There is a few times when the flow stops momentarily, but overall it's quite playable. Load times between sections are a little long but nothing out of the ordinary.

Case: Termaltake Tsunami VA3400SNA
Monitor: Viewsonic VP201s
Motherboard: ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3500+
Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR400 (C2), 1 GByte
Hard drive: Western Digital Raptor 74G SATA 10k
Operating System: WindowsXP Home SP2
Video Driver: Catalyst 5.2 (Radeon driver 8.10)
Chipset Driver: nVidia nForce v6.39
Graphics card: MSI RX800Pro-TD256E

The game insists on Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP on a 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible computer. However, overall that's not too scary with the minimum at a Pentium III or Athlon 1.0 GHz, 256MB RAM required and a 64MB 3D Graphics card with Vertex Shader and Pixel Shader (VS/PS) capability. Of course you will need a DirectX 9.0c compatible Audio Device, 8X Speed CD-ROM, Keyboard and Mouse. You will need at least 2 GB of free hard disk space (plus Windows swap file and save games).

There is a slight surprise in the supported graphics chips since it also includes the Intel GMA Graphics beyond the typical ATI Radeon and nVidia GeForce. Judging from the requirements, a Matrox Parphelia should work too.


SUMMARY

So you have seen it all. And only the most ground-breaking game will get your attention these days to feed your insatiable need for more. Well, if that's the case, you may skip this game and move on in the attempt to finally find the 'perfect game'.

Star Wars fans may not have that option and this game is the 'perfect way' to bridge the time until Episode III. Beyond the ties to the movie, there are a few innovative ideas about SWRC but overall it's fairly average. In fact it's actually quite a fun game which just sometimes becomes crippled by the no-fun weaponry and the repetitive cheesy comments of your team mates. It's all fine the first few times around but having your colleague tells you several times that "you work better as a door than a window" (in other words you're in his way), it gets kind of old.

Nevertheless, graphics are cool though not ground breaking, overall game play is good and the squad control is innovative at times. With all that, SWRC is a great game for the $30 range, but a little overpriced at the MSRP of $49.


ONLINE RESOURCES

Official game homepage:
- http://www.lucasarts.com/games/swrepubliccommando/

Demo [421 MByte]:
- http://www.3dgamers.com/games/swrepubliccommando/downloads/

Mentioned Games:
- Thief: Deadly Shadows
- Call of Duty
- DOOM III
- Painkiller
- Halo: Combat Evolved
- Far Cry
- Unreal Tournament 2004
- Half-Life2

© 2005, theuerkorn

Recommended: Yes