[Introduction]
Remember last week, when I reviewed a squad-based third person cover shooter?
Well, this week, I'm reviewing Star Wars: Republic Commando, a squad-based first person tactical shooter with particular emphasis on the squad. Through 3 missions of increasing length, you'll be playing as the leader of a squad of clone commandos fighting for the Galactic Republic. These are the toughest, scariest, most elite warriors the Grand Army of the Republic has to offer short of throwing a Jedi at the enemy.
Incidentally, it's also a console port, and actually not a very good one.
[First Impressions]
Assuming you're playing on PC, you'll probably notice that your cursor is trying to beat Han Solo's Kessel Run record. Moving your mouse an inch will send the cursor flying across the main menu, which is gonna get pretty frustrating pretty quickly. Fortunately for you, there's a solution. Download and install the Star Wars Republic Commando Graphics Fix, go to the in-game options and set your FPS limit to something appropriate. Around 60 should do the trick, but I found that as high as 144 still allows precision mouse control in menus. As an added bonus, the fix also adds improved widescreen support and some graphics fixes without impacting gameplay.
With that out of the way, you can actually enjoy the game, which wastes no time establishing your circumstances and the stakes: the galaxy is at war, and you and your 1,199,999 brothers are gonna save it. More to the point, you and your 3 squadmates are gonna do some "covert" ops.
And by "covert" I mean we're going in guns blazing, but in a sort of unexpected way.
[Development]
Would you believe that this is a first party LucasArts game, developed and published entirely by LucasArts themselves? It's true - so true, in fact, that George Lucas himself was directly involved, particularly with how the commandos presented themselves. He made the decision to discard the original plain white armor with something more personal. Say what you will about the man and his other, weirder decisions. I think this was the right call, but I digress.
The most significant element of the game's development was surely its AI. Just like how armor decoration helps characterise the individual commandos, the squad's behavior helps characterise them as a team. Bear in mind that this is an Xbox title from 2005 that got ported to PC. Your squad know how to take cover, will call new targets, maintain variable proximity depending on standing orders, that sort of thing. Crucially, they can also assist the player if you get downed, and will determine whether it's currently safe to do so. It's not the best AI ever developed for a game, but it's pretty damn good for its time, and it's done with very few scripted events.
This is a year after Half-Life 2, and you can tell that the devs learned from Valve. For example, Combine soldiers would seek out cover when taking damage and coordinate with allies to provide suppressing fire and advance to new positions. The enemies in Republic Commando aren't quite as cunning, insofar as they won't coordinate in a similar fashion, but they absolutely will make individual calls for when to take cover, when to advance and when to open fire. Of course, this isn't true for battle droids, but who really expects tactical acumen from Separatist clankers?
Another big thing is the animation and general mannerisms of Delta Squad. LucasArts had a Navy SEAL instructor on board to train motion capture actors in room breaching and firing positions, that sorta stuff. It goes a long way in selling the characters as elite soldiers when they actually move and gesture appropriately.
[Game Mechanics]
Shields, no health regen, limited weapon selection, ammo counter on your default weapon...
You'd almost think that Halo: Combat Evolved was a popular and influential game in the early 2000s. Its influence on Republic Commando should be pretty obvious for anyone familiar with Halo, because setting and tactical elements aside, the two games play quite similarly.
You get your wrist-mounted vibroblade, providing your melee attacks. You get your DC-15s pistol which never runs out of ammo, but because you've got a knife in your hand, you won't be using it. You get your DC-17m blaster, which in its default setting provides you with a somewhat bland but effective assault rifle - and which can turn into a sniper or a grenade launcher as well. And then you get your interchangeable miscellaneous weapon slot, allowing you to pick up a wide variety of firearms.
It's really a shame you can only hold one "extra" weapon at a time. I'd happily ditch the pistol to carry both a concussion rifle and the infamous not-a-shotgun weapon wielded by the trandoshans. Or a wookie bowcaster. Or one of those giant particle accelerator machine guns. You get the idea, there's solid variety.
Where the game sets itself apart is, as has been mentioned, through the inclusion of a squad as a permanent fixture throughout most of the game. You issue commands to them, designate special weapons firing positions, determine squad movement, and it all really works rather well. It seems somewhat simple to us today, but go back 16 years and this was fairly unusual.
The game sold itself with the advertisement "the squad is your weapon," and this is true. To reiterate: the squad AI is intelligent. It's not just functional, it's actually competent. You don't have to babysit your squadmates. You're not dragging along 3 braindead conjoined twins here. You're advancing as a squad. This is crucial, because the game is designed in such a way that you will frequently have to rely on your squad for protection, just like you frequently have to protect them if they're carrying out an important task. There's an investment in those situations, because if either of you fail, it's game over. It takes two to tango, and it takes four to Delta Squad.
There are also elements that may not be readily apparent to the player initially. For example, did you know stealth is sometimes an option? I didn't. I always ignored the occasional advice to just hack a door instead of breaching it with explosives, but you actually get opportunities to sneak up on enemies or enter areas quietly to better position yourself or circumvent obstacles. It's not a one-off thing either, this happens multiple times. So while you could absolutely go in guns blazing in every situation, you could also dedicate yourself more to the sneaky elite operator role that Delta Squad are meant to fill. Become Delta Force in space. Be an actual commando.
Finally, you might notice that although each squad member is introduced as a specialist within a certain field (i.e. hacking, blowing stuff up and shooting good), these specialisations don't seem to really matter in terms of raw gameplay. And you're right. Sev is just as good at hacking as Fixer, and Fixer is just as good at planting bombs as Scorch, who's just as good at sniping as Sev. For a long while, I did wonder about this, and I was somewhat critical of it, but in the end I came to the conclusion that I assume the developers came to as well: that it would probably be too frustrating to try and get the right guy into the right position with the controls being what they are. So, in a frankly sensible compromise, the specialisations were sacrificed on the altar of pragmatism in all but name. The commandos maintain their characterisations, but it has no impact on gameplay.
[Graphics]
Not bad.
I mean, it's a 2005 Xbox title. It was never gonna be mindblowing, but LucasArts decided to flex their cinematic muscles and add a lot of neat effects. Lighting, atmospheric fog, that sort of stuff. They managed to create something visually appealing that, in my opinion, still holds up today, albeit with the caveat that you temper your expectations somewhat. There are, of course, nicer looking games around in 2021, but if you can reinstall a game older than your average American high schooler and it still looks decent? That's a win on graphics.
It also warrants mentioning that although Republic Commando is a sort of "realistic" take on Star Wars, in the sense that we're following a crack team of clone commandos in some pretty gritty situations without any fancy space magic to help them and no hero's journey story arc to brighten things up a little, this still looks and feels like a Star Wars game. We're crawling through the dust of Geonosis and Vietnaming our way through the jungles of Kashyyk, but we're doing it in a galaxy far, far away.
[Story]
You are RC-1138, AKA Boss, a clone commando. It's established from the get go that regular clones are all well and good, but you're particularly well and good. You get more independent thinking, better armor and bigger guns. You also get a few extra guys like yourself to lead into battle. This is where the rest of Delta Squad comes in: RC-1140 (Fixer), RC-1207 (Sev) and RC-1262 (Scorch).
Your first mission takes you to Geonosis, where you're tasked with doing assorted commando stuff. Taking out enemy leadership, sabotaging infrastructure, stealing data, that sort of thing. By this point, it should be clear that you're not gonna be going down in the history books as the big shots who won the war. That entry belongs to the Jedi and the Grand Army of the Republic as a whole. You're the ones making things happen behind the scenes.
Your next mission takes you to an Acclamator assault ship. Things have gone awry and nothing aboard is quite what you expected. This is when things escalate and become particularly grim, and it's where the player probably starts coming to terms with the fact that there won't be any sunshine or rainbows in Delta Squad's story.
Finally, you go to Kashyyk, where shit really hits the fan. Here, you will face your greatest challenges in the direst of straits and win your greatest victories at the greatest of costs. This is where things come to a head, and it's where the game asks you:
"Are you invested?"
Each mission is longer than the preceding one, and each features a number of set pieces that provide further insight into the personalities of your squadmates, in addition to the general interaction throughout the game.
The story isn't glamorous, but there's something very compelling about it all the same. It scratches that same itch as Band of Brothers, fills a similar niche in terms of narrative and appeal. just like last week, the story is what truly carries the game, even though the gameplay in and of itself is also quite satisfying this time around.
The story also ends on a cliffhanger.
There is no sequel.
[SPOILERS]
I'm not gonna tell you what the investment test is that the game throws at you, but I will share some gripes I have with the story. These are rather specific (and perhaps nitpicky), so I'll put them here.
On Geonosis, clone troopers more often than not die in droves to plain old battle droids. I understand that this is an effective means to introduce an enemy as a threatening opponent, capable of inflicting damage on you and your allies, but... man, they're borderline harmless to the player. It would have been nice to see the clones put up more of a fight before getting blown up.
Aboard the Acclamator, Sev gets incapacitated fairly easily by some trandoshans. This is the guy who talks a big game about jungle hunts and gets introduced by wrestling a geonosian to the ground and stabbing it with a vibroblade. This really doesn't strike me as the type of soldier who gets ambushed and knocked out that easily.
And at the end of the Acclamator mission, two assault ships take out a Lucrehulk battleship.
What?
Lucrehulks are like 6 times as large as Acclamators and an ungodly amount of firepower. It's a space donut covered in guns. It's a huge cargo freighter converted to a design intended to soak up as much firepower as possible while disgorging a ridiculous amount of strike craft, while Acclamators are essentially armed transports built for planetary invasions.
I just don't buy that two of these things stand the shadow of a chance against a Lucrehulk, particularly considering that the ghost ship Delta Squad are on is not exactly operating at peak efficiency, what with its entire crew being dead.
[Pros]
- Solid shooter experience
- Excellent weapon variety
- Competent squad AI
- Compelling story
- Clones troopers of any stripe are awesome
[Cons]
- Bad PC port
- Player loadout gets limited
- Some weapons lack satisfying impact
- Cliffhanger with no sequel
[Conclusion]
We may never have gotten a sequel, but Republic Commando is absolutely still worth picking up and playing today. It's not the most advanced shooter on the market, but in its day, it had some fairly impressive technology on display.
Moral compass optional. Good soldiers follow orders.
/DUX
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