Okies. So. After my rant on KotOR2, I stated that I wasn't going to buy any more
Lucasarts games just because I'm interested in them. Thusly, I spent the time
between the Tuesday US release date and the Friday UK release date of Repulic
Commando watching reviews and forum posts. I was satisfied that the game would
be fun, if not long (as many people had stated). So I went out and bought it.

What a ride.

I started playing at about 11:30 on Friday, played through till the afternoon,
and then played Saturday morning-afternoon, finishing at about 3:50 (Just in
time to leave for work, I might add). The entire game, start to finish, must
have taken me about 13 hours on hard difficulty. The funny thing about that? I
don't feel cheated. At all. Normally, if a game doesn't last at LEAST 20 hours,
I feel cheated. This time, I just didn't care. It was too much fun.

The game's opening sequence is quite nice, with you being given your designation
as just a baby clone-trooper (aww), and then seeing yourself being trained, and
then you're shown your squad. Then you're all growed up and are being shipped
off to Geonosis to start the fight. Your 3 squadmates are all split up to head
different groups of clones, which is a mechanism designed to introduce them all
to you one at a time so that you can be taught about their personalities. This
is probably the best feature of the game: The squad is a completely mixed bunch.


Fixer (RC-1140 also called four-zero, or 4) is a fairly dull and plain soldier
type, does everything by the book and keeps his emotions in check.
Scorch (RC-1162, also called six-two) has gone a little...wacky...with his
training. He's the joker of the group, and even after hearing it about 10 times,
him yelling "Wheeee!" when a trandoshan gets hit in the jetpack, sending him
skywards still makes me laugh. In fact, the laughing fit resulting from that got
me killed on two occasions.
Sev (RC-1207) is a killer, plain and simple. He lives to kill. Tends only to
speak to taunt the opposition or to discuss his kill-cout. He also has one of
the funnier dialogues with Scorch when on Kashyyyk.

The game's humour is mostly what appeals to me. There's plenty of one-liners and
some scripted comments that feel perfectly natural. The banter between the squad
makes you feel like you're a part of the unit, rather than just being a guy who
works with some people who cover your back (a la Rainbow Six). The only thing is
that the emotional ties to the characters that could have developed never quite
did. The ending is meant to play with those ties, but I felt more torn over the
decision made on a moral basis than on any sort of group-spirit. That said, the
Epilogue sent shivers down my spine, and could definitely be setting the scene
for the beginning of Episode 3, or for a something featuring in it at any rate.

Okay, that's the feely-emotional side of the game taken care of. Now for some
hard-facts.

First, storyline. It's simple: You're a clone commando (RC-1138), in charge of
your 4-man squad. The Republic assigns you missions that're too dangerous for
standard clones who don't have your training or gene-pattern (though you have to
wonder - if the Commando is a much better unit, why bother training Clone
Troopers at all? Why not just make millions of Commandos?). You get dumped on
Geonosis at the start of the Clone War to take part in an operation to
assassinate a seperatist military leader. This part of the story stands alone.
Then, just over a year into the Clone Wars, you're dispatched to investigate a
ship that was thought lost that turns up in Republic Space, but apparently
empty. During the course of checking the ship out, you learn of an invasion of
Kashyyyk. You're then sent to Kashyyyk (surprisingly a YEAR after finding out
the data...that was the only glaring fault in the storyline, I found) to try to
stop the invasion (What? You couldn't prevent or prepare for it in the year
between finding out about it and doing anything about it?). That's basically it.

In terms with how well it keeps to the Star Wars universe, the only things I
found disturbing were the size of the Trandoshans (most were just over
Jawa-size, with only a few being of the size that Bossk was), and the size of
the Wookiees (who looked like Chewie on steroids...they were all huge, hulking
things, not lanky at all).

In terms of game mechanics, I very much liked the action system. The basis of it
is that at points in a level, there are places that you can point to and press
the "use" key to assign that position to a unit. They're basically things like
"Snipe from there" "Use grenades from there" "Use anti-armour from there", etc.,
which a lot of people have criticised as being too simple. In actual fact, I
found the simplicity of it fit well with the gameplay. You enter a room, assess
the situation, and then point to a few of the appropriate action-positions to
assign your squad to what you feel is best. At one point in the game, your squad
is being overwhelmed by a limitless supply of battle-droids, and on hard
difficulty, THIS is when this system shines: There are about 10 different
positions in the room where your squad can perform actions...how many of them do
you want performing actions? Where do you want them going? Placing a commando in
the wrong place makes it extremely difficult to win the situation, whereas
placing them right makes it relatively easy (by which I mean that you're quite a
bit less likely to die, but don't get cozy yet).

In addition to that, you can give the commands "Search and Destroy", "Form Up"
"Secure that area" (wherever your crosshair is pointed) and "Cancel manoeuvers",
which deactivates the sniping/grenading/anti-armour positions and sets all your
squad back to Search and Destroy or Formed Up mode. These simplified controls
keep the pace of the game well up.

The squad AI is also really good. The way they take positions around doors and
such makes you believe that they really are a special forces unit. The way they
stand and move helps maintain this feeling of being Spec-Ops. They find cover by
themselves, and will generally take the smart option. About the only problems I
had with the AI is that they never change weapon unless you give them a specific
position (as in, they'll stick with standard rifle unless you tell them to
snipe...then they'll switch to the sniper rifle), and that they sometimes would
walk right in front of you when you're firing. This has serious repercusions if,
say, you decide to throw a grenade just before someone walks in front of you.
Serious like, "Shit, I just killed my entire squad). Why they don't walk behind
the player when you're firing is beyond me.

Graphically the game looks impressive. I played it all the way through with
everything turned up to high at 1280*1024 without FSAA, and it looked beautiful.
No slowdown at all, anywhere. It's definitely the best looking
Unreal-engine-based game to date.

About the only thing I didn't like about the game is that the weapons are weak.
It takes up to 15 blaster shots to knock out a trandoshan from medium range. It
takes maybe 9 at close-range. It's actually faster to kill them with 3 pistol
shots, but the pistol is only effective if you're fighting fewer than 3 enemies
at once due to the recharge time on its battery. I actually found myself making
more kills with my wrist-mounted vibroblade (the COOLEST feature of the game, by
far - run up to an enemy and stab them for a (usually) one-hit kill) than with
the standard DC-17m. The "range" of secondary weapons was laughable, too. The
only pick-up weapon I EVER used seriously was the heavy repeater. Every other
time I ran out of ammo I just resorted to the pistol.

Multiplayer is suitably frantic. This morning I spent about 50 minutes playing 4
games and it was great fun. The only problem is that it seems that not many
UT2k4 fans are playing RC, so I have a huge advantage over just about everyone
online...I haven't lost a game yet - this morning the closest I came was someone
getting to 21 kills on a 25 kill limit game before I won. Aside from that, there
don't seem to be any dedicated servers up at the moment, so everyone's suffering
with bad patches of lag which make it unplayable. I'd heard that multiplayer was
quite bad because of how basic it was, but in actual fact, I find the frantic,
basic nature to be just right. Start with the DC-17m and 2 thermal
detonators...you're sorted. The weapons in MP are fairly well balanced, so that
someone who's just started can take down someone with the heavy repeater (which
is just sick...takes about half a second to kill someone from full
health+shields) with some tactics. I can't wait till the MP community picks up a
bit more.

Most reviews have seen the game getting around about 85-88%. Personally I'd give
it more like 92%. It seems to be bug free, and was probably the most fun I've
had with a short game in ages. Bring on the community-made campaigns!