Star Wars Republic Commando Feature Preview

Ever since a holographic Princess Leia spoke of the Clone Wars way back in 1977, millions of Star Wars fans have speculated and fantasized about the epic conflict that shaped the galaxy of their favorite fantasy film series. It's too bad that Attack of the Clones ended just as the Clone Wars were beginning, though, and that it looks like the upcoming Revenge of the Sith will pick up just as they're coming to a close. In March, LucasArts will leap to curious fans' rescue with Star Wars Republic Commando, a tactical first-person shooter that tasks you with carrying out some of the most covert and dangerous missions of the entire Clone Wars.

Attack of the Clones introduced us to the Republic's massive clone armies, all the soldiers of which are exact duplicates of the infamous galactic bounty hunter Jango Fett. The elite troopers that you'll control in Republic Commando are also clones of Mr. Fett, though they've undergone more rigorous training than their comrades in the regular army, and their personalities (and, inexplicably, their voices) are much more unique. You'll play as RC 01/138, the commander of the elite Delta squad, and you'll be joined by three teammates nicknamed Fixer, Scorch, and Sev. Delta is given the toughest missions of the Clone Wars, tasks that require utter precision with no room for error.

Most clone troopers look identical, but your three squadmates are hardly cookie-cutter soldiers. The first thing you'll notice about them is that their armor has unique patterns of battle paint that correspond to their functions and help you easily tell them apart in the thick of battle. Fixer is the hacker of the group, able to slice into computer terminals to access restricted systems; he carries green markings. Scorch bears yellow paint and is the explosion-happy demolitions expert of Delta squad. Finally, Sev is a no-nonsense hunter with exceptional sniping skills that will save you on more than one occasion; his armor has red markings. It's nice to see that the design team has put some thought into differentiating the members of your squad, which translates into a smoother gameplay experience when battle heats up and you don't have much time to think.

At first glance, Republic Commando plays like any regular first-person shooter, but there's a lot going on here that gives it a tight, cohesive feel that really aids the immersive quality of the game. The first thing you'll notice is that the game takes a cue from Metroid Prime by placing you literally inside the helmet of a clone trooper, complete with visor, sensor readouts, and health and ammo displays. You'll even have blood or oil splatter on your faceplate when you kill something up close, and afterward an amusing electric windshield wiper will appear to clean the muck from your view. You can disable the visor if you want more viewing area, which makes the heads-up displays just hang in midair, but we found that the helmet view went a long way toward making us feel just like one of the clones.

Republic Commando features a context-sensitive command system that's both easy to get a handle on and absolutely integral to successfully completing your missions. You'll find a multitude of hotspots throughout each level that represent an action you can assign to a team member. Look at a piece of rubble and you can tell a teammate to provide sniper or grenade cover. Point at a computer terminal and you can order Fixer to slice it and access security functions. Highlight a sealed door, and you can have all three characters perform a breach-and-enter move. You can even target a particularly strong enemy and have your entire squad focus its considerable firepower on that one target until it's defeated.

Some of these contextual actions are mandatory, such as when you need Scorch to blow a hole in a barrier to clear a path; others are optional and will only help you win a battle with greater ease, such as having a soldier man a nearby turret for greater firepower. It might seem constraining that you can only order your teammates around at these hotspots, but so far we've seen so many of them in each level that it rarely feels like you're required to pursue one course of action without any alternatives. To the contrary, it seems like the designers have done a good job of giving you multiple options and letting you pick whichever one suits your preference. You can also assign basic behaviors to the squad at large, such as search and destroy or a defensive posture, to further tailor the team's actions to your own play style.

The way in which you and your squad heal in Republic Commando is pretty interesting. You'll find bacta tanks spread around each level at which everyone can recharge, but you'll also have a portable healing unit to administer aid if someone goes down in battle. You can resuscitate a teammate on the fly by standing over him and holding down the "use" button for a few seconds, and surprisingly enough, your teammates can do the same to you. When you die, you'll go down with a red, blurry filter over your view, but the battle will keep raging, and you'll have only limited head mobility. At this point you're given three options: you can have your team keep fighting with current orders and hope they win out; you can have them abandon current orders and heal you immediately; or you can simply load a previously saved game and try again. So far, we've found the artificial intelligence-controlled squad to be surprisingly competent at getting us back into the action whenever we were taken out.

Send in the Clones

Even if you had all the squad tactics in the world, you wouldn't get anywhere without a good weapon by your side, and the commandos come equipped with one of the best: the DC-17 multifunction assault rifle. You'll begin the game with the DC-17, which is a rapid-fire blaster in its default configuration. As you progress, you'll find attachments that turn the weapon into a sniper rifle, an antiarmor grenade launcher, and so on. If you run out of ammo for all the DC-17's modes, you'll drop to a standard blaster pistol with unlimited ammo, which we found to still pack a pretty decent wallop.

You'll occasionally be able to pick up the weapons of your enemies, too, such as the heavy laser beam carried by Geonosian elite soldiers in the early levels of the game. Finally, you'll have a vicious one-hit-kill melee attack that consists of you punching outward with your free hand while your suit extends a wicked blade from your gauntlet. We found this melee move to be especially satisfying, as it would splatter a Geonosian or reduce a battle droid to rubble with one well-placed hit.

Plenty of first-person shooters incorporate grenades, but we found Republic Commando's 'nades to be especially important in combat, since you'll often be up against a huge number of enemies at once. Interestingly, the grenade types are somewhat tailored to the kind of enemies you're fighting. For instance, the thermal detonator is your standard frag grenade and is most useful on organic targets. It'll also come in handy in a cluster of weak battle droids, but heavier machinery has shields that the thermal detonator can't scratch. Droids can be more easily neutralized with an EMP grenade, which renders them temporarily defenseless. You can do a lot more damage to stronger droid targets while they're temporarily stunned by the effects of this grenade. Other grenade types, such as flashbangs and sonic charges, will have their own uses during combat.

The combat in Republic Commando relies heavily on dynamic mission goals and on-the-fly communication with the rest of your squad as well as with your off-world commanders. Though you'll head into each mission with a clear objective in mind, things have a way of spiraling out of control, and you'll invariably find yourself tasked with a much bigger job than you started with. Your first mission has you touching down on the droid-factory world of Geonosis to take out a strategic enemy target. Once that character is neutralized, you'll have to pick up the objectives of another annihilated squad, which leads you farther into the planet and deeper into trouble. From what we've played so far, the game presents your developing mission goals in a fluid and understandable way that gives the levels a hectic and exciting feel.

LucasArts is using the latest Unreal engine technology to power Republic Commando's graphics, so by default you know it's at least going to look good. But the developer has clearly invested a lot of effort into beefing up the game's visuals and applying some really unique and appealing effects that set it apart from other Star Wars games--and other first-person shooters in general. The look of the world is consistent with the recent Star Wars prequel films, from the massive droid foundries on Geonosis to a derelict starship that the Delta squad must infiltrate. You'll get plenty of characters you recognize from the movies, too, from battle droids and droidekas to wookiees and trandoshans. The game definitely feels like it's a part of the prequel trilogy universe, which makes its depiction of the Clone Wars' events believable.

The game uses a number of striking visual filters to give its presentation a specific and unique style that we've appreciated so far. When you're taken down in combat, for instance, your vision becomes a light shade of red and the surroundings become extremely blurry, giving you only a hazy picture of what's going on as the battle continues to rage. The commandos' night vision is among the most unique we've seen; rather than turning everything green, it gives the immediate area an overexposed black-and-white sort of look that is quite appealing in motion. Even the regular flashbang grenade burns an overbright image of your surroundings into your eyes, along with light blooming that gives everything a dreamy sort of look.

A strong single-player campaign is the clear focus of Republic Commando, but the game will also ship with a multiplayer mode for 16 players online or split-screen with up to four players on the Xbox. You'll find the expected array of multiplayer game types from deathmatch and team deathmatch to capture the flag and assault, the last of which is an attack-and-defend game type where one team tries to breach the other team's base to score a point. It's safe to say that anyone who enjoys the fast-paced, accessible shooting action of the single-player game ought to get a lot of extra mileage out of the multiplayer mode in the game.

Based on initial impressions, Republic Commando looks like the rare Star Wars game that marries a strong storyline from outside the actual films to well-designed, entertaining game mechanics and solid technology. The result looks to be a great action experience for both Star Wars fans as well as for those who haven't found the prequel films entirely to their liking. Republic Commando is slated for release in early March, just a couple of months before the release of Revenge of the Sith. Look for more on the game soon.