[Video Game] Star Wars: Republic Commando

Category: Action/First Person (with elements of RPG, and it has stealth if call using explosives to sneak into a place stealthy...)
Rating: T for Teen (on a side note I hear SW Ep3 will be PG-13...)

Synopsis: You are Delta-38 the leader of a 4-man clone commando squad. You are born in a vat like all other clone troopers, but from birth you received extra training and better equipment to allow you to become a lethal weapon of the Republic. You have trained all your life with 3 other commandos who form your squad; Delta-40 (code slicer specialist), Delta-07 (sniper), and Delta-62 (demolitions) (your specialty is close-combat). This game is meant to help span some of the storyline starting from the battle for Geonosis to Ep3 and supposedly hints about Ep3 are given as you progress through the game (only seeing Ep3 will prove this true or not).

Pluses:
- Good graphics
- easy to use squad control interface
- relatively good and robust AI, especially for your fellow commandos
- excellent sound effects (I turn the music off in games such as this so I to be more immersed in the environment)
- multi-player
- the squad (nice to have backup)
- your armor looks cool
- you can use turrets to help
- the Wookies look cool

Minuses:
- Linear gameplay and often only one way to do things that is laid out before you. At least it does not feel you are being ram-rodded into the story thanks to the help of your handler named 'Advisor'
- Super Battle Droids are tough, which they are supposed to be, but when faced with more than 2 and no more grenades, you are screwed
- Squad has unlimited ammo, while during points of the game this is a good thing to have, it does detract from the immersion since you only have a limited amount of ammo (except for your pistol thankful which can recharge AND has a decent punch to it)
- Multi-player while having many maps and a few modes are your basic FPS faire, CTF, DM, TDM, AS. It would have been nice to have missions, allow for custom missions and maps, and let you form squads so you can use the squad interface. I found the multi-play to be fast paced and standard, find which gun does the most damage then use it while jumping around stuff you've had since Quake 3. Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six in my opinion are how multiplayer commando games should be done. :)

Nit-pickers corner:

I was very excited about this game. All the trailers and pre-release stuff I saw had these anonymous, cold, professional commandos in plain gray armor. In the game each command has 'customized' his armor with colors. I can see commandos camoflaging their armor based on their mission, but reds and yellows would not be it. I was originally upset at the campy chit-chat the squad has with each other, but I got over it. I would have just preferred to have seen the commandos in non-descript gray armor that looked really nice.

All in all though I enjoyed the game.