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Mmalnox's Star Wars Republic Commando (XBX)

[January 14, 2008 06:00:11 PM]

Summary: First-person shooter game on XBOX console. You are a clone and the leader of The Delta Squad in the middle of the Clone Wars Era in Star Wars (game begins at the end of Star Wars Episode Two, but before Episode Three). You and your team are to infiltrate and annihilate the enemy.

Game Play I:
The first 45 minutes of playing Star Wars Republic Commando I realized that it definitely helps to have some previous FPS skills because there are many controller options that create a complex level of interactivity, but it is not necessary that one has FPS skills. While I played I expected the basic elements of a first-person shooter game; kill enemies, stay alive, complete any objectives, and utilize all weapons and other objects to your advantage. This game is exceptionally good because on top of the basic elements compiled, there were things I had to learn along the way. A unique quality of this game was the complex and realistic interaction with your command squad. Similar to Rainbow Six, you can command your team to do different actions depending on the situation. You are also responsible to keep them alive by reviving their health when they are shot down and commanding them to get more health before you move on.
Most FPS games you are a part of a team but you are very limited to your interaction with the computer's characters. In this game, not only can you command your men to "form up" or "search and destroy," but also each clone on your team(three total) specializes in a particular trait that is to your benefit. There is a Sniper specialist, a demolition specialist, and the technical guy. The creates personalities for each member of your team making the game play experience realistic and more interesting than most FPS games. During my second Game Play session I utilized this team interaction to my advantage to kill enemies quicker and progress through the levels easier.
I would also like to mention briefly the cultural implications this simple yet influential game has on our world. My choice of playing Star Wars Republic Commando was due to my appeal to the Star War films, which I am sure much of the world agrees to Lucas' ingeniousness. Star Wars started out as cinematic medium and moved on to spread throughout our culture as action figures, board game themes, posters, and video games. One does not have to be familiar with Star Wars to play the game, but most people have an idea where the storyline and narrative originate from. This change of medium from film to posters to digital technology into the magic circle of gaming, creates an entirely new experience of Star Wars as you control the team and characters, when originally we just watched the characters in a film.
Overall, the first game play session I got the feel of the basic control buttons but I also had to learn some unfamiliar control buttons (which makes a game good). I had expectations and those expectations were met thus allowing me to be anxious to play everyday.

Game Play II:
The second hour of game play made me realize other great qualities of this game, enemy diversity. What I mean by this is that there were different types of enemies, who had different weapons, and some were harder to kill than others. This is very important for any FPS game. There should always be the basic simple enemy who is in every level of the game and is easy to kill. Then later there should be introduced bigger enemies which are much harder to kill on top of the basic simple enemies still. This game had this. The Droids are in every level and are very easy to kill, then as I progressed new enemies were introduced, some that flew in the air and some that were just big robotic monsters. This allowed me to use different weapons on different enemies which is really fun. I used the sniper rifle on the big robotic enemies and used the assault rifle on other guys. Also, the game kept me challenged because as I attempted to complete objectives my team and I would be under attack at the same time.
Like I mention earlier you have much responsibility. Not only do you have to stay alive but you are responsible to give your team health if they go down, and most of the time you are being attacked at the same time that you have to revive their health. Another cool quality is that if you get knocked out (you have loss all control) you have a couple of options. You can command your team to revive you right away, or you can command them to finish killing the enemies and then revive you. Sometimes it is smarter to have them kill enemies first so they do not die as they are helping you.

Design:
The graphics were great! Levels were diverse and there were distinct textures and colors making the environment look realistic. The guns offered were really great and the scopes, movement, and timing were all exceptional. You have three different vision options: night mode, normal mode, and tactical mode. This was also very innovative.
Each level had great space and time layout. There was a perfect amount of health and ammo offered on each level but not too much. Each level had at least two areas where your team was under mass attack and it was difficult to beat those areas (this is also a good quality in a FPS game). Some areas of the levels were calm and allowed your team to get health. Another awesome thin g about this game is that you can point to an enemy and hold down "Y" and this tells your team "eliminate target." This is helpful when you are faced with one of those stronger harder enemies, you can have your team gang up on him to kill him faster. There is also various levels of interaction on each level. You can point to terret guns and command the your sniper specialist to begin sniping.
The only bad element about this game is if a person is not a gamer and hardly plays video games, they may get discouraged because this game has a high level of interaction. The objectives are not that interesting either, they are repetitive, but truly this game is excellent.