Developer: Lucasarts
Publisher: Lucasarts, Lucasfilm, Disney Interactive
Rrp: £6.99 (Steam and Humblebundle) £8.09 (Gog.com)
Released: 1st March 2005
Available on: Steam, Gog.com and Humblebundle
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far away blah, blah, blah, Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars. Clones, Empire, Rebels, Robots. Explosions, stupid mesa guy, lightsabres, Sith, Jedi, Wookies…
I think its fair to say that I don’t need to explain the basic concept of what Star Wars is. I mean they have a metric ton of games, movies, series, books, comics, toys and all sorts of other stuff and that’s without going into the old expanded universe.
There is some debate as to whether this game is actually part of the canon of the Star Wars universe, so if that’s important to you then you’ll have to make your own minds up. Either way the events of this game happen bit before and during Star Wars: Episode two. The game itself is a team based first person shooter, in which you control a squad of four (including yourself) clone commandos. Even though these commandos are all cloned from the same person, each member has their own specialisation and personality. Your team is known as Delta Squad and you in particular take on the role of Delta RC-1138 (otherwise known as 38 or Boss).
Unfortunately I have to start off with a negative if only because its the first thing you come across when you boot the game up. I never thought I’d have to say this about any major release game but its easier to navigate the main menu (which is a dull as sin, seriously a grey background) with the keyboard due to the in menu mouse being insanely fast.
Turning down the sensitivity does help a lot but it also causes the in game mouse movement to also slow down, meaning you have to turn it right back up again afterward.
The HUD is shown as part of your helmet by default, you can choose to disable the helmet view in the options menu if you so wish. Personally I didn’t find that the helmet got in the way but I know some people who took issue with it.
The game is separated into missions which in turn are split off into small levels that essentially act as corridors. Each missions structure tends to pretty simple and similar, get to a certain point, blow something up and escape. Of course while you attempt to complete your mission you’ll be set upon by droids and other such enemies. Most of these tend to be fodder and easily dispatched but mixed among them are more elite units that generally need the whole squad to concentrate fire on to defeat. They can be defeated without issuing the ‘concentrate fire’ order but it takes much longer and usually you’ll find that a few of your commandos have fallen in the process.
As I just briefly mentioned above you can issue orders to your fellow commandos. These come in two flavours, the contextual ‘blow this up / concentrate fire’ or the general orders like regrouping and securing a position.
If you choose not to issue any orders (other than those necessary to progress) and treat the game as an ordinary shooter you’ll find the game to be much more difficult and the commandos will seem somewhat stupid, they’ll eventually get the job done but they’ll be terribly inefficient and will likely need to be brought back to full health after any large fight. If you instruct them correctly though they can be a real force to be reckoned with taking down large swaths of enemies. It does mean you as the commander have to have a level of situation awareness though.
If a commando goes down during a fight you can send another commando to put him back on his feet or you can do it yourself. Once they’re on there feet they’ll limp around and fight as best they can until they find or are order to use a healing station.
I found that the combat itself felt a bit lacklustre, all the weapons seemed to lack any real ‘kick’ or sense of weight. Since this is basically all you’ll be doing through the game its a rather large problem and its not one that I found I could get over.
This game shows its age graphically the worlds look quite angular and blocky and the textures are clearly fairly low resolution, at least compared to what’s around now. All of that could be forgiven though but for some reason the games frame rate really takes a dive during combat. I don’t feel that its due to any limitation on my system… I mean I can play most modern games on the high graphical settings which makes me think that this is a problem with the game itself. The game also doesn’t have a setting for 1080p. I’m sure this is largely due to the games age but it does mean that on the highest resolution the game has a large vertical black bars on either side of the screen.
One thing this game has done is remove my rose tinted glasses. I remember this game so differently, and feeling much more open. Now I can see it for what it is, its a decent squad shooter, not amazing but also not terrible. The levels are linear as all hell and the gameplay loop does get a bit tedious after a while.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Star Wars: Dark Forces
Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight
Brothers in Arms: The Road to Hill 30
