Star Wars Republic Commando Remastered (Switch)

Out of the shadows like a Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Republic Commandos Remastered got announced out of no one and released at a wallet friendly price. Is it still worthy of honours or has it degraded as quick as a clone?.

Star Wars: Republic Commando originally released as one of the many tie in titles to the “prequel trilogy” of Star Wars aka the last time it was good. 

The story sees you take control of the leader of a Commando group, designed to be the most elite of the Clone Troopers who fans will know had a huge part in Star Wars lore. 

The narrative manages to capture the Star Wars magic as you bounce from objective to objective, making victory for the Republic seem ever within grasp while being totally inoffensive to the source material. 

Naturally the game has all the famous sound effects and the John Williams music to show it’s stance as authentic Star Wars experience, the too and fro from the team is utterly fantastic and the radio chatter does a fantastic job of immersing you in the role of Commando in the middle of a warzone. 

The presentation in Star Wars: Republic Commando Remastered is easily the strongest part of the product and I don’t mean any disrespect to the rest of it when I say this. The slow intro brings you into your role of Commando and shows you the on going war effort and your training before your jumping out of a ship in the middle of a wartorn area. 

Raindrops gather on your tactical visor and a Lazer style windscreen wiper clears them off, same with bug blood. Your team mates react to your actions and your visor will display any and all tactical options. The weapons are all authentic and the set pieces are done brilliantly, coupled with the pacing of the story and the superb audio and as a Star Wars product its top shelf stuff. 

On the flip side of that it would be remiss of me to skip over the graphical age of this title, Star Wars Republic Commando looks as old as it is. The game has had very little done in terms of graphical updates, brightened up a bit but the game is still rather brown everywhere and the textures fairly low Res and animations about standard for the mid 2000s. It’s the little extras within the presentation that excels this game rather than pure graphics alone.

Star Wars Republic Commando Remastered is a first person shooter with a leaning into tactics territory, controls are your standard affair while missing modern conveniences such as ADS being placed on a trigger and a sprint button. 

As much of a one man army you are, you’ll need the backup of your team, each of the 3 members have a specialty be it explosives, sniping or hacking. Fortunately commanding your troops has never been easier, pressing the A button when a context icon appears will get them into position for their ability or ready to breach.

Alongside the standard shooting mechanics of point and shoot, you can aim down sights at an analogue press but hip shooting works just as well, you can also melee and issue commands such as form up or attack by holding A then pressing a direction on the D-Pad.

While Star Wars Republic Commando Remastered doesn’t really do much beyond the standard FPS even around the time it was released, the level of presentation married with the sheer pacing of the 8 to 10 hour campaign is why it’s so fondly remembered and still frankly slaps hard to this day.

Licenced games always have that stigma of being lazy cash ins and while the extended universe titles tended to be heavy hitters, Republic Commando comes in with a campaign that once you get beyond the slow intro doesn’t really slow down until the credits roll and manages to stand up to the other shooters of its time.

Hardcore Star Wars fans will lap this title up and as someone who’s come and gone from the fandom I still couldn’t have enjoyed the tightly crafted campaign anymore, lack of gyro controls and multiplayer may put some off but for the asking price you get a brilliantly playable version of a criminally underrated first person shooter.