Star Wars: Repubic Commando

I seriously love me some Star Wars, but gaming has rarely been good to it. There are a few exceptions, but the license has just been to lucrative, encouraging dev studios to flood the market with crap (people will buy anything with 'Star Wars' on it). Fortunately, there are exceptions, like Star Wars: Republic Commando.

A late Xbox era FPS, this game should have been total junk, there are no Jedi and it introduces new "heroes" that no one ever expected to be worth a story, but, and this is a huge 'but', I think the game is good because of these things, not in spite of it. You play the leader of a squad of specially grown clones tasked with the most difficult missions of the Clone Wars; the initial campaign is through the Geonosian battle from Attack of the Clones, and the action feels nothing less than authentic.

The game has aged incredibly well, it'll be 10 years old in a few months, but still as imminently playable as it was in 2005. The lack of need for a background on your character leaves room for personal immersion you almost never find in an FPS; you also get a lot of character from your squadmates with little effort, and don't need to be distracted from your game in order get the standard Star Wars backfill.

Ah, the old stab the commando in the back trick!

The game has a great flow to it, the weapons work well and feel authentic, and the enemies are really well made, being both interesting and challenging. The squad command system works really well too, there isn't a lot of variation on how to utilize your squad, but that keeps from over complicating the interaction, keeping you immersed in the experience.

10/10 on this one, maybe the best Star Wars game made to date, definitely one of my favourite games of all time.