The presentation is great, especially if you enjoyed at least the design of Episode II. There's a cool little intro where you're a clone, growing from baby in a tube, to young Kiwi kid doing computer tests, to full-on Temuera Morrison meeting your squad and seeing armies of clones and transports gathering. Then you're thrown into the Geonosis battle from the end of the movie and having great fun blasting all those droids and bugs. The HUD is nice and helpful, with objectives and possible team-member orders highlighted (focus fire on this droid, snipe here, blow this up).
The only problems I've hit so far are:
It's surprisingly difficult already, with laser-shooting bugs that take up to 3 clips of ammo. I'm actually tempted to go back and put it on easy, unless there's a tactic I'm missing.
As with Pacific Assault, there's a team system where you can tell your team to pull back, defend an area etc. I always find these way too difficult to think about in the heat of battle, as there's never an easy way to remember which key does what. It's an RTS element that doesn't really mix well with FPS.
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The team system is better once you figure out how they want you to use it, can be pretty satisfying. It's still insanely difficult, though. Anything but the lowest of enemies can kill you from full health in a couple of shots. There's a siege section now and I just don't see how it's possible.
EDIT: okay, a walkthrough advised me to use the sniper positions which I hadn't spotted. You kind of have to charge into deadly situations just to get your team set in the only positions that will allow you to win...
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I had to put this down to easy just to make it possible, and it's actually not too bad now, although I do spend a lot of time healing my squad mates and using health-recharging bacta stations which can make it feel like a slog.
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I had noticed the shields on my tactical display, but I hadn't quite figured out how they worked. I guess the deal is that you only lose health if your shields are at zero, so as long as you duck under cover before your shields go down, you're fine? The revive mechanic is also cool and has gotten me out of some jams, but to be honest I'd rather they just alleviated the difficulty a little instead because, along with bacta stations, reviving team-mates or waiting to get revived myself is where I spend a lot of game time.
And yeah, now I'm used to just running in and immediately setting my guys up, it's a lot better. Although sometimes there aren't any POI for them, or there's a ceiling turret, which they just cannot handle. Those fucking Star Wars ceiling turrets have been the bane of this FPS play-through. Also the flying droids with lightning attack were stupidly overpowered on Normal setting, especially when I was on my own. I just cannot believe that they play-tested this and decided the difficulty levels were spot on.
Basically, there's lots of cool stuff going on here but also a load of bullshit enemies, bad ammo balancing etc getting in the way of it.
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I've finished it! It's actually pretty short, which is definitely a good thing without a lot more variety being introduced. Overall, once I switched to easy, I very much enjoyed this. Great atmosphere and attention to detail (your visor's wiper cleaning away bug splatter, wire-frames of targeted enemies showing through walls), and satisfying squad mechanics. It's actually made me want to re-watch the prequel trilogy, which is pretty damn impressive. I wish this had done better so we could have got the planned sequel, Imperial Commando. That would have been great, starting the game as a Republic commando on Kashyyyk to retrieve your fallen crewman when Order 66 is given and suddenly turning sides and taking down a load of wookies and Jedi.
Rating: Green.
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