I'm sort of trailing the squad as they're on seek and destroy orders, patching holes in the squads firing arcs
The order system (which I feel really could have been better explained in the demo) boils down to seek and destroy, do something specific, and stop everything you're doing/get ready for a new order. There's defend location which hasn't been needed in the geonosis(sp?) missions. Also ‘group on me’, which too never came up.
That's mainly because Republic Commando does this neat 'sticky' order system when telling guys to take cover at a certain location, or hack a door. When the squad is given an order like that, one guy (randomly as far as I can tell) is assigned and the rest of the squad keeps doing what they're doing. The next squad wide order doesn't effect those guys even if a general order like seek and destroy. To get those guys off that order you need to issue the cancel everything order, then reissue the new order. It's a minor feature, but it really let's you have 100% predictable control over your dudes. A niggle is the 4 icons in the lower left tell you what they're up to (very useful!), but they're so abstract that I'm still not 100% sure up arrow is 'on me' and down arrow is 'defend location'.
The game tries to bring personalities to your clone teammates, but they're all named 49, and 30, which doesn't help. While they're meant to have specific skills, they can all do each others job and the squad level granularity of the order system doesn't let you really pick who does what. To be honest I'm not sure why "man this turret" specific-type orders need to be an order at all. Why don't they just go jump in and do it. It's not like most of the missions have 8 to choose from, where I have to tactically pick a gameplan. Maybe it's to make sure the player see something cool being done by the squad.
The combat is the standard blaster fare, which can be pretty uninspired traditionally, but they spice it up with primarily tight, close combat. Republic Commando uses the increasingly standard halo shield model of health, though you appreciate it, because as far as I can tell friendly fire is on by default.
The squad AI is pretty good in these encounters, but the enemies are straight forward. The old sci-fi exploit of being able to do the most horrible things to robots (cuz they're not human, right?) is in full effect and there's lots of dismemberments and decapitations.
The game does the interesting thing of having every ammo drop give you your weapon's full capacity, instead of trickling "random" amounts to you that add up to whatever they add up to. Promotes being generous with the trigger. Off hand grenades (instead of selecting them). Melee attacks are so powerful the game ‘cripples’ them by having whatever you’re stabbing spray its innards all over your visor. This ‘flashbang’ effects you until the wiper scoops off to goop.
Something that really shines in the game are the team animations. In the above mentioned seek and destroy, they'll wave you along in the right direction. When they fight hand to hand with aliens, it's like a fighting game's combo as they just kick the living **** out of their foes. They interact with the dead bodies of enemies, kicking them halo style or if left alone for a few moments, collect together over it looking almost hypnotized by it. The death animations of the enemy exhibit a real gallows humor. Decapitated droids stumbling around firing aimlessly, amputated badass droids drag themselves along the ground before croaking. Can't wait until someone tries this level of violence with human figures and a nod to realism (maybe not...).
Consol-isms include extremely short levels (though loadtimes are blistering on modern PCs), a checkpoint system made irrelevant on the PC by the inclusion of quicksaves (thanks!), and ginormous fonts everywhere. I'm worry that less and less developers are designing for the PCs strengths these days.
Last thing I'll mention is they do great living battlefields. I'm as jaded as the next 35 year old star wars fan about the new trilogy, and the geonosis battle in ep2 was no hoth as far as I was concerned. But they convincingly carry it off here, with an almost a call of duty level of burning, spiraling fighters, vietnam-esque hot drops, and close air support pyrotechnics. I think there was even the old war horse of a medic reviving a fallen soldier.
Playing a lot of tactical shooters didn't prepare me very well for playing Republic Commando. Once I got into the groove of squad control (which, again, boy did I not grok in the demo…twice), it barely plays like a first person shooter. You're shooting sure, but most of the time you're directing the squad and pitching in when more that 3 tasks need to be done simultaneously. That combined with fairly righteous science fiction war scenes and intense character animations, you've got a very good tactical shooter.
Hope Lucasarts didn't fire this internal team..