As opposed to the planet-hopping that usually defines Star Wars games, Republic Commando centers on three detailed missions, at different points throughout the Clone Wars. The game’s perspective shifts from the galactic setpieces of the movies to nitty-gritty, behind-the-scenes Black Ops missions. The members of your squad are distinguished by the coloring on their armor, but also by their hard-boiled personalities. With your D-pad, you issue orders to your clone comrades: “Scorch” detonates explosives, “Fixer” hacks or “slices,” and “Sev” is an expert marksman. The game begins as you are awoken from a life lived out in constant combat simulations to experience the “real thing.” You are RC-1138 (one of many winking nods in the franchise to George Lucas’ very first film), or “Boss,” the leader of Delta Squad, one of the galaxy’s finest fighting squadrons. This is the kind of game in which your avatar is constantly wiping goop, ooze, and alien guts off their helmet visor. Commando is in many ways a startling change from the vast majority of Star Wars games, which generally focus on precise lightsaber button-combos or superheroic Force powers.

Beyond just the general fast-paced FPS flavor, Commando feels even more like Doom specifically because it’s the rare Star Wars game to feature projectile firearms in addition to lasers: a shotgun. In terms of its tactical, squad-based approach, Republic Commando is most reminiscent of games like Rainbow Six, but it moves with the speed and agility of a Doom or Wolfenstein, a throwback to the alleged “Doom Clone” Dark Forces. Recently remastered for Switch and PS4 by Aspyr Media, Republic Commando is not just a story about the Galactic Republic’s commando elite-it’s one of the elite shooters of its era.

Gears of war clone