FORCE COMMANDER Review
by Chris Knight

My all-time favorite Star Wars nightmare: AT-AT walkers on Cloud City.

Imagine Vader making good on his threat to put a garrison on Lando's city. Imagine the lumbering war machines being deployed on an open plaza, patrolling the city. Having a shootout with a Rebel enclave. Imagine being one of the frightened civilians, trapped between Imperial might glowering above you and a gas giant, the creaking metal of the city under walker legs the only thing keeping you from plummeting, below. Fantastical but hey, that's what Star Wars is about: fantastic places.

And something else I've wondered: how would you land an AT-AT on Cloud City? How did they land something that big on Hoth, anyway? Well, I may not have seen my dream/nightmare come true, but at least that question has been answered, thanks to LucasArts' latest release, Star Wars: Force Commander.

Now, in all honesty, I'm fairly new to real-time strategy gaming. My introduction came two years ago when my roomie played WarCraft. Until getting Force Commander, the only RTS I'd actually bought was MechCommander Gold. But I'd been following FC's production since two years ago and had steadily grown intrigued by the potential of this game. When it finally appeared on the shelves in Greensboro, I snatched up a copy (paying for it, of course :-).

In a nutshell, how does Force Commander rate? This is a great game! But it may not be for everyone... at least just at first. There were some things about the game that were intimidating, frightening even, if you're a relative novice at RTS. Once the "learning curve" is over (something I'm still in the process of), Force Commander easily becomes a groundbreaking classic, albeit one that a gamer could recommend some stuff about.

The game gives you one of two install options: one over 400 MB, the other 500 MB. Figuring I had plenty of room on the drive and wanting the game to go fast, I opted for the full install (which took the better part of fifteen minutes, including the loading of new DirectX drivers). Even then, on an AMD K6/II at 450 mhz, with 64 MB of RAM and a 32 MB Voodoo Banshee 3D card, Force Commander was a bit slower in loading than most players might enjoy.

But once loaded, Force Commander screams like Duke fans at Cameron.

After a stunning opening video (where the deployment of AT-ATs is at long last revealed) sets the tone, the story focuses on two brothers: Brenn and Dellis Tantor, who have followed their dream of joining the Imperial military. Once the game starts, you play Brenn in the holographic tactical unit as he directs troops and materiel on the planet below, beginning with training missions on Tatooine. Your first assignment: finding an escape pod that has crashed in the desert... a pod with two sets of droid tracks that have set out from it. The first few missions play around events seen in A New Hope, while later ones take the player to Yavin, Endor, Hoth, and some new locations made for the game, culminating in an assault on the worldcity of Coruscant.

These first missions are critical, as they introduce players to the camera controls. And it's this, more than anything else, that will turn some players off from Force Commander. The camera is powerful. Almost too powerful. I played FC for an hour the first go-around and had to abruptly quit: learning the camera required going through the first mission three times, and even then it was a dizzying experience. My eyeball was floating over Tatooine sands and I had a hard time distinguishing whether I was looking at a game, or a movie, or a real landscape. This engine is potent stuff, and it's going to take many gamers some time to get used to it. It's definitely NOT the "move the cursor to that part of the screen you want to see"-type of RTS we're used to seeing. That's 2D tactical. The 3D of Force Commander introduces a whole new paradigm with its own new permutations to the mix, and it's going to take some people a while to become accustomed to the intense control offered.

Some permutations traditional to RTS have been taken out: it's not important to "salvage" here. A system of "command points" let you have whatever materiel you can take on for the points you accummulate, handed out per your mission performance. Do good and you can land some AT-ATs. Do bad and the supply depot laughs when you requisition a speeder bike. This is the way RTS gaming should be: concentrating on the mission, not behind-the-scenes economy that the paper-pushers are being paid to manage. One thing I found appealing was the detail poured into this game from SW lore: everything from the name of the stormtrooper who asked Obi-Wan about the droids, to the Death Star hanging over Endor's sky. There's a sense that you're moving people around a real place, in real time: for everyone awaiting Star Wars Online, this should easily tide you over.

(Part 2, more about Force Commander and some thoughts about LucasArts' gaming philosophy, will be posted tomorrow)