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Star Wars: Force Commander

The game commences after Darth Vader had captured princess Lea, and the pod with droids had fallen on Tatuin. The player leads Imperial ground forces through 20 missions. As the story develops, the main characters (Two brothers, one in charge of the strategy, the other in infantry) will join the rebels and make sure the justice wins.

	Fire and Ice You better watch out for those units!

The first several missions are in fact tutorial missions where you are instructed how to use your interface by your senior officer. However, these tutorial missions are situated on battlefields as a part of the campaign and if you make a mistake you actually can loose.

After the training, you will be put in charge of one of the critical zones. There you will have to take care of mission varying from destroying rebels to taking control of energy sources and espionage. Once you have changed sides, you basically do the same stuff for some other people. Missions cannot be completed it a typical way (produce a lot of strong units and destroy everything) because of an unusual resource management system. It will take some brains and combined warfare to succeed in a mission. The size proves not to be that important here as some small units can sometimes be of much greater use that huge AT-xx machinery. The enemy buildings can be captured and used in fight for the right cause (whichever it may be J. The AI is not too bad. The enemy keeps attacking from several directions, but as they usually use typical paths, you may easily defend your base and concentrate on preparing the attack.

As I already mentioned, the game has a very untypical resource management system. There is no common resource (gold, spice) harvesting like in most similar games. In stead of that, you gather command points - which are calculated from your field performance, and represent, your rating with your superiors. Depending on the number of your CPs you may build structures and units. The units and structures are in fact being ordered from a nearby Star Destroyer and it takes some time for them to arrive. This actually means that you can concentrate on the tactics, rather than building. If your superiors are not too pleased with your work you may gat negative points, which is very inconvenient.

In the course of the game you will be able to command a large number of units from the Star Wars universe. All the units appearing in the movie are here, as well as some specially designed for the game. The unit models are very detailed, and stay that way no matter how much you zoom in. Unit movement and animation has been given special attention: the small like stormtroopers units can maneuver swiftly while enormous AT-ST machines take their time in turning about. This is why one should never rely on raw firepower: achieving goals with less expense will win you more CPs. Units move from one point to another taking the shortest way, but there is also a possibility of giving them waypoints.

The graphics are as beautiful as they are in all Lucas Arts games. The game will take you to ten different planets, each with special characteristics and scenery, from the deserts of Tatuin to the forests of Endor. The game is in full 3D so that you can move your camera whichever way you want and zoom in. There are, of course a lot of great special effects like lasers, explosions, etc. The sound is as good as graphics (excellent), and the music is, naturally, composed of typically becoming Star Wars themes.

Force Commander is a great game and I recommend it to all RTS fans. And if you happen to be a Star Wars fan as well - this is (to quote Lucas Arts) your dream come true.

May the force be with you!

			click to learn how we rate games
	Very Good   86		highs RTS in Star Wars universe;		lows AI is sometimes stupid.		stability / learning curve /