LucasArts Archive Series: Star Wars: Force Commander Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Once in a while, we see a game that will be immortalized not for being extraordinarily good, but for being extraordinarilly terrible. This is just such a game, and arguably the worst flop in the history of real-time strategy.
I was really looking forward to this game, since it is the first real Star Wars strategy game of any kind (and yes, I have heard of Rebellion). LucasArts had just put out the very excellent X-Wing Alliance, and I expected at least as good a product out of Force Commander.
How disappointing to see what they have done. I would seriously have enjoyed a Westwood-licensed C&C clone with a war factory that spits out 2-d AT-ATs. As a matter of fact, please note that LucasArts' redux of this game- Galactic Battlegrounds- uses the Age of Empires engine. LucasArts is starting to have a history of putting out a horrible title, and then remaking it into something great, and I have high hopes for Battlegrounds.
What is painfully obvious is that the FoCom team tried hard- very hard and too hard- to make the game something unique. They deviated from the tried and true formula of 'gather resources, build your base, destroy your enemies' by employing a completely new resource system. This system is centered on a nebulous affair called the 'command point.' You get more command points by killing enemy units. Already you can see how this makes multiplay games quite stupid. Once you get on a roll, there's no stopping you- and same goes for your enemy.
The 'engineer element' is so strong in this game as to be ridiculous. You can capture AT-ATs with Rebel hijackers, which makes it rather risky for an Imperial player to build them. You can also capture just about anything by entering it, which makes defensive structures almost as dangerous to you as your enemy. It is entirely possible- nay, probable- to win a battle with just infantry. They also have the added advantage of not getting stuck so easily. If you think big guns mean more impressive firepower, you can think again. Every single weapon basically shoots a colored hyphen, and some of them aren't even the right color. The explosions look like they were taken from X-Wing and the units don't do anything but sit still and fire salvoes at each other. You would think they would have at least made combat look good, but they apparently had other things to worry about.
On that note, the path-finding, ever a critical element in any RTS, is horrible. The 3-d terrain plays havoc with collisions, which are not handled well. You will frequently see units get stuck going through even moderately narrow areas, and vehicles will often try to plow through a cliff and twitch there until you tell them to stop. If you order units to attack something that is behind a hill, they stupidly fire into the hillside instead of moving to a better position. All this basically means is that you have to micromanage your battles on an individual unit basis, which is difficult and annoying.
The user interface seems like a weak-sauce version of Myth 2's intuitive console with Starcraft wireframes added. Rather than combining the best aspects of these GUIs, it combines the worst. You won't be able to see anything unless you zoom out, and the camera has a nasty tendency to bend with terrain, often putting a hill in front of your line of sight. If you zoom in, you will see the average-quality unit models and the blaster fire, but nothing much else. Overall, you will be hard pressed to both keep track of your units' whereabouts and be able to see the overall scope of a battle. The wireframes are simply useless. They provide none of the color-coding diagnostics that made them useful in Starcraft while managing to clutter the screen.
Lastly, the music is more than just bad, but an abomination. They tried to 'improve' on John William's original score by adding techno beats and ear-rending sound effects. What in the galaxy were they thinking? You can't improve on a score as good as that! The first configuration I did was to turn it off.
Although you might have some fun playing Force Commander (I especially liked killing the Jawas), the overall experience is lackluster and more of a chore than enjoyment. This game doesn't deserve the Star Wars name, and should have either been released four years ago or scrapped.

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