You are one of a million clones of the late great Jango Fett. You're a member of the clone army. You're just a small cog in the machine. Your designation is RV01/138, but to quote a paternal Kaminoan, you are "a commando, an elite unit, something truly special." Your destiny lies as the team leader of the Republic's most dangerous unit, Delta Squad. You're the best of the best, the receiver of special training, special skills, and special equipment. You're the tip of the sword, and the Republic intends to pierce the heart of the Separatist forces. After all, this isStar Wars Republic Commando™.
Of course, just saying that you're a team leader for a crack unit of Clone Troopers isn't good enough. The role you'll play will have to feel like a team leader too. You'll need to be able to give orders, keep track of your team, use tactics instead of just running and gunning, and generally feel like you're a badass instead of the typical grunt.
Commanding demolition.
Luckily, the latter point is made rather swiftly. After touching down for the first mission, you immediately sense that your armor can take more damage than the typical Clone Trooper. You can wade into battle and use your hand blade at melee distance with the fragile Battle Droids, whereas your grunt comrades fall quickly after a few hits. Not long after that, you encounter two Clone Troopers who cheer at the arrival of a commando (that's you), and one even remarks that the commandos can "win the war by themselves." There's nothing like having the faith of your brothers.
Shortly thereafter, you meet up with the other three members of your crack commando team. There's 07, known as SEV, and 62, a.k.a. Scorch, and finally 40, called Fixer. These three team members will be with you for the long haul, and you'll need to know how to use them properly.
Commanding terminal slice.
First things first: You need to learn the One Touch commands for your team. You can use these with the D-Pad. If you need to, you can hold down the A button to bring up the commands, but if you have them memorized (there are only four so it shouldn't take long), a simple directional press on the D-Pad will do the trick. You have four basic commands at your disposal:
Form Up: Things get quite chaotic in the middle of a firefight, and if you don't watch out, you can easily get separated from your teammates. Make sure you use the Form Up command often in these circumstances.
Search and Destroy: Remember, your teammates are not typical Clone Troopers. They're commandos just like you. They can take care of themselves. Sending them on Search and Destroy will let them fire at will and take down any enemy within sight. This is particularly helpful when you're low on health. You can let your squad-mates do most of the damage until you find a bacta (that's health) station.
Secure Area: This again is quite handy when you're low on health. If you're about to bust through a door, you can send your fellow commandos in to secure the area first. It's also handy for flanking. Send them down towards the enemy and let them engage. Then, you can sneak around and tear up the enemy from behind.
Cancel Maneuver: There are a lot of surprises in Republic Commando, so if you suddenly endanger your team with a hasty command, you can cancel your orders instantly.
These are the four basic commands that are available to you at any time. However, they do not by any means represent all of the commands you can issue to your team. All other commands are handled by context-sensitive triggers in your environment. Place your cursor over a specific area of the environment, and you may be able to give a squad member a command to interact with it. For example, a big rock could be the perfect cover to snipe from. Sure enough, when you roll your cursor over the rock, you can issue a command for one of your teammates to snipe from that location. The same is true of breaching a door, ordering your team to heal up on bacta, fire from a turret, slice a computer terminal, or any other number of other commands.
You can concentrate fire on one enemy.
There's even a context-sensitive command for a fallen comrade. If a teammate goes down in battle, you can order another member of your squad (or take on the task yourself) to revive that team member with a little shock treatment. Just highlight the fallen member with your cursor and press the A button. Not only is this another context-sensitive order, but it allows you to quickly move on instead of having to backtrack to revive a squad member.
In order to succeed in Republic Commando (which gets extremely difficult), you'll need to become very proficient at recognizing environment-specific commands. Don't worry, though. You'll have plenty of practice.
Republic Commando puts you in charge of the Republic's most highly trained squad. Not only is this an element of the story, but the intuitive squad-based tactics add exponentially to the experience. Can't wait 'til Republic Commando ships? Yeah, neither can I.
