When an entertainment property has been around for a while, it’s bound to have some good years and bad years.
There have been Star Wars video games almost as long as there has been Star Wars, with the first game coming out in 1982, five years after the first film. In that almost 40 years of Star Wars video games, there naturally have been good years and bad years.
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For those of us who have been playing Star Wars video games a long time, it’s hard to argue against 2005 being one of, if not the best, year for the franchise in gaming.
Since EA took over the license to exclusively make Star Wars games for PC and home consoles in 2013, it has released just four games.
In 2005 alone, we got four Star Wars games. While I’ll always take quality over quantity, those four games all were terrific and remain some of most beloved Star Wars games to this day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oIgF2A5GIQ?feature=oembed
Things got started in 2005 with the release of “Star Wars: Republic Commando” for the PC and Xbox on Feb. 28. That was followed by “LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game,” the first game in the popular LEGO Star Wars series, on March 29. Star Wars Day (May 4) that year saw the release of the video game adaptation of “Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith” come out about two weeks before the film. The final game of the year was “Star Wars Battlefront 2,” the first one before EA rebooted the series 10 years later.
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In 2019, Aspyr Media started re-releasing some classic games from Star Wars’ past for modern systems, and this week saw it re-release the first of the 2005 classics.
“Star Wars: Republic Commando,” which is still playable on modern Xbox systems through backward compatibility, was released on PlayStation 4 and 5 and Nintendo Switch on Tuesday. It was the first time the game ever had been released on PlayStation or Nintendo hardware.
“Republic Commando” is set during the three-year gap between Episodes II and III of the Skywalker Saga when the Clone Wars are raging across the galaxy. You play as an elite clone commando, part of Delta Squad. The rest of the squad is comprised of other clone commandos who are computer controlled, but they will take commands from you.
The game sends you on different missions throughout the Clone Wars, including rescuing a Wookie chieftain from slavers on Kashyyyk. The game even features one of the very first appearances of General Grievous, one of the main villains from the Episode III movie, in a cameo appearance.
The highlight of the game is its story, which ended up being a big influence on the popular “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” animated series. In the movies, the clones weren’t given any character development. They were basically an army created to protect the Republic and programmed to betray the Jedi. But in the game, the four members of Delta Squad are each given a unique personality, something the animated series would expand on.
Aspyr provided me codes to play the game early on both the PlayStation 5 and the Switch. The game runs great, even on the less powerful Switch hardware.
This is a straight port of the original game, though. When a modern game autosaves your progress, it does so in the background and you probably would not even notice if the little save icon didn’t show up in the corner somewhere. “Republic Commando” also has an autosave feature, which is great, but it causes the game’s performance to hiccup for a second after it’s done, just like it did 16 years ago.
Aspyr has been doing a terrific job with these Star Wars re-releases, and I really hope it continues. It brought the excellent role-playing game “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” and its sequel to iOS in 2013 and last year, respectively, and I would love it if it also would bring them to PlayStation and Switch, but the 2005 version of “Star Wars Battlefront 2” is the game I would want to see ported over the most.
Dusty Ricketts can be reached at dricketts@thedestinlog.com. He is currently playing “Star Wars: Republic Commando” and “Marvel’s Spider-Man.” You can find him to play online through his PlayStation Network ID: DustRAG316.
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