I played my very favourite sequence from Republic Commando yesterday. It's my third time through the game - fourth if you count me watching my brother play, and much much more than fourth if you count all the times I died - but that part never gets even slightly boring! It's the part where you're on the Prosecutor and are trying to prevent the Separatists from taking over the ship. Something is just too awesome about running from hanger bay to hanger bay, demo-ing droid dispensers, activating the forefield, blowing up everything with the cool walker thing, concussion rifling droids, and finally, activiting the turbolasters to blow the dirty Sep ship of out of the sky. Golden. So yeah, the levels entitled Saving the Ship (Hanger B), Holding the Line (Hanger C), Overwhelming Odds (Hanger D), and Deus Ex Machina (Turbolaster Control) are my favourites by far.

Hanger B is notoriously easy - the Seps don't even arrive until after you get the chance to place many traps and get ready. A couple droid dispensers is usually all they have time to send in before you can demo the shield generator to stop their invasion.

Then it's run down the hall to Hanger C. (All the hangers are nicely marked with the Aurebesh letters, A, B, C, etc. Very cool!) This is where it gets fun - droids are already deployed. Run across the upper section, debate about whether to leave a 'nader or a sniper at the top. Normally I prefer to keep the squad together, so once we're ready we all head down below, me at point. Go in, tell your squad to kill the dispensers, send Scorch over to demo the shield generator. You use your big weapons to cover your squadmates. Normally by the time everything is blown up, there are still 50 million droids everywhere. This is where it gets hard, trying to clear them all out while keeping your squad alive.

When it's all said and done, time to get over to Hanger D. Insides, it's already insane. Advisor tells you to gather in the back of the hanger and not engage the dispensors directly. You sneak back, tell your squad to 'nade and snipe at the positions at the back. Fixer goes and slices the control panel while you cover. You run out of anti-armour ammo very quickly, due to the large number of SBDs deployed at this point. But then... the lift comes up, and a big AT-TE walker is on it! Climb in, blow away everything.

Now you need to take out the Trade Federation battleship before it blows you away. Down the lift, through some access tunnels. You run into an armada of droids in the hallway. Much less ammo and many fewer grenades later, they lie in pieces as you enter the turbolaser control station. Three control panels need slicing. I told two of my squad to cover our backs with sniping and anti-armour positions, then Fixer and I sliced two of the panels. By now, the droids are relentless and just keep coming. While Fixer slices the last panel, I do my best to keep Sev and Scorch alive and to stop the battledroids from coming up the side catwalks to own us. I hide behind the barricades, but the SBD fire still hits me. But eventually all the panels are sliced, and our ship starts firing at the Sep ship. The droids shut down, their remote control systems inoperable. Our turbolaser fire combines with that of the Republic ship that came to aid us, and the TF ship is completely destroyed.

"No one steals a ship from the Republic while we're around!" - Sev

Indeed. And now the Assault Ship compaign is complete!

In case you're wondering - no, I can't say I like the Hanger A part. o_o That's where the Trando ship is... and also a pair of highly annoying rocket turrets which repeatedly own me. And my whole squad. Death times a thousand. It took me many tries to get past that hanger! Though yesterday I did experience a new remark upon my death - Sev goes "Sir, you're a waste of good genes". (That might have occured when a wall magically appeared in front of me right as I shot my concussion rifle. ^_^)

The other thing I was doing while playing yesterday was reading the Aurebesh on the walls of the ship's hallways. Most of them said nothing - I saw a lot of "FSLKJE" and "FAS", rotated and flipped in various ways depending on how the texture maps were used. But still, very cool. Though nothing beats the "LOVE" and "HUGS" that appear on one of the Kashyyyk concourses.

I love this game.