I know Republic Commando is an older game, but with the current abundance of squad-based games on the market, I thought I'd chime in and talk about a bit of a sleeper game that you may have missed. Republic Commando is, in my opinion, a fantastic (if dated) squad-based shooter. You are the leader of a team of Republic Commando clones set during the Clone Wars. Your missions are varied, but mostly revolve around stopping the bad guys in a number of familiar and unfamiliar environments.

First, we'll discuss the game as if there was no squad.

In the game you technically carry 5 types of weapons:
1) A very powerful knife that apparently springs from a bracer worn on your left wrist. This instant-kills many of the enemies you encounter in the game, which is handy since a lot of them still think "eat his face off" is a valid combat tactic.
2) A pistol with unlimited rounds that has to recharge after a few shots. Like most pistols in video games, it's inexplicably more accurate than the rifle at range, and the infinite ammo makes it great for tricking the enemy AI into getting stuck out in the open so you can pick them off while eating a piece of pizza.
3) You main weapon is a modular laser rifle that works as an automatic rifle, sniper rifle, and grenade launcher. This is the main gun in the game, and is powered by generic power packs. The rifle is a bit under-powered, I think, but it does increase the difficulty by forcing you to shoot each enemy a half dozen times. The sniper rifle's zoom is great, and sniping people is satisfying. The small environments mean you don't get many chances to snipe people, but there are the occasional hallway or canyon that you can make use of if you're smart. The grenade launcher is fun too, but only carries 4 shells and you'll find yourself saving them for the big baddies rather than using it to scatter clumps of enemies.
4) The fourth weapon slot is used to carry enemy weapons. You can pick up Trandoshan concussion rifles, Wookie bowcasters, and Genosian beam weapons, to name a few. Each weapon has its own unique firing pattern and use. Some, like the light repeater gun, are for small enemies. Others, like the beam weapon, are for super-heavies. It's up to you to grab the weapon that most closely matches your play style and what you think may be coming up.
5) As with any good FPS, you also have grenades. Frag grenades, for blowing people up, EMP grenades for blowing robots up, and stun/flash grenades to sit uselessly in your inventory forever. I found myself forgetting I even had them, and since switching between them is awkward, they're more of an "after a quick-load when you know where the enemies are hiding" kind of weapon. There's also "hot points" in the game which allow you to attach proximity mines to fuel tanks, but I'll talk about that later.

It's difficult, but still possible, to die in this game. When a member of the squad goes down, another member can revive him at your command (you can also do it yourself). When YOU go down, you can give a single order with your last breath. You can either order them to revive you immediately, or carry out your previous order until the end of the battle. If you're confident they can clear the battlefield, select "continue orders" and watch through the haze of blood as your well-trained squad dispatches the enemy from their attack points. Once they revive you, find some bacta so you can return to full health. Whenever you see some bacta stations around, click on them to make sure none of your squad is low on health. If they're all full, you get to hear the confused lieutenant carefully explain to you that no one needs health, sir.

There aren't many different ways to play through this game. Normally when a publisher attempts to artificially give the player freedom that means there's a place to hide somewhere nearby. Republic Commando doesn't do this. You see a group of enemies? You can shoot at them, or run toward them while shooting at them. The game is linear to a fault, there's very little exploration and no open arenas. Given just this information, you may be thinking that this is a standard first person shooter, with John Williams music in the background. Well it's not, and there are three reasons why it's not: The nature of the combat, the extra attack vectors, and your squad mates.

First, the nature of combat. The developers did a great job of making combat challenging, you feel like you're actually in a battle, as opposed to some games which give you the impression of being at the state fair with a BB gun. Mostly this is due to the fact that the developers had access to the "whatever weird things we want" pool of enemy design. You have flying enemies who can stick to walls and carry beam weapons, robot enemies that have flying carrying cases, lizard men that can hide in the ceiling, all kinds of things. What that means is that you may find yourself in a hangar, desperately trying to stop a platoon of robots from flying through the force-field when suddenly a handful of Trandoshans floods the room from the door you just entered through. Weapon selection (EMP grenades to the robots, frags to the Trannies) and cover will rule the day in that scenario. Not to say that there's a "cover system" which has been romanticized by recent games such as Gears of War. This is the PC, you have buttons for "crouch" and "walk" and "lean", you can hide behind something on your own without a "hide behind stuff" button.

However, there's more to the game than just the weapons you have in your hammerspace. There are also turret weapons you can jump into and fire huge lasers or rockets at your enemies. In addition to stationary turrets, there are other "hot points" where you can strategically place proximity mines. Usually your intelligence agent allows you a small amount of time to "set up" for a big battle. The aforementioned robot invasion of a hanger is one such time, you have roughly 45 seconds to set stuff up before they arrive. Take that time to get the lay of the land, find the turrets, and place some proximity mines, you'll thank yourself.

"Hot points" are not just for you, however, and this is where the game really shines. Any one of your teammates can perform any action you're capable of, including things normally reserved for the player, like retrieving data from a computer terminal or placing proximity mines. No matter where you are on the map, if you have line of sight to something, you can point at it and hit "use" and one of your squad mates will go perform the appropriate action. You have one fighter, one demo expert, and one hacker on your squad, so sometimes it may take the appropriate teammate a few seconds to arrive, but once they do you can handle the fun part (shooting aliens) while the AI handles to boring part (holding "use" for 40 seconds). This is also handy for opening locked doors. When you come to a locked door, there are 2 options: Hack into the opening terminal (thousands of years of tech development and no one has invented an acceptable door lock in this galaxy), or place a detonator in the middle of the door to blow it open. You can do these actions yourself, but it's much more fun to give the command to your squad, because the scripted actions are fantastic. In "blow the door open" mode, the demo export places a charge, and when the door blows open he and the soldier throw a grenade through the opening while the hacker blind-fires around the corner. Occasionally your team will blow into a room and take out all the enemies before you can even get through the door. Now that's cool.

This strategy extends to turrets as well. You can order two teammates to man the guns while you and the demo expert handle the proximity mines, or you could be in the turrets and still issue commands. In combat, there are also pre-designated places where your teammates can be where they will do proportionately more damage than normal. These "hot points" server as places where you can give commands like "set up for sniping" or "set up for grenades". This allows you to keep a sniper up on a hill, a grenade thrower in the corner, and still lay waste to the bad guys out in open field. This added feature to the map design is what makes the game really stand out to me. At first your squad control seems extremely limited. Outside of combat, you can only tell them "follow me", "go ahead of me" and "stay right where I'm pointing." In combat, your controls are limited to only putting them in pre-defined locations. However, these locations are brilliantly useful for the most part, and really add to the game. Not strategically, of course, since there's no strategy in saying "go where the developers determined you would be of the most good" but it gives you a sense of power at least. For that, you get a WIN. It may not be superior in terms of open-world exploration or high NPC AI, but it's fun, it's Star Wars, and it's challenging even when you take advantage of the pre-made "be useful" points for your squad mates.