OK, so years ago I bought Force Commander. I had some fun moments with it, but my memory of it was pretty uniformly negative. The big and ungainly UI, the horrific path finding, the over-the-top Hollywood feel of it all... I remembered all too well how bad a game it was. But lately I've been reading the strategy guide and found myself wanting to play it again, so when I found that there actually was a demo out, I ran and downloaded it. After spending days on getting it to run, setting compatibility mode to Windows 98/ME and finally figuring out that the two drivers I have to download have to be in the Force Commander directory's Resources sub-folder for some reason, I finally got to actually play it today.

Surprisingly, it was actually fun. It contained one single level (the first Imperial Ruul mission), and only a handful of units (stormies, Dennis Tantor or whatever his name is, an APC very handy when capturing turrets, the AT-PT, and the AT-ST, and the enemy only employed infantry and troop carriers, and there was no way to heal or repair units as far as I could tell, but I still had a smurfing blast. It was particularly fun to exploit the poor AI of the game by letting my army, sans APC, attack a turret and draw its fire, for then to drive the APC up to the turret's base and unload its cargo of half a dozen stormtroopers to capture the thing. The micromanagement is irritating, the AI sucks, and the graphics are old, and the briefing is simply silly, but it's still a decent experience, and it actually has a good atmosphere.

Makes me very, very sad for not having intact CDs anymore. Maybe I'll have a game store order it for me, though, much as I dislike giving LucasArts money these days (a feeling that'll probably pass when they start giving out good games again).