| Too
busy to do a truly massive, in depth review of SW:BF, so here's
the reader's digest version.
There's
one universal truth when it comes to Star Wars games. They're
either amazingly good (ex. Jedi Knight) or outstandingly terrible
(ex. Force Commander). Like the battle between the Dark Side
of the Force and the Light, there is no middle ground. When
I walked into the store last week and saw Battlefront I was
torn. I'd either be giving George Lucas more of money for
something I'd never play more than once, or I'd be a happy
little Star Wars nerd with a new toy. I took a deep breath
and put my money down and..... I'm a happy little Star Wars
nerd. Praise be unto the Emperor!
Premise
Unless you've been in hiding in a deep hole in Afghanistan
since the late 1970s, you should be somewhat familiar with
the Star Wars universe story line. The Rebel Alliance and
the Galactic Empire are embroiled in a civil war, and are
busy trying to take planets away from the enemy, and in the
process, kill them really dead. You'll also be thrown into
the middle of the Trade/Clone Wars from the new movies. In
Battlefront you'll play many of the famous battles from the
movies, most notably in my opinion, the battle of Hoth. You'll
be playing as a Rebel, Imperial, Clone Trooper, or as a battle
droid. In the single player battle, the game switches you
back and forth between the teams as the game advances. You'll
be able to control multiple player classes, as well as vehicles,
again depending on the map.
Gameplay
If you've
played Battlefield or Battlefield: Vietnam, you've pretty much
played Battlefront. The
maps have control points that your team must capture. When you
approach a control points you'll see that it has a little hologram
over it that displays the logo of the team that has it, and
it also appears on your map as friendly (green) or hostile (red)
When a point is captured, your team can respawn there, and if
you control over half of the points on a given map, your opponent's
tickets (reinforcements) will start to count down slowly. Killing
an enemy player will also cause their team to loose one point.
Some the vehicles also act as a mobile command/spawn point.
(The Imperial AT-AT walker for instance.) To capture a control
point you must eliminate all of the enemy players around it,
then hold it for a certain amount of time. There's a little
counter that shows the flag going to neutral, and then counting
up in your team colour, as long as no enemies appear there to
challenge it again. Players are unable to spawn in at neutral
flags. Some maps will also have a target that must be destroyed
such as the shield bunker on Endor to achieve victory. You can
also win by capturing or destroying all of the control points
on the map and holding them until the victory timer hits zero.
Team work is critical in Battlefront, as all of the classes
are required on the field in most of the fights for your team
to be ultimately triumphant. Combat is first person by default
in both infantry and vehicles, but you can switch your view
to third person if you prefer to play like that. In fact, sometimes
it's handy, and unlike most other first person shooters you
actually get a crosshair in third person. I found that flying
some of the aircraft worked better for me in third person than
in first. There are voice binds to give your teammates basic
commands quickly, and the AI in single player actually seems
to obey you pretty well. One interesting thing is getting "bounced".
A explosion near you will sometimes just send you flying, but
won't kill you. You'll take a few seconds to recover and pick
yourself up and away you go again. Multiplayer browsing is handled
by the ingame Gamespy interface, and there's tons of servers
up so it's easy to find some people to play with. If you have
a Gamespy account there's also stats tracking avaliable, which
can be accessed at the BF website. I love stats tracking. :)
Graphics/Environments
Obviously
the dev team put a great deal of effort into the graphics
and maps on this game as it's quite pretty. Models looks detailed
and sexy. The one notable exception is the wookie model. It
looks horrible. The game features tons of eye candy, with
light rays streaming down into forest glens, huge desert vistas,
awe inspiring destroyers passing over the battlefield, laser
bolts flying everywhere during fights, small fires from near
misses, and best of all: TONS of detail in the environments.
Unlike many games where the locales just sort of feel....
Wrong would be the best way to describe it. There's no little
piles of rubble around, no underbrush in the woods, things
like that. The maps in Battlefield actually feel inhabited
and realistic. Environmental effects like rain and lightening
look very good and add to the feel of the game. Terrains range
from city streets, arctic fortresses, forests, cities on the
water, Cloud City, the desert wastes of Tatooine and more.
(Watch that first step on Cloud City, it's a doozey!) You
have to watch out on a few of the maps as well, not only for
the opposing team but for native threats, such as the Sand
People and the Sarlac on Tatooine and the annoying Ewoks on
Endor.
Sound and Music
As per
usual in a Star Wars game, you've got all the classic music
and sound effects that are such a huge part of the phenomenon.
There's just plain nothing finer than mounting up in an Imperial
Walker, cranking up "Imperial March" on your speakers
and attacking rebel scum. Sound effects are excellent and
true to the movies and previous games and the music is of
course awesome. Even in the Star Wars games that were horrible,
the music was still kick ass. (Again, use Force Commander
as an example.)
We like guns! And of course we like vehicles!
What
would a shooter be without things with which to do the shooting
with? We're talking weapons of course. Each class of character
in the game has different abilities and armament, which they've
balanced quite well for the most part. All of the armies have
four virtually identical classes, as well as one special one
that is unique to that team. Soldier's are armed with an assault
rifle, blaster pistol, and grenades. Anti-Armor troops pack
a locking rocket launcher, pistol, grenades and mines. Pilots
automatically repair damage to any vehicle they're riding
in, can repair vehicles and mounted weapons as well as droids,
and drop health and ammo. They're armed with a different main
weapon for each army, pistol, and a fusion cutter. The special
classes are interesting and quite powerful if supported properly.
The Clones and Empire get a jet pack equipped trooper, who
can be especially effective on the city maps. The Rebel's
Wookie smuggler is equipped with a grenade launcher and timed
bombs and the Droids... Ohhhh.. They get the Droideka. Remember
the cool rolling droids with the shields and the twin blasters?
Those guys. Bwhaha.
There's
also a wide variety of vehicles you can command, from snowspeeders
(now with 100% more cabley goodness!) and transports to Wings
and Tie Fighters from my personal favorite: The Imperial AT-AT
walker. It causes much manical laughter to rampage with one
of these massive bad boys. Many of the vehicles contain multiple
positions, (ex. gunner/driver) which you can switch between.
As far as I know, this is the first Star Wars game where you
can actually pilot the vehicles. (And no, I don't count pod
racer.)
Bugs
The only
real bug we found during play testing was minor, but quite
annoying. There's a Tatooine map where the Empire is gaining
their vengeance on the natives of Mos Eisley for assisting
the Rebel Droids C3PO and R2D2 in their escape from the planet's
surface. Darth Vader arrives to assist in the battle, and
promptly stands in one place and does nothing for the entire
map. We tried to replay it multiple times and the same thing
always occurred. A few days later we went back, and he was
unbugged and running around playing lumberjack as he should
have been. There were some odd things with the enemy AI where
they flat out refused to shoot at anything, or get caught
up on some terrain and just stand there, but such instances
were very rare. A few sound glitches in multiplayer. Overall,
nothing was found that detracted from gameplay and enjoyment.
Conclusion
An excellent game, that will provide hours of enjoyment
for everyone. If you're not a fan of Battlefield type games,
or hate Star Wars it's not for you. Then again if you hate
Star Wars you probably wouldn't be buy it regardless. Watching
the movies and having a clue as to what's going on makes it
even more enjoyable. We could have done without the full motion
video interludes.. But.. Meh. It's still a darned good game
and a worthy addition to George Lucas' coffers.
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