Star Wars: Battlefront

The Good
I'm not a devoted follower of Star Wars, but I am a big fan of massive war games such as Dynasty Warriors so when I first caught sight of this game, I was ecstatic and after renting it, I had to have it, even if it meant shelling out the $50 (back in the day when it was new), that is how much fun it was.

The music and sounds are incredible, authentic Star Wars music from the past along with the genuine sounds of the blasters, speeders, even the voices. The gameplay can be very addictive, with so many things that you can do, from strafing the ground with aerial vehicles to utilizing snipers, there is no end in sight on how to win the battle.

The variety of vehicles also make this game fun to play, snow speeders, AT-ATs, Droid Starfighters (the most powerful in my opinion) and the option to choose the era, either the CIS revolt or the Empire Rebellion on most of the planets keeps things fresh.

The Bad
There were a few things that bothered me, one of which is how short it can be, you can easily tear through enemy forces fast, especially with an experienced human teammate, even though there almost 10 worlds with 2 stages a piece, it's very easy to finish the game in almost a half hour.

Another thing that bothers me is just an opinion, but the lack of having the option to fight against enemies from other eras would have been fun, it would be nice to play against the Empire using the Droids. Another is a better placement of some respawn points, for example on Hoth you can respawn underneath an AT-AT, but you can easily be stepped on by it as soon as you spawn, making it very frustrating.

Sometimes the game can be a bit easy and the Ally AI can be brain-dead at times, such as getting in your line of fire or running at a shooting enemy without stopping to fire back. The single-player missions can be a bit shallow, so playing with a human friend can be much more entertaining.

The Bottom Line
Really this is a great game to play despite its little faults, but for real excitement, hook up with a buddy or relative, either fighting against each other or teaming up to see who is better (a personal best for me and my brother is 20 minutes beating the game on campaign teaming up while we fought each other that lasted up to 3 months going back and forth). Even if you're not a Star Wars fan, at least give this game a whirl, you might be pleasantly surprised about how much entertainment can be taken from this game.

The Good
What you’re looking at is gorgeous presentation with some of John Williams’ great music scores and epic foley sound effects. The live-action cutscenes set the stage as much as the mission briefing. Every planet and battle front you go to has plenty of space, multiple routes for you to fix and flank your enemies. Many notable battles from Naboo to Hoth seem to show you what you didn’t see in the Star Wars movies.

What you can do during the battle depends a great deal on available resources, choices you make and creative moves that you execute. There are turrets for defense, kill zones to pin your foes, vehicles to spearhead enemy territory and specific troop classes you can pick to fight the battle differently. You get a decent variety and play style whether you’re an OOM battle droid, Republic Clone or Empire Stormtrooper. There’s enough content in the game to make playability last.

The Bad
You might think that, with practice and tryouts, you would be ready for this game. But when you go deep into the gameplay, there are many problems you need to withstand to play it through and through. One problem is the lack of balance between the types of soldiers. You only get two weapons, nothing else. Your abilities as a rocket trooper or sniper have very limited ammo, you need an ammo droid at all times. And the healing droids have a slow rate of healing. And speaking of slow, you’re going to find your soldier spawning at the most inconvenient spots that force you to do a marathon of jogging, wasting precious seconds to enter the battle. If you'd spawn at a command post nearer the frontline or of your choosing, that would have worked.

The controls are another matter. Mouse can be jerky and make aiming precisely a chore. Controls are not predefined well since your finger on the mouse can accidentally slide on the right mouse button and throw a grenade you didn’t mean to toss because we all take traditional modern shooter controls for granted. But the worst part of the game are the flying vehicles which seem to soar out of control and crash using the reverse mouse aim. Why couldn’t there be manual ascend, descend and accelerate buttons for user friendly movement? You’d best stick to boots on the ground.

The Bottom Line
Battlefront did some things right like capturing the Star Wars lore and atmosphere perfectly and paved the way for a fantastic battle simulation framework. Unfortunately what problems exist make it less fun to play, where you expect to fight harder. Still there is decent genuine challenge. Perhaps specialists like Kyle Katarn or RC-1138 would have fared better, but that’s wishful thinking. As long as you stick to choosing a regular rifle trooper and nothing else, you should last throughout the battle without too many losses. It’s gun toting time across the galaxy when you grab yourself a copy and get it running.

The Good
Every fight is rather big for Playstation 2 standard, both the multiplayer and singleplayer matches put you in the role of a soldier in the middle of the battlefield along with a few hundred other soldiers. There are lasers flying everywhere, armies taking over bases and you are a relatively small part of it all. It is an interesting take on what we expect from war games, the kind of games where we are supposed to be everyday soldiers, but can take a few hundred bullets and grenade shells to the face. Here you will just have to outwit the AI if you want to be relevant.

I am a big sucker for multiplayer games with vehicles in it (see also Halo 3), I simply love it when I can step into a car whenever I feel like and cruise around while firing lasers at everything that survives the initial collision. The Star Wars universe is home to some pretty basic cars, but you may also take over Walkers and aircraft... I probably don't have to explain how insanely awesome that is. Flying over an enemy base and firing a huge laser into the main room is so much fun that it should probably be illegal.

You can choose what kind of soldier you want to play as, meaning you will select between different classes every time you respawn. This choice can make a lot of difference and choosing the correct spawn location is also something to keep in mind because you are naturally not going to live very long if you spawn a sniper in the middle of a settlement that is under attack. I often found myself switching between the classes all the time because the battles have the tendency to be very unpredictable, you might be doing fine with a standard assault class for a while until some vehicles drive into your base and you find yourself switching to a rocket launcher.

The AI is pretty good for a game as hectic as this, their main tactic is to overrun enemy settlements, but they at least try to dodge bullets and encircle the base. When they are given a vehicle they will also do pretty well and if an objective is in danger they will try to fix it without abandoning the main battlefield altogether. I especially like it when they get into a flying vehicle because they will try to protect ground units during their dogfights, which both looks impressive and really saved my hide from turrets a few times.

The Bad
The truth is that I have never watched any of the Star Wars movies. I don't like sci-fi, I was born too late and I simply don't have any interest in them. When I got this game with my new Playstation 2 I was hoping it would be nice to me and at least explain what I was supposedly doing, but instead I got a very poorly explained story. I played this game in a bit of a trance, going from battlefield to battlefield with not a single bit of understanding. It was kind of fun, but I wish there would at least be a narrator to explain how I went from mining center in the middle of space to a jungle level within the same five minutes.

I don't like doing tutorials before I start a game for reasons I consider to be very obvious, you just want to get started with the game and not play through an hour of boring instructions. Left 4 Dead fixed this rather well by giving advice as you got across new features of the game, if you found a grenade a little message would pop up telling you how to throw it for example. I kinda hoped Star Wars would do the same, but while rarely needing it, it would have been nice to get at least a few hints now and then. When I first played the Jet Trooper for example I had no idea how to use the jet and during a mission in the snow I had to fight these huge walkers which I had to take down by somehow putting a rope around its legs. Those are the moments when a simple message telling me how to pull that rope out of my ass would be VERY welcome.

The game's audio was really messed up and my copy of the game seems to be fine, so I assume it is a programming error of sorts. The most common problem was dialogue getting stuck or the narrator telling me things about the battle about a minute after they happened (regarding events such as taking over an enemy base or taking a huge hit to our reinforcements). Normally I wouldn't really mind seeing as I got through the game just fine and I couldn't really care about the story anyways, but it was just very problematic during combat when I wouldn't be able to reinforce a settlement because by the time the message would arrive, it would already have been taken over.

While it is fun to drive around in vehicles, it is not nearly as fun when you have to fight one. The main problem is that unless you can specifically target the enemy riding it, you will likely die before the vehicle will. Most vehicles just have an ungodly amount of health, even when firing rockets at the most common ones it will take a while to take them down. It is also doubly unfair when they have a mechanic onboard that repairs the vehicle in question, this was the case during the snow level too. Most of the time a vehicle only counts as one or two reinforcements too, so all that effort is kind of a waste in the end.

The Bottom Line
Star Wars: Battlefront has some pretty grave problems that would normally give me enough reason to drill the game into the ground and I have certainly given bad reviews to much better games for much lesser problems, but I just have to admit that I had fun when playing Star Wars: Battlefront. I had no idea what I was doing, but the hectic combat and the size of even the smallest conflicts was just so thrilling that it felt like playing a game like Space Invaders, you don't need context, you just need a weapon and enemies to fire at.

If you are a Star Wars fan you will likely love this game, judging by the other reviews here on this website it may even be a great game once you know what is going on. The few, rare people that aren't fans (like me) can probably do a lot better than this game. Am I going to review the sequel to this title? Yes, I certainly am, but not until I have played Ratchet and Clank. I want to know what all this "best franchise ever" is about...