Star Wars: Battlefront

aka: Star Wars: Battlefront (Classic, 2004)
Moby ID: 15220
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

For the first time in gaming history, after countless games depicting various aspects of the rich Star Wars universe (including some we never wanted to see), players have the chance to step into the boots of the average soldier in the wars that raged across the galaxy. Gameplay is based on the successful standards set by Battlefield 1942, but combat in Battlefront is even more massive and heated, vehicles are more predominant and the familiar starships are also included.

There are three different game modes to play: Historical Campaign (featuring a series of "historical" battles from the Star Wars mythos), Conquest (in which players vie for dominance of individual planets) and, of course, Instant Action. The game puts two pairs of factions at war: Republic vs Separatists and Rebel Alliance vs Galactic Empire. Each faction has four standard unit types (soldier, heavy weapons trooper, scout and pilot) plus a fifth, special unit which differs radically for each side. Famous Jedi and Sith are included as NPCs only in selected battles. Finally, the game offers almost all of the vehicles seen in the movies for players to fly, drive or hover and prevail.

Spellings

  • 星球大战:前线 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

352 People (252 developers, 100 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 49 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 87 ratings with 8 reviews)

Perfect for casual gamers

The Good
Graphically this game is very good. You really do feel like a part of the Star Wars universe in this one. Graphics help bring you into this game. This was not made easy given the grand scope of the prequels. The detail of the Star Wars movies (up to 2004) is preserved in this game with great success. You can relive epic battles from the Star Wars movies with good detail.

Sound and music is also very good in this game. This is important in any game, especially if it claims to be a Star Wars game. Sounds are authentic to the movies, such as the fellow playing Jango Fett in Episode II. His clone troopers are recreated in this game with perfect detail.

There are numerous weapons in the game, and some five classes of soldiers for each side. There are lots of vehicles too, all of which can make the difference between victory and defeat.

This game is not like Battlefield 2, which records so many of the moves you make in the game. In Battlefront I no permanent statistics are collected. This makes for a much more casual game as it does not require you to be a perfect gamer to enjoy the game.

The main campaign in this game is well done, with cutscenes taken directly from the movies to fill in the story. It is great to play alongside Mace Windu during the Battle for Geonosis, especially after seeing the jedi master leading troops in Episode II.

The Bad
Gameplay is not bad in this game but the controls are somewhat unintuitive, even for a FPS game. You cannot run and when jumping you cannot shoot. Although this does put you on par with the other characters on the battle map it hurts your ability to make precision moves.

The AI is not very good in this game. That is the case for a lot of games though.

A major weakness in this game is the air vehicles (X-Wings, TIEs, snowspeeders, etc). You find yourself making a lot of tight turns in this game, hurting your ability to set up an attack run on an enemy position. This is especially true when playing the Hoth map as you fly a snowspeeder trying to take down an AT-AT.

One odd thing in this game is that to hit your target requires excellent precision. Even an AT-AT with its enormous guns must be as precise as a little laser pistol to hit its target, otherwise the guns have little effect.

The galactic conquest mode is fairly short. This is not necessarily a problem, but more could have been included to make this mode more fun (ie more planets).

The Bottom Line
This is a good, decent and clean game. If you want to fight some of your favorite Star Wars land battles, any way you want, then this is a good game to try. Star Wars fans will not be disappointed.

Windows · by bb bb (25) · 2012

I still don't know what the hell is going on!

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...

PlayStation 2 · by Asinine (957) · 2011

The greatest Star Wars Game

The Good
I like that the game has many levels and characters you can play as. Also, there are tons of weapons and vehicles you can use. With its online play, you can play an even larger variety of people. You can change the difficulty to easy, if your not very good, or to hard, for those die hard veterans. Wonderful graphics and gameplay with excellent sound and tons of action.

The Bad
I didn't like that you can't actually play specific people like Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker. The load time is kind of slow but that's not too bad. The computers aren't to smart either.

The Bottom Line
Star Wars Battlefront is a great, action packed game. With tons of levels loaded with creatures and vehicles of all sorts, this is the game for you. If you like action, you'll love stomping through Hoth as an AT-AT pilot or battling it out on Naboo as a Droid. With online play, this game just gets better and better. Crush the Galactic Empire or the Trade Federation as you choose when and where to fight. Capture bases and destroy your enemy. See how well you stand up against your opponents. Destroy the Empire in an X-wing on Cloud city or as a Rebel Vangaurd. If you like any type of action, futuristic, or shooter game, then Star Wars Battlefront is right for you.

PlayStation 2 · by Dark Lord (31) · 2005

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

Continuity

Along with "Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force", this game was released to tie in with the Star Wars DVD sets.

Online servers

The game's online servers (which were hosted on GameSpy) were shut down on 5 December 2012.

Multiplayer was restored specifically on Steam and GOG (via the Galaxy client) versions of the game on 1 May 2020 with patch 1.3.5.4.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Silverblade.

Macintosh added by Corn Popper. Xbox One added by Kennyannydenny. Xbox 360 added by Matthias Günl.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Apogee IV, MegaMegaMan, Zeppin, Plok.

Game added October 19, 2004. Last modified March 14, 2024.