Star Wars: Battlefront
Publisher: Lucasarts
Reviewed by Andrew Liptak
Summary: Star Wars Battlefront is just like it sounds. It's set entirely on the battlefront of all six movies and then some. There, you play any soldier, fly any ship, drive any walker and play in any time period. Want to blast Ewoks during Return of the Jedi? Choose a Storm Trooper and fight against the rebels. Want to help the little buggers? Play as a rebel. Relive the battles of Geonosis, Hoth, Yavin IV, Naboo, Endor, and visit planets like Tatooine, Kashyyyk and others.
Note: While this game doesn't add anything new to the Clone Wars storyline, some of the battles you can play out are set during the Clone Wars, so we thought it would be fitting to do a review.
What Worked: First off, I am not a very big Gamer. I don't play them often, although I will pick up a couple every now and again on a friend's computer. This is what happened with Star Wars Battlefront. I must say, I was totally blown away by it. Almost everything, from the graphics to the combat was exciting and put me right into the Star Wars universe as one of the soldiers.
You can choose from a variety of maps, from Tatooine to Naboo, Endor and Geonosis and fight in the Clone Wars era or the Galactic Civil War era. There, you can play as several classes of soldier. You can play as an elite, which usually is a Droideka, Jet Trooper, Dark Trooper, a Soldier which is usually a Clone Trooper, Rebel Trooper, Storm Trooper, Advanced Trooper, which usually gives the soldiers a rocket launcher, scout/sniper, Soldier with a sniper rifle, and a pilot. Not all of the soldiers fall into this category, but it works fairly well. Plus, as Storm/Scout/Snow/Clone Troopers, you can actually have armor that works! In addition, you can call in a Jedi for your side: Mace Windu for the Republic, Count Dooku for the Confederation, Darth Vader for the Empire and Luke Skywalker for the Rebels. It's extremely fun to watch them in action.
The main thing is that the battlefield maps are fairly accurate. I think that the most accurate is the battle of Hoth, which is extremely accurate in dimensions, or seems to be. Geonosis and Cloud City are also fairly well done, as is Naboo. Yavin Four and Endor are have a little more creative liberty with them, but those maps are fairly exciting anyway. Most of all, the maps are detailed. It was awesome to run through the tunnels of Hoth, or to run in to the Mos Eisley Cantina. Little details like those are very good. Vehicles; This was one of the things that I was really looking forwards to. Every vehicle that you see in use for the game, you can drive it, and then some. You can drive an AT-AT, AT-TE, AT-ST, Droid Tank, Republic Saber Tank, speeder bikes, gunships, Jedi Starfighters, Cloud Cars, Droid fighters, transports and more. I am unsure right now if you can actually pilot TIE fighters or X-Wing Fighters.
What Didn't Work: I only have two gripes about the game. First, whatever character you have, you can't change your weapons, and the weapons seem to overheat rather quickly, or have a small magazine. I would often get into some situation where I was surrounded and was either out of ammo, or was loading, which takes a couple seconds. When playing as the ARC trooper, you'd think that they could improvise with a number of Republic and Confederation guns, but I haven't been able to pick up any. In the Imperial era, this isn't so much of a problem.
Gripe number two concerns the droids. They seem to be able to enter droid fighters, which shouldn't happen, and especially droidekas, which can't fly at all. Not a major problem, but it certainly bugged me for a while.
Overall, You want war? You've got War! None of that sissy Jedi action!
Rating: 8/10
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