Posts Tagged ‘Star Wars Battlefront’

Star Wars Battlefront II

Star Wars Battlefront II is probably the best Star Wars FPS game released to date. Through the campaign, players are involved in major battles as a member of the 501st, an elite regiment of troopers, during the Clone wars and Galactic Civil War.

When playing there is no doubt that this is the successor of Star Wars Battlefront I, as many of the good points from Battlefront have been included and improved upon in this second edition. Probably the best part of the game, and the one which the developers of SWTOR can learn the most from, is the engaging story line. It really makes players feel like they ARE one of the clone brothers of the 501st, and we see the transition from Galactic Republic to Galactic Empire from this new and interesting perspective.

The single player campaign of Battlefront II has many improvements over that of its predecessor. Even though both games are set during the same time, with the same infantry regiment, there are enough different battles in the second instalment of the series to make it not seem like an updated version of the first. This is vital, because they do effectively tell the same story, and a few of aforementioned the battles ARE featured in both.

The campaign of Battlefront II is objective oriented (although some times you do need to resort to the familiar capture points and defeat reinforcements) which is what really allows for considerable story to be added to the game. During battles, if the player is doing well enough, it is possible to play for one life as a Hero character, such as Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi or Han Solo. This adds some interesting flavour to the game, as each of the Heros have their own special abilities, and are far stronger than normal units (although you do lose health over time).

Proper space warfare is also featured in Battlefront II, and provides quite a reasonable Star Wars flight simulator in doing so. Players can blast capital ships and other fighters from the outside, or board them and gut their interiors. Although it is by no means a fully fledged flight simulator, or even as in depth as X-wing Vs Tie Fighter might have been, it does have a nice spacey feel to it and is about as realistic as something designed to allow players to feel what flying a Star Wars starfigher might actually be like can be. This is another place in which the developers of The Old Republic could learn from Battlefront II, by implementing multi player space combat such as this, not just Star Fox style linear arcade modes.

In addition to the campaign mode there is a galactic conquest mode as in Battlefront I, and other Instant Action modes which are very entertaining. These include things like a Wampa invasion of Echo base battle, and an all hero battle-royal in Mos Eisley between our favourite Star Wars characters, regardless of what era they are from. One aspect which incorporates all of the game modes is the battle award feature. Players can get awards for achieving certain milestones during each life, and are given temporary upgrades for doing so. If enough of these milestones are achieved over the course of many battles, they are permanently awarded to the player and are in effect during any future fighting.

All in all Star Wars Battlefront II is a good quality Star Wars game, which can still be enjoyed even by today’s audience who are used to games like Call of Duty Black Ops and Bad Company 2. It offers many improvements over Battlefront I, and provides an engaging story and many hours of other content for players to enjoy.

Overall Battlefront II achieves a 8/10 Rating.

Pros:

Space and hero combat is very entertaining

Immersive campaign with the 501st

Nice visuals, game engine and general game play

Good selection of never-before-seen battles from the era

Cons:

The AI is once again quite unintelligent

Some of the classes, although cool, are rather useless

Minimal re-playability value

Star Wars Battlefront

Star Wars Battlefront will forever be a classic Star Wars game of console gaming. Its game-play is fast paced and interesting, and in this SWTOR has a lot to learn from it. For its time, it was a very new and exciting shooter, and allowed players to participate in all of their favourite battles from the Star Wars saga.

The game mainly revolved around conquest modes, where players had to capture and hold command points. A game could be won by either capturing every command point simultaneously, or by defeating all of the reinforcements on the opposing team. This is a fairly interesting game type, which is very lucky because almost all battles in the game are of this variety.

The units in Battlefront were pretty much what anyone would expect from a Star Wars shooter. There were stealth classes, snipers, soldiers and other special classes that could be unlocked during battles. Also on the battlefield occasionally were heros, but unfortunately unlike in Battlefront II, these could only be controlled by the computer.

There were numerous vehicles in Battlefront, as well as star fighters that players could pilot. It lacked specific space modes, so these fighters were constrained to flight within the atmosphere on the ground maps, which worked surprisingly a well (and is another thing the Bioware developers of SWTOR could learn from).

Outside if campaign there is of course an Instant action mode, and an additional Galactic Conquest game type. This involves commanding fleets and taking over the galaxy, one star at a time, which gives players much more freedom to pick their fights, although they are much the same as the ones encountered in campaign or instant action mode.

Battlefront has a good star-warsy feel to it, and enough content to keep the average player entertained for some hours. Even though every game is the same old conquest mode, this mode allows for enough uniqueness that battles are rarely the same, so players do not bore easily (even if they are repeating the same map over and over again). Although by today’s standards the graphics are pretty ordinary, at the time they were much more acceptable and even attractive in some regards. In this regard Battlefront and Star Wars The Old Republic are quite similar, as neither is trying to break new ground in the visuals department.

Over all Battlefront achieves a 7/10 rating.

Pros:

• Engaging Star Wars feel.
• Lengthy campaign with re-playability value.
• Good range of classes.
• Interesting vehicle combat and piloting.

Cons:

• Average Graphics.
• Repetitive conquest mode.
• Often foolish AI.