Posts Tagged ‘Other Games’

Star Wars Battlefront

An ice cave from 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.

Flying a droid figher (which you somehow get inside of)

Bookmark to:

Star Wars Galaxies

Star Wars Galaxies

Unlinke SWTOR, Star Wars Galaxies has been around for a long time. Released in 2003, it has had seven years to mature and grow. Nobody will argue that these years have been a wild ride for the game. There were some ups, as well as a few very well known downs. These were of course the combat upgrade and new game enhancements, which were met with unanimous negative reviews, and saw a serious drop in subscriber numbers. If anything is learned by the developers of SWTOR from their predecessor, it is to avoid changes like this.

That aside, Star Wars Galaxies provided an unparalleled Star Wars universe, where players could really choose their own path unlike any game, then or now. This is one area in which SWTOR falls down, as it seems it is not trying, and will never be able to, compete with the sandbox nature of Galaxies which attracted many in the first place.

SWG Space Ship with 3D Enabled

In many ways, Galaxies seems superior to the upcoming Old Republic. It’s space system was far more open, players were free to do what they pleased, and there were complex and challenging resource and crafting systems. Also incorporated were involved and detailed ship customisation sub-games which were both interesting, and generated a lot of repeatable content for players to continue optimising their craft.

The Player versus Player system in Star Wars Galaxies was also one of the better ones from any MMORPG today. Like the rest of the game, it was very open, and battles could and did take place anywhere around the galaxy, although they did tend to concentrate at a few heavily contested locations (Restuss anyone?). Large fights were possible anywhere, although there was usually significantly latency due to the poor servers employed by SOE (One of the games major flaws). So far, SWTOR does not seem to support such large scale conflicts, which has displeased many of its most avid supporters.

Player Combat in SWG

The graphics of galaxies were also somewhat more realistic than those of SWTOR, which has chosen to take a more cartoon-esque approach to visuals. As can be seen in the space ship screen-shot above, the game also supported various forms of 3D viewing, with cheap anaglyph methods available to all, whilst those with more advanced computer monitors could take advantage of polarised or shutter glasses.

Although the developers of Star Wars Galaxies did make many mistakes, they also did many things right. Their MMORPG still having a steady subscriber base as it approaches its eighth anniversary only confirms this. There are many things that Bioware can learn from Galaxies, and if done well and with patience, they should be able to, in SWTOR, avoid many of the problems of their predecessor, and incorporate many of the positive points.

Over all SWG achieves a 8.5/10 rating. Although a lot has changed since its release 7 years ago, the current game is well made and entertaining.

Pros:

• Involved crafting, equipment and space customisation systems.
• Entertaining player combat.
• Large open range game world.
• Good grouping, guilding and community tools.

Cons:

• Excessive lag.
• Very demanding on computer resources.
• Currently low-ish subscriber numbers.
• Some irritating bugs and game mechanics

A screenshot from Star Wars Galaxies

Bookmark to: