There are few franchises in the history of video games that can compete with the prolificness of the Star Wars franchise. The fine people of LucasArts have managed to turn nearly every scene in the series of movies (and even some that never made it anywhere near the movies) into some sort of interactive experience over the past twenty years or so. With only a controller, one could control Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy, pilot Anakin Skywalker’s pod in races on Tatooine, fly an X-Wing, fly a TIE Fighter, fly both an X-Wing and a TIE Fighter, and even create your own Jedi in the far past with the option to fight for the forces of good or be drawn by the seduction of evil.
The one thing that has never been possible in the Star Wars video games, however, is to play an ordinary Rebel or Stormtrooper and recreate the climactic battles of the Star Wars movies. Enter Star Wars: Battlefront, a shooter more than a little bit influenced by the enormously popular Battlefield 1942. In a variety of battlegrounds strewn across all six films (including the yet to be released Revenge of the Sith), the player can take on the role of Rebel soldiers, Stormtroopers, members of the Droid Army, or Clone soldiers in the service of the Galactic Republic.
Each battle takes place in a battlefield representing a pivotal battle in one of the Star Wars trilogies. Each faction has a set number of reinforcements, which are drained every time one of the soldiers is killed and must respawn. A faction wins the battle either when its opponent’s reinforcements are completely drained or when they control all of the command posts that are scattered across the map. Since the command posts also serve as spawn points for the faction that controls them, the dynamics of the battle shift significantly with each captured command post. The faction with more command posts will be afforded more options for attack, while the faction with fewer command posts will concentrate around a couple of spawn points, making the final command posts the most difficult to capture.
Each faction has five soldier types for players to choose from each time they respawn. The most basic is the standard soldier, who typically has a repeating blaster rifle and some sort of grenade in addition to the standard hand blaster. Each faction also has a sharpshooter and a heavy weapons expert, who are equipped with a sniper rifle or rocket launcher, respectively, instead of the repeating blaster rifle. Most factions also have a pilot, who is fairly weak in terms of personal weapons, but can instead heal vehicles as he rides in them, and can rebuild health and ammo dispensers around the map. Each faction has one unique unit as well, including Wookies, Dark Troopers (returning from LucasArts’ Dark Forces), Jet Troopers (essentially Jango Fett from Attack of the Clones), and Droidekas (the rolling, shielded droids, most notably from the opening scene of The Phantom Menace).
The battlefields themselves range from mediocre to extremely impressive. The best battlefields are, without question, the ones that provide the most opportunities for vehicle combat. Hoth, in particular, is just crazy fun, with AT-ATs and AT-STs stomping their way toward the shield generators, while the Rebels take to Snowspeeders and stationary turrets to keep them from their destination. However, there are maps designed for more close-quarters combat, sans vehicles, and those just don’t have the same intensity level to them, like the Temple on Yavin 4. It is also extremely easy to get lost on some of the battlefields, and the mini-map in the corner often isn’t a whole lot of help in this regard. However, the bad maps are more the exception than the rule, and Battlefront does a good job of making the player feel like he is actually an individual soldier playing a part in a large, significant battle.
In fact, in the single player mode, the game does too good a job of conveying the feeling that the player is simply one small part of the overall battle plan. Since the level is cleared only if the battle is won, and the player can only control one of 32 or so combatants, the human player has remarkably little influence over the eventual outcome of the battle. In some battles, I had single-handedly eliminated a full quarter of the opposing army, and still managed to lose the battle. What’s worse, the player really has little choice as to what role he wants to take in the single player mode; to put it more bluntly, if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself, because the AI teammates simply cannot be counted on. What that means is that you can’t spend a battle sniping at opposing units and rely on the AI soldiers to take the opposing command posts, because they likely won’t. If an AT-AT is heading straight for you, then you’d better grab a rocket launcher yourself, because that’s the only way that thing’s going down. What’s worse, while simple orders can be issued to nearby AI soldiers, there is no way to control the overall strategy of a battle, so it’s often difficult, if not impossible, to get the support one needs to prepare a full-on assault of a heavily defended command post. The result is that the single player battles are extremely anti-climactic, because the player can play his best and still fail, or vice versa, so the outcome feels arbitrary at best.
To make matters worse, there are some game balance issues as well. In general, it seems to me that the dark side forces are significantly more powerful than their light side counterparts. The Droideka, in particular, is pretty well imbalanced, given that they are given an extremely strong shield (that does need to be recharged from time to time) as well as a powerful repeating blaster. One or two Droidekas defending a command post can easily take on at least a half-dozen Republic soldiers with no trouble. The vehicles, too, are overpowered. While it should be difficult to take down an AT-AT, for example, there should be some sort of counter-strategy available, especially given that the Republic is rarely given an equivalent vehicle to fight with the AT-AT, mano a mano.
The other main problem with Battlefront is that there is really just the one way to play. It should be noted that there are different single player modes, including Instant Action, and a Historical Campaign where a series of battles are reenacted in chronological order. There is also the Galactic Conquest mode, where each player, in turn, chooses a battlefield, and winning in all the battlefields on a given planet provides a bonus that can be used in subsequent battles, like extra reinforcements, better trained soldiers, or a nigh-invulnerable Jedi to aid your cause. However, the fact remains that all the battles have the same objectives; while there are occasionally some bonus objectives like destroying the Shield Generator or taking down specific vehicles, the battles always require the two factions to try to acquire command posts and drain reinforcements. There are no Capture the Flag style battle modes, for example, and while the battles are fun for a while, they tend to get old quickly.
This is less of a problem online, which is clearly how Battlefront is meant to be played. Up to 16 people can play simultaneously over Xbox Live, and any empty slots are filled up with AI teammates. Assuming that your teammates are conducive to teamwork, some of the single player problems can be alleviated, as several players can coordinate to take a particular command post, or a couple of players can stay back and snipe enemy aggressors without worrying that the offense will fall to the wayside. However, the online interface does leave something to be desired; for example, features that most Live players have come to expect, such as a pre-game lobby and the Gamertag of a speaking player appearing on-screen, are nowhere to be found in Battlefront. The game also assumes the worst as far as how many people one can host by default; instead of auto-detecting the speed of the connection, it requires the player to tell it what kind of connection he has in order to determine how many people that connection can host. Lag has been a concern as well, though LucasArts has issued a patch that should help some “connectivity issues”. Even despite the issues, though, Battlefront is much more fun online than off, assuming that one can find a large enough game with the right people playing.
The control is fairly straightforward and familiar to anyone who has played first person shooters on the Xbox before. I found the use of the black and white buttons to change weapons a bit awkward, but otherwise everything is fairly intuitive. Even if it’s not, the auto aim is so good that you barely need to be able to control your soldier anyway; as long as you are within a quarter of a screen of your adversary, you’ll probably hit him, and continue to do so even as he moves; needless to say, players desiring more of a challenge should turn this feature off. I did find the starfighter controls a bit loose; I eventually gave up on being an ace pilot, because I could never pilot anything for more than a couple of seconds without crashing into something (usually the ground). Other than that, Battlefront is pretty easy to pick up; after the short tutorial, you should be good to go.
Graphically, Battlefront is decent, but clearly not the best effort available on the Xbox. The battlefields are reasonably well detailed, and certain stages really do an excellent job of recreating the Star Wars experience. Others, though, particularly any dark or heavily forested area, are simply muddy and difficult to navigate. Endor is easily the worst example of this, simply because there are so many obstacles, all of which are either dark green or dark brown, that it can be excruciating to get from point A to point B. There is also some slowdown at times, which is somewhat to be expected given the number of moving objects that the game has to manage simultaneously. The clips from the movies in between scenes in the Historical Campaign are a nice touch, and while they aren’t integrated as seamlessly as they are in the Lord of the Rings games, they do an excellent job of setting the stage for the next battle.
Battlefront’s audio is what one would expect from a Star Wars game. The standard lightsaber and blaster sounds are all here, and sound true to the originals. What voice acting there is (generally limited to battle information coming over radio transmissions) is authentic as well. Of course, given that the Star Wars movies have provided a plethora of quality battle music, much of that is used as background music for Battlefront’s battles. It’s hard to take issue with the classic Star Wars music, so there is no disappointment here.
Let’s be blunt: Star Wars: Battlefront is no KOTOR. Of course, it’s no Super Bombad Racing , either. Battlefront is a decidedly average Star Wars game that is extremely fun as a rental, but wears thin with repeated play. If you have a lot of friends on Live that have Battlefront, there are worse ways to quench your online gaming thirst until Halo 2 comes out. Otherwise, put the money for this game toward the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD (Hayden Christiansen and all); you’ll get much more replay value out of that than out of Battlefront.
