Star Wars: Battlefront - Review

Added October 10th, 2004 by Colin

Introduction:

Star Wars games have always had a reputation of occasionally not sucking, and for many franchises that wouldn’t exactly be a positive statement, but in the field of movie-game adaptations, that’s downright glowing. Though steadily improving, movie based games tend to be absolutely terrible, and the many poorly tested multi-platform titles are don’t do much to fix this stereotype. There is hope, however, as some recent games have been making a valiant effort to turn around this trend, foremost among which is The Chronicles of Riddick, which actually surpassed the movie it was based on, a rarity in the game industry. So, is Star Wars: Battlefront another step in the right direction, or yet another step backwards? The answer is a mixed one, so read on to find out more.

Gameplay:

Battlefront is a Battlefield 1942 clone, no questions asked. Its gameplay is based off the same general ticket system, classes, vehicle types, and control points as Battlefield. That’s not to say that Battlefront isn’t at all original, its just that most of that originality lies within the Star Wars license, and not any inherent gameplay additions. All of the classes, vehicles, and maps do have a very definite Star Wars flavor, and no matter what class you are there is absolutely no doubt that you are playing a Star Wars game. In Battlefront there are four sides, which are divided into two groups, all of which share the same class types…

Soldier- Equipment includes blaster rifle, pistol, and grenade. It is the general purpose cannon fodder class, so if you want to blow stuff up minus that pesky “planning” thing, this is your best bet.

Assault/Anti Armor- The requisite rocket launcher class, the Assault class has such original and utterly non-cliché gems as the missile launcher, pistol, grenade, and mine dispenser. It is good against vehicles, but does take quite a few rockets to take down any decent sized vehicle, so bring along a few friends before trying to take down that AT-AT.

Sniper/Scout- Has the sniper rifle, pistol, grenade, and “recon droid”, which can be sent out to explore areas from safety. The recon droid is a decent idea, but in a fast paced game like Battlefront, this feature remains mostly unused, since you’re better off just looking through your sniper scope then sending out the droid.

Pilot- Very seldom used by players, the Pilot has a charging weapon, pistol, repair tool, and health/ammo dispenser.

Special- Side-specific, each side has a different special class, ranging from the jetpacking assault troops of the Republic and Empire to Wookies of the Rebels.

All of the sides are balanced, if not from the classes then from the level design, which does an excellent job of presenting a balanced playing field, with each side having an equal chance of winning. One thing to make note of is that each side only playing its regular adversary (Republic vs CIS, Empire vs Rebels), so no hot rebel on droid action I’m afraid. One thing that is great about the class design is the vehicles. Every single vehicle is fun to use, since there is something inherently fun about blowing Rebels away in an AT-AT. The vehicle specifics change from side to side, but the types of vehicles remain the same throughout all sides…

Scout Vehicles- Hop in one of these, and prepare to crash into stuff… a lot. High speeds, low armor, and bad weapons lead to scout vehicles being a glorified taxi to other vehicles, so don’t expect to win any battles with these. Examples of Scout Vehicles include STAPs and Speeder Bikes.

Medium Assault Vehicles- Sporting average weapons, average armor, and average speed, these vehicles manage to be the height of mediocrity, while still managing to blow up stuff with ease. Some of the vehicles in this category include landspeeders, AATs, and hailfire droids.

Heavy Assault Vehicles- Heavily armed, armored, and slow; spider droids and AT-STs fall into this group.

Heavy Assault Transport- Ridiculously powerful, ridiculously well armored, lumbering, and ridiculously fun to drive, these are the biggest, baddest vehicles that you can get your hands on in Battlefront. Some of these vehicles include the AT-AT, MTT, and AT-TE.

Starfighters- Flying fighter craft, these are almost impossible to pilot well thanks to some of the worst flight controls in recent memory, the only real use for starfighters is ramming them into enemy vehicles. X-wings and TIE fighters fall into this category.

Attack Transport Flyers- Basically flying assault craft, these aircraft can haul around troops while cutting enemies to shreds in the process. Unfortunately, these aren’t actually utilized well in game because of the AI, which seems to refuse to actually get in to fill up the extra slots, leaving players to try to fill it up, which almost never happens.

Speaking of bots, one of the biggest innovations in Battlefront is the use of bots to fill up games to make them appear bigger then they really are. On PC, this is useless as you can just play with real people on a dedicated server computer, but on Xbox most people just can’t host 24 players and not have massive lag. This is a great future that should be looked into more by other developers making Xbox Live games, like Battlefield: Modern Combat. It really is a great idea. When implemented well. Which in Battlefront it is not. At all.

The issue is not in the core idea of filling up small servers with bots, but the bots themselves, which have the ignoble honor of having some of the worst AI in any game, ever. This isn’t just run of the mill bad AI, this is AI as bad as Daikatana. Bots will run to base from the front lines for inexplicable reasons known only to the programmers who made them, drive snow speeders straight into the ground, and get hopelessly confused by impassable obstacles such as buildings with open doorways.

There are 3 options in Single Player: Galactic Conquest, Historical Campaign, and Instant Action. In Instant Action, you simply select which level, or list of levels, you want to play through, which side you are going to play, and then play it. Galactic Conquest you take turns with the Computer, attacking and defending the different planets, selecting a special power granted by your already owned planets. Not very innovative, not very interesting, and not very fun. However, Historical Campaign is another beast entirely. In this mode, you select either Galactic Civil War, or Clone Wars. In the Galactic Civil War mode, you play through the original Trilogy, and in the Clone Wars, you play through the Prequels, playing through the battles of the era in order of their occurrence. To keep this from being a glorified Instant Action playlist, each map is usually separated by a clip from one of the films, a short text briefing, and some actual (GASP!) objectives on select levels, such as destroying the Gungan Shield Generators on the Battle for Naboo. I for one would have loved to see those same Shield Generators in multiplayer, but apparently it isn’t meant to be, so if you want to see Gungans and Shield Generators, play Single Player. Another problem with Historical Campaign is that as you play through the Clone Wars campaign, after most battles it plays a clip from one of the movies, which is a nice change of pace. But, then when you finish the last mission, it just plays a scene from Episode 1, which makes no sense, because it has nothing to do with that last mission, and it would have been far cooler to have some sneak scene from Episode 3 or something. It’s a very small thing, but really goes to show the lack of general polish in the game. Despite these issues, however, Single Player is relatively well featured, but is brought down by the terrible bots, which could have, with more polish and time, made the Single Player far better.

The next problem with the game is the entire hero system. Everyone knows that Jedi’s are Star Wars, which puts Pandemic into a Catch-22 scenario: add a Jedi class and create one of the most unbalanced games of all time, or leave them out of the game entirely. Luckily, they came up with the bright idea of having an AI controlled Jedi on each side, which are powerful enough to turn the tide of battle. This is a great idea… in concept, which is unfortunately utterly ruined by terrible AI, hit detection, and animations. Seeing Count Dooku running into battle should strike terror into the hearts of all those on the Republic team, but instead he is merely a small nuisance. Shooting a hero only causes them to stands, continuously blocking shots while standing still. This leads to long winded duels between heroes and AI soldiers, with the heroes standing blocking, and 6 of their opponents shooting. Not only that, but heroes take as much damage as an AT-AT, so no matter how many rockets, grenades, or laser blasts are fired at them, they will just keep living unless you want to spend 1 minute shooting them. Because of this, most players simply run past heroes, leaving them to deal with far more complicated things like navigating around trees. More than once, I’ve seen a hero walking between two points inside a building, oblivious to everything in the game, except for those two points. At least there is a silver lining to the hero system, as Battlefront generously includes the option to turn off heroes.

I don’t mean to say that the entire game is all bad. It isn’t. And that’s for one reason alone: the level design on a select few maps is fantastic. Most of the maps are small and forgettable, but the ones that are good are absolutely incredible. And when I say incredible, I mean that they are amazing. Hoth, a prime example of this, is one of the best levels in any game. Ever. There is nothing like hopping into an AT-AT and blasting away rebels, or zooming across the frozen landscape in a snow speeder dodging enemy fire, and taking down an AT-AT with a tow rope. These are absolutely incredible sequences, which are unfortunately hampered by the core Gameplay- namely the bat hit detection and spammy weapons. These issues run through all of the game, as it seems like halfway through development, someone realized that the hit detection is completely off, and to fix that they should make the most common class (Soldier) have a gun with a massive clip that also fires fast, leading to much spam on the part of both sides, which in turn downgrades every single level, no matter how inherently cool.

If there is one saving grace for Battlefront, it’s the Xbox Live functionality, even though even that isn’t particularly well done. The game is obviously multiplayer-focused, and it shows in how it is fun when you get into a good server with a bunch of friends. Lag isn’t much of a problem, though hit detection still is, but thankfully voice is as well done as in every other Xbox Live game. The only real problem with the Xbox Live multiplayer is a lack of 3.0 functionality, and that means no clans, no competitions, and no voice messaging .The lack of clans and competitions is fine, but voice messaging seriously hurts the game overall, as it’s a pain getting a game together without being able to communicate well with people on your friends list. All in all, the Live functionality is average. And, just like Live, the gameplay too is simply average, with a few exception of a fun gameplay sequences that keep it from being worthless.

Graphics:

The graphics in Battlefront are, as with the rest of the game, average, with a few notable exceptions. Textures are generally low quality and boring, bad weapon models, and physics that are a joke. However, the architecture and layout of Hoth and Endor do make up for these issues to some extent through some very nice eyecandy in the form of well-detailed vehicles, objects, and a few fun elements, like the AT-ST crushing logs on Endor and the massive and perfectly scaled AT-ATs, which tower over everything else in the game. Physics are of the canned kind, mostly limited to grenade tossing and flying bodies, which just don’t cut it anymore with physics engines coming out that are practically photo-realistic. On the other hand, however, Battlefront does have some very nice water effects, fantastic explosions, and great character models. And, then again, it also includes an absolutely terrible 1st person mode, activated through the option menu, suffering from some of the worst weapon models of the generation. How can it be that the 3rd person weapons are great and the same 1st person weapons are terrible? I still haven’t read a decent answer about it anywhere, but they are truly terrible. Just like much of the game, the graphics aren’t all bad. But they also aren’t great, and Battlefront again settles for mediocre, when it could do so much more.

Audio:

If there is one part of Battlefront that is exemplary, it is the audio. From the John Williams score blasting out from your television while blasting away Stormtroopers to the authentic sounding lasers flying everywhere, everything sounds absolutely amazing, especially through 5.1 speakers. From the main menu to Endor, everything sounds 100% Star Wars, and is truly something to behold.

Controls:

The controls themselves are pretty normal fare as Xbox shooters go, following Halo’s example in most things. There are some issues, however, as aiming just always feels a bit “off”, whether through some tiny amount of lag or bad design, the end result is the same: lots of blaster rifle spam to compensate for the controls. The directional pad is used to issue orders to nearby bots, which generally don’t follow the orders anyways. Overall the controls are pretty… you guessed it! Average.
Replay:

Battlefront isn’t a bad game, it’s just not. In fact, it’s a pretty good game. It has some great locales, vehicles, and sound, which most of the year would be enough to warrant a buy. Except for the fact that this is one of the most competitive holiday seasons for games, ever, and because of that, this game just doesn’t have much longetivity. The question to ask yourself, is whether or not when MechAssault 2 comes out, you’ll still come back to Battlefront? What about when Knights of the Old Republic 2? Or Halo 2, which is coming out in just 1 month? You have to ask yourself, are you going to want to continue to play this game 3 months from now, and I think that answer is a resounding no.

Summary:

Battlefront is a good game, with a lot of small problems that all add up to create a terribly polished good game. There’s some fun to be had if you look past the issues, but with so many other games coming out soon, it just isn’t worth the purchase. If you are looking for a fun weekend rental while waiting for some of the Christmas releases, give this baby a whirl, and you’ll have a good time.