"Impressive... most impressive."
Star Wars Battlefront is hands down the best Star Wars game to date. It’s superb variety, ingenious gameplay, and authenticity to the movies all help to make it the masterful game it is. Being able to play in all the Star Wars battles as one of the troops is sure to deliver the Star Wars thrills that we’ve come to not expect from Star Wars games now.
Gameplay:
The gameplay in Star Wars Battlefront is simple, but well done. You are simply one of the many troops thrown into a battle to fight over supremacy of the battlefield. You can either play in the Clone Wars (Republic Vs. CIS), or the Galactic Civil War. (Rebel Alliance Vs. Empire) You can win the war two ways. You can either eliminate enough of the enemy troops that their reinforcement count drops to zero, or if you capture all the command posts and hold them for 20 seconds. You can capture command posts by standing near them until they convert to your color. When under your control, you can spawn there after dieing.
There are three modes in Star Wars Battlefront, Historical Campaign, Galactic Conquest and Instant Action. Historical Campaign doesn’t have much to it, but basically puts you on Instant Action maps with a couple tweaks here and there, and going along loosely to the Star Wars plot. You can also unlock pictures and concept art by beating the missions, which is fun. Galactic Conquest is more interesting, challenging you to conquer every planet by winning the battles on them. When you conquer different planets you gain tactical advantages such as having a Sith or Jedi fight with you on the field, or having your troops slowly regain health over time. While this tactical edge to the gameplay is nice, it doesn’t bring a whole lot to the table, and could’ve been a lot better. Instant Action is where the game shines though, just letting you play any map you want with any faction. It would’ve been nice if there had been more options, but such masterful gameplay doesn’t need to many options anyways.
You can be 5 different troops. You can be a soldier, a pilot, a heavy weapons expert, a sniper, and a special troop, which is different for each faction. Each have their own strong and weak points. Obviously, the pilot is best at piloting vehicles and driving tanks, due to the fact that, while in them, they constantly heal. The troop diversity adds a ton onto the game, and my personal favorite is the Jet Trooper, the Republic’s special troop.
Yet another thing Battlefront excels at is map selection. There are many different maps, ranging across Endor, Bespin and more! It really feels like the movie counterpart in most of the maps, but some fall a little short, such as Geonosis. But all are very fun.
The gameplay itself is very fluid. You spend most of your time running from command post to command post destroying enemies and taking over the Battlefield, but being able to get into a wide variety of vehicles, man turrets, and play the game in split-screen co-op adds a lot on to the whole package. With all these elements put together makes the perfect Star Wars game. But it’s not that this game isn’t without it’s flaws. It’s extremely glitchy, with troops dieing for no reason and glitching into the walls, it lowers the quality of the game, but for some reason, I don’t mind. Another bad point of the gameplay is the uneven feel of the battles. On certain maps certain factions win every time, and the only way to win is if you do really good, while sometimes your faction will win without you having to lift a finger. This especially limits the game if you’re trying to face a friend on an opposing faction because it’s never even. It’s by far the biggest flaw of the game, and pretty hard to ignore as well.
While this problem can make doing vs. split-screen pretty much worthless, the co-op makes the game much more fun. There’s endless fun to the teamwork that can be used, and it even features online play, not that I’ve tried it. The multiplayer is one of the reasons this game is so great, and would be much worse without it.
Graphics:
The graphics in this game are quite nice, with smooth animations and nice textures. Although they’re a bit faded and lacking at times, and could use some touching up, they’re very nice. They take a huge toll in split-screen, but they’re still quite enjoyable.
Sound:
The sound effects in this game our great. Every laser blast is spot-on Star Wars, and the voice snippets portray all factions very well. The ambience of being in a forest on Endor, and nearby waterfalls on Yavin are amazing, but are lose a lot of quality in split-screen. The music is classic John Williams fare, but can be oddly placed, especially in split-screen, playing snippets of songs every once in a while, which cuts down on the impact of it.
Value:
This game can go on forever, and with the Historical Campaign and Galactic Conquest it makes a very satisfying and long-lasting experience. You won’t get tired of this game, I know I’m still not.
Tilt:
With the superb gameplay, the long-lasting appeal, and the Star Wars flair and charm, this makes the perfect dream for any Star Wars fan, despite it’s apparent flaws.
Outro:
Well, I think I covered most of the main points of Star Wars: Battlefront, but I’m sure there’s much more to the game that I didn’t cover. It’s definitely the best Star Wars game to date, and should be checked out by any remote fan of Star Wars.