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Star Wars Battlefront - D-Dave - 09-30-2004
For those of you interested in this game I put together this short Review.
First of all I love Star Wars (even though Episode I and II traded some of the athmosphere for stylish looks) so I got this game on release date and was realy looking forward to playing it.
So after 2 days of Single-Player and some days of online Multi-Player here are my impressions:
The story is, well, not existent, but that is not a real problem. Team-based strategy oriented Shooter do not realy need a story, do they?
There are basicaly two eras that you can play in: the Clonwar and the Galactic Rebellion so you get to play as Clones vs. Droids or Rebels vs. Imperium plus a few "neutral" enemys / allies.
Each side has their version of the four "standard" units (which are a basic soldier, a rocket-trooper, a sniper and a pilot) plus 2 "special" units.
The gameplay is very much like Battlefield 1942, so the goal is to gain control over as many spawnpoints as possible and decimate the credits of the opposing team.
Enough foreplay. Lets start with the good things:
-Looks: Just beautyful. The units are nicely rebuild from the Movies, especialy those imperial walkers are just great. The landscapes are also very nicely done. Ranging from more open maps to city streets there is a large variety of locations. One thing to point out is that on those maps that are covered with snow and ice the Rebel and Imperial Units are dressed accordingly.
-Sound: Oh wow, good job there. Even in software mode without effects the ears believe being in the middle of the Movies. Turn it to hardware mode with effects and a good set of headphones or a surround-sound set of speakers and this impression gets intesified. The blasters sound "realistic" as do the various vehicles and the voices are taken straight from the movies too.
So summing up the look and feel is realy authentic and fun.
Now to the down sides:
-Stability: There are massive reports of crashes, bad performance and the like. My own imporession is that some aspects of the 3D-engine are a little instable. For example the first Singleplayer Mission is to battle the Gungan army on the fields of Naboo. They have a large shield surrounding their primary spawn point (just like in Episode I) and they toss around tons of granades. This combo of effects seems to destabilize the engine as it regularly crashes to the desktop.
This is on a system featuring 1 GB RAM, an Athlon XP 3000+ and a ATI 9800 pro which is completely water-cooled and that has not crashed once during Doom 3 or any other high system-requirement game.
-Net-Code: Even on extremely low ping servers (<50ms) there are frequent lags and teleporting characters, which is realy annoying on maps that feature "neutral" enemies which are completely server controled (in other words, the comp knows where to aim but the players don't)
Being able to join servers seems to be a little random too...
-Manual: ridiculously little information leaving lots of controls and important issues to be discovered (for example weapon funcitons, side dodging and the like)
-Light-Sabers: While it is not the ONLY Weapon the Star Wars Universe needs it is somewhat frustrating having only the Computer controlled "Heros" use those. Puuduu!
As this game is a clear port of the Battlefield 1942 series it seems to be fair to compüare the two:
-Spawning-Interface: Badly done, when selecting the Character class one does not see how many of each type the team already has so more often then not the team is rather unbalanced (at least in public games that is) and even worse after selcting the spawn point and hitting join, the countdown to respawn starts on a different screen. This results in the bad side-effect that when the selected spawn-point is lost during this period you will spawn on the last selected one which could bring you to the most inappropriate place, like 30 Seconds away from the Battle.
-Sniper-Class: Problem is that almost every weapon has zooming ability and when only single shots are fired are almost as accurate as the sniper weapons but have a much larger clip and reserve ammunition as well as a faster rate of fire. Now the Sniper Rifle does have twice the zooming capeability it simplay lacks power.
Even a fully zoomed perfect headshot does not take down an enemy. One needs two hits at least. Bah, bad balance. Actualy makes me wonder if the game discriminates between different hit-zones at all.
All in all the game is fun to play but has some realy annoying downsides.
So I guess it is ok for Star Wars Fans while all others may like the Battlefield series more.
An alternative could be the Star Wars Mod for Battlefield...sort of like the best of both worlds (I guess that mod will increase in quality quite a bit after the modders have ripped some resources from Battlefront *g*)
Anyway, I hope this helps those interested in the game.
Have fun, I'm off to kick some Rebel-scum's Butt. :lol:
Dave
Star Wars Battlefront - Kevin - 09-30-2004
Can you sniper Ewoks like in the commercial? Can you do that right out of the box? I thought about renting it for the X-Box just to be able to do that.
Star Wars Battlefront - Haider - 09-30-2004
It is a great game, and runs very stable at my computer. I have only two small complaints: the installation was a hassle (it took 4 attempts until I followed the tips on the LA-forum to copy the files to the harddisk and installed it from there) and the netcode is simply not good enough for a (more or less) pure multiplayer game.
Star Wars Battlefront - Nicodemus Phaulkon - 09-30-2004
Dear LucasArts:
"DSL/Cable Modem required for Multiplayer"
Kiss my grits. Those of us in the hinterlands suffer enough having no other workable option from dial-up; take your requirements and stuff 'em in the personal orifice of your choosing.
Oh, and George needs a straight-jacket; keep him away from the movies. I recommend a padded stall in one of the barns on Skywalker Ranch. Be certain to change the straw bedding frequently, as he seems to be churning out an ungodly amount of crap in recent years.
Your's sincerely,
Nicodemus.
Star Wars Battlefront - JustAGuy - 09-30-2004
I'd like to add a little, as that was the PC version that D-Dave was reviewing.
I own the Xbox version, and it's quite good. The A.I. for the bots is awful, just awful, but other than that, it's a fantastic online multiplayer experience.
You need DSL/Cable for any FPS online, since they're twitchy and require reflexes and quick reaction time. Any lag causes death... So, considering that Xbox Live is a service that only allows Broadbanders, this shouldn't be a problem, should it? Thankfully, what I've played so far, lag has not been a problem, and games have been extremely fun when played with well coordinated players.
Voice chat helps team coordination, but eventually, you get this little high-voice kid sqeaking and squalking away on the mic... Damn, I just loathe those buggers. But I digress...
The meat of the game is excellent; you experience the major battles as a soldier of your choosing. In the Xbox version, you can play up to 12 on 12, with bots for each side. The bots are dumb, and often times ruin your vehicles (like, they'll jump on a speeder and crash it not five feet in front of him), but it still is cool commanding a few of them and leading them into battle. On the Xbox, you can switch between first and third person views, which is helpful in some situations, but most times, I just stay in 3rd person.
There's a couple of balance issues with the game that probably won't be addressed, such as the sniper being a bit weak, and the pilots(Engineer class) being over powered (some pilot classes can shoot immediate-exploding grenades, and then refill their own health and ammo! Not fair!). These are minor issues over all, though.
Vehicles are super fun. There's nothing like flying a snow-speeder around the legs of an AT-AT, tying it up and subsequently dropping it to the ground. I'm also a fan of the Endor speeder; the blurring effect when you hit high speeds is really quite well done, and gives a great sense of speed. AT-STs and the like are also a blast to ride around in. Did I mention Taun-tauns? :)
The computer controlled heroes are a bit of a let down, since they're just as dumb as the rest of the A.I., but it's nonetheless cool to see Luke Skywalker in his flight-suit on Hoth tearing through some Snow Troopers.
All in all, they did a great job with Battlefront. This is the only game of it's kind on the Xbox. To be sure, this is a mutliplayer game, despite it's tacked-on single player campaign. If you liked Battlefield 1942, or you like large-scale FPS battles, and you like Star Wars, you can't go wrong with this game. That is, if your broadband is relatively good, and you have Xbox Live (or system link -- I had a few good games on my home LAN).
Star Wars Battlefront - Guest - 09-30-2004
Would you prefer Lucas took the PlanetSide approach?
PlanetSide was(I assume it still is) sold as being playable on a modem, Yes its playable, but you are a big gimp, lagging all over and ussually the first obe to dies in a shootout.
I have to give Lucas Arts some credit for being honest with potential customers who would have terrible gameplay if they bought it.
I say this as someone trapped on a 56k.
Star Wars Battlefront - D-Dave - 10-01-2004
Gnollguy,Sep 30 2004, 05:44 PM Wrote:Can you sniper Ewoks like in the commercial? Can you do that right out of the box? I thought about renting it for the X-Box just to be able to do that.
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Playing on Imperial Side on Endor map you sure can...and some of those stupid wookies as well B) (the latter actualy on all maps when facing the Rebel-scums :ph34r: )
Star Wars Battlefront - JustAGuy - 10-01-2004
D-Dave,Oct 1 2004, 12:07 AM Wrote:Playing on Imperial Side on Endor map you sure can...and some of those stupid wookies as well B) (the latter actualy on all maps when facing the Rebel-scums :ph34r: )
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Personally, I enjoy shooting those damn Gungans. It's quite satisfying.