Tryzon?s Nonsensical Gaming Trips #43
Star Wars: Battlefront II (PS2, 2005) (Also on PC, PSP, Xbox)
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?..
DOOO DOO DOO DOOO DOO DA DOOO DOO DO DA DOO DEE DOO DOO DOO DOO DOOO DO DA DA DEE DOO DOOO DEE - Right, stop that. It?s silly.
When you?ve done as many Star Wars reviews as I have, thinking of new openings for them starts to get tricky. So, I thought, why not just recreate what you think of when someone says Star Wars? Then again, I could?ve simply written the words ?IMMEASURABLE AWESOMENESS? and it would have had the same effect.
At any rate, Star Wars is the pinnacle of sci-fi movie excellence, with probably the sole exceptions being Total Recall and RoboCop, and I have a feeling most males with nerdy tendencies could understand where I?m coming from when I say that. More fantastical than Star Trek but not entirely outlandish, it hits something of a magic G-spot. Ah yes, some clarification; 90% of the time that I spend showering love on Star Wars, I?m talking about the original trilogy and its mythos, not the prequels, though I frequently include the Expanded Universe in my discussions. I can only hope that my reasons for not hugely liking the prequels are obvious to you, but many of the elements that those films include are not inherently rubbish, even if the movies they came from are. For instance, any army of killer droids is going to be at least moderately cool, and I don?t have any problems with the clone troopers, either. It?s just a shame that the films they debuted in couldn?t have been comparably good.
I have made it my personal mission to one day own every Star Wars home game worth having, and have come some way towards achieving that impossible dream. However, I find it hard to imagine anything short of perfection being able to top today?s topic of discussion.
Pandemic, the famed developer, first sunk their teeth into Star Wars with The Clone Wars in 2003. That ended up quite similar to the Starfighter games, being a string of missions with involved piloting vehicles, only they were entirely land-based and there were a couple of on-foot segments. It?s a perfectly pleasurable ride, but its main purpose in history was to pave the way for true mastery.
2004 saw Battlefront hit, and it truly was mind-blowing at the time. Just as the slogan stated, you really could ?live the battles?. You were a regular cannon-fodder grunt caught up in galactic warfare, and it was incredible. True, places like Hoth have appeared in practically every Star Wars game ever, but less-explored corners of the cosmos could now be fought over. I won?t go into complete detail as to why Battlefront swiftly became my favourite Star Wars game ever made, simply because its sequel would rightfully inherit that title. As a side note, I feel the need to mention that Pandemic released not only Battlefront II in 2005, but also the first Mercenaries and Destroy All Humans!, both of which are comparably amazing. Apparently that was the year of the gasmask, then.
As you might have guessed from the title, Battlefront owes more than a bit to the highly-popular Battlefield series; both involve two teams of soldiers competing for control of bases that serve as spawn-points, and victory is achieved either by killing enough of the enemy or capturing all the bases. Simple enough, but throw in Star Wars and you?re onto a winner. Unlike Battlefield, Battlefront is primarily third-person, but you can switch to a first-person view and play like that if you want. It works well, despite what you might expect.
I never thought that the original Battlefront had anything wrong with its controls, but Battlefront II proved me foolish. For starters, rolling and jumping are now mapped to separate buttons, which means there?ll be none of the unfair deaths caused by attempting to perform one action and inadvertently doing the other. Also, the ability to lie down has been scrapped, leaving just standing and crouching positions. This is much more convenient, as I was always inadvertently going prone instead of standing up in the first game, usually with fatal consequences. You can also manually lock onto enemies at the press of a button, which can be helpful, though I tend to consider it cheating.
The vehicle roster has been expanded further to include a number of those introduced in Episode 3, with perhaps the most notable being whatever you call what?s clearly meant to be some form of early AT-ST. None of them give the same level of ?OMG I?M LIVING MY NERD FANTASIES?-ness that the classic toys do, but they?re still enjoyable and the variety on display is fairly impressive. Plus I?ve always had a soft spot for AATs. I do think some balance issues remain, especially since there?s often not much a few soldiers can do when one of the various tank-like monstrosities roll up to them, but you can often out-manoeuvre them long enough to either escape or whittle their armour down.
Many maps return from the first Battlefront, like Mos Eisley (which is still wretched a hive of scum and villainy), Endor and Hoth, but there are also some new contenders, including the Tantive IV, Mustafar and Utapau. There are only a couple that I just avoid whenever possible; Jabba?s Palace has a hungry rancor but is far too cramped, and the Death Star should be great, especially since you can die by walking into its laser, but is pretty tedious regardless. Maybe you disagree, but whatever the case, nobody?s forcing you to use those settings, so don?t get too angry about it.
More problematic is the bizarre decision to remove some of the greatest arenas from the previous instalment, sometimes replacing them with more mediocre ones to rub salt into the wound. Notable absentees are: Dune Sea and its hilarious Sarlacc pit; Bespin Platforms, which is admittedly a lot like Kamino; the Rhen Var Harbour and Citadel, the former of which was the only level other than Hoth to have an AT-AT; finally, Naboo Plains is only available as an ace bonus level, but not for standard battles. I can?t think why some of these were left out, but I suppose that?s what you play Battlefront I for. Might?ve been nice to have a single game with all the maps, but oh well.
Galactic Conquest was a game mode in the original, albeit one with little long-term appeal. You and an opponent took turns picking between one of a small number of planets to steal from each other through combat, earning usable bonuses from said planets. The idea was novel but the execution was flawed.
Battlefront II takes the same concept but fixes it. Now you and a rival take turns to steal planets from each other, utilising nearly all the possible maps. Playing against the computer is fun enough, but the best thing is spending a day competing with a mate in splitscreen. It actually strikes me as being like a much simpler version of a Total War game, only you directly control units instead of manoeuvring them with godlike powers, so you could also make comparisons to Mount&Blade. At any rate, competing for control of the galaxy is immensely entertaining and epic. Elements like the special homeworld each team has and the implications that using certain units or bonuses has give depth, but this is still not a real strategy game, by any means. GalCiv II it ain?t.
Similarly, the new Rise of the Empire mode is a relatively long chain of unique missions. They play mostly like normal battles, but often have twists to them, like having to defeat General Grievous as a boss of sorts. Most striking, though, is that it all adds up to form a cohesive and decent story, following the 501st Legion, a squad of clone troopers, from the Battle of Geonosis and culminating with the Battle of Hoth. Plot-wise, it?s nothing to rival Knights of the Old Republic, but taking a passable tale and sticking it onto Battlefront gets an enthusiastic thumbs-up from me.
There?s your standard Capture the Flag, which provides some amusement, but more intriguing are the odder options. Take Hunt, for instance; only available on certain maps, you?re given the opportunity to partake in such extraordinary activities as a wampa attack, a Mos Eisley stand-off between Jawas and Tuskens and the aforementioned Naboo level, which tasks you with murdering an army of Gungans. That last one is particularly good for stress-relief.
Maybe the largest single change from before are the space battles. Two teams, two capital ships. You can either nip about shooting down other fighters like womp rats, or you can attempt to disable the opposition?s vital systems for big points. This can either be done by bombing parts off the hull of their capital ship (though you?ve got to take their shields down first), or by parking inside the hangar and laying charges about. It?s supremely cool stuff, even if the computer isn?t very good at it, but competing with a friend takes that out of the equation.
But perhaps the most hyped-up new thing in Battlefront II would be the inclusion of playable heroes, including Force-users. Remember those lightsaber-wielding gits in the first game who?d wander aimlessly about and could only be killed in very specific ways? Well, they?re gone and have been usurped by versions of them that you can actually control yourself! Every so often, a player on a team will be given the chance to take control of that faction?s hero on that map. Some of the heroes are just like normal soldiers in function but much stronger, while the best ones have ?sabers and Force powers! Hurtling around as Vader, desperately dispatching rebel scum in order to keep the magical bar up is pure joy. Heroes can feel badly unfair against the already slow-to-think CPU, though, so I tend to turn them off in singleplayer.
One of the biggest improvements over Battlefront I is the balance. Anyone who?s played as the Separatists in that can tell you that there is something badly wrong with the droideka, namely that it?s too bloody powerful. He walks into a room with his shield up, absorbs all damage done to him and kills everybody before they can even run away. Battlefront II, meanwhile, has a droideka who works in much the same way, but isn?t practically indestructible when in his shield. As another nice touch, the deadly specialist units (like the droideka or Bothan spy) can?t be used until you?ve earnt enough points, which doesn?t take long but stops you spamming the enemy with minigun-toting clone commanders before a match has properly started. On top of all that, each team can only have so many of each kind of specialist unit running about at once, so it?s no longer possible to have an army of droidekas?sadly.
A very obvious way to make this the truly definitive Battlefront would have been to let you merge the time periods. Imagine the Empire fighting their past selves or a comparably evil mass of droids? It would?ve been glorious, but Pandemic didn?t implement it. Granted, a few of the campaign missions let you mix things up in an explained manner that doesn?t smeg up the timeline, but the potential here was colossal. I wouldn?t imagine there was a legal reason why Pandemic couldn?t have put in such a fantastic option, so why not?
Battlefront?s A.I. has historically been rather bad. Sometimes very: the CPU knows to run forward, shoot and capture command posts, but not much else. There are times when its behaviour becomes overly predictable and you can exploit it. For instance, it rarely bothers to try and stop you when you attack the shield generator in its capital ship, and indeed doesn?t really try to sabotage your ship from the inside itself. My famous example of idiocy that I always use involves parking an AT-AT outside the rebel hangar on Hoth and cackling as a constant string of snowspeeders crashes into the obstruction over and over. But it gets really annoying when your computer-controlled team-mates start acting stupidly, wandering into your line of fire, say, and then having the balls to penalise YOU for it. Overall, though, the A.I.?s level of retardation means that I highly recommend using the elite difficulty option, so as to have a vague challenge.
A key ingredient in Battlefront has always been the phenomenal sound work and all-round atmosphere. It honestly is utterly faultless Star Wars-iness, with every noise and detail of significance being just as it should. The music is completely from the films, but I wouldn?t have it any other way. Plus just try not to feel excited when the Imperial March starts up in the final minutes of a crushing victory.
Pandemic tried to implement a bonus system similar to that which would later be used so well in Urban Chaos: Riot Response. Here?s how it goes: performing impressive feats during a match, such as earning so many points or getting so many headshots as a sniper, will grant you either a temporary stat boost or a special weapon. This makes sense and I like it. Where the idea falls apart, however, is when these incidents become numerous. See, every time you earn a bonus, it goes into a universal tally. Achieve the Legendary rank for an award by getting it so many times, and you unlock that stat boost or weapon permanently. This is very, very silly when you consider that the A.I., as mentioned, has enough trouble trying to beat you as it is. The end result is that you stop experiencing even a slight challenge, and the stat boosts even constantly emit a beeping noise seemingly designed to cause madness.
Urban Chaos? bonus system works far better because it?s very difficult indeed on the highest setting until you go out of your way to earn the power-ups. Your reward for going the extra mile is a fighting chance, and that?s why it?s a successful mechanic. Battlefront II gets it wrong because it just makes you invincible. I wouldn?t complain as much, except the permanent bonuses can?t be turned off, so your only option is to start a new save. I did discover a workaround, however; just always say NO whenever the game requests permission to update your profile data and the numbers will stay low. Clever, eh?
Battlefront II is one of those games I?ve played so much that I?ve committed to memory all the maps worth bothering with and learnt many little secrets that give me the edge. Like the exploit that lets you restock your ammo by swapping to the droideka and then switching back, or the knowledge that unlocking the soldier in space battles is more of a hindrance than a help, since the computer is so thick that your team-mates will often pick the pilot for raids and use the soldier for dogfights. I?ve discovered so many little titbits that I gain some sick pleasure from it. And I like that.
There are a fair few silly bugs to be found, though the worst one I?ve ever experienced is the occasional looping of a music track for a few minutes. Other than that, they?re quite trivial, like how it?s possible to walk about on the outside of the big ships during space battles, but there?s little reason to, other than for the amusement of then jumping into the endless void. Any game will inevitably have some glitches if you look hard enough, but so long as they don?t negatively affect gameplay, they shouldn?t be dwelt on. Frankly, I just find them amusing, though the PS2 version?s frame rate is inconsistent, particularly in splitscreen.
As far as I?m aware, only the PC and PSP versions may still have online capability, though that can?t be proven by yours truly. Then again, I can tell you from personal experience that PSP controls and Battlefront don?t mix, which just leaves PC if it?s online you?re after, and the increased precision of using a mouse just sweetens the deal, so the PC game is a great option. Then again, the convenience of just plugging in another controller and enjoying some splitscreen action is one of the best things about the console versions, so it?s up to you.
At any rate, Battlefront II, much like the original, is a spectacular action-?em-up in its own right and one of my all-time favourites, but the flawless application of the Star Wars universe is what makes it outstanding. Even a soulless droid who doesn?t care for the brand will probably have plenty of fun with it, but all the nutters like me who have the action figures and periodically spout quotes will consider it heroin. Forgive the cliché, but the Force is very strong indeed with this one.
P.S. I feel compelled to point out that this is the best-selling Star Wars game of all time. Guess what the previous one was? Why, the first Battlefront, of course! This should tell you something. A third instalment was in development by Free Radical, creators of the absolutely phenomenal TimeSplitters franchise, but that seemed to fall apart after the studio went under and became Crytek UK. No idea what the status of Battlefront is these days, but it?s only a matter of time until they try to continue the success of the originals. Personally, I can?t wait.
UPDATE: I?ve since come into possession of the PC version and it is indeed superior in a number of ways, though I still think the ability to just impulsively have a co-op match with a mate makes the console versions worthwhile.
Also, you should maybe include the whole giant war mode thing for PC, since you've played it now. That makes things so much more fun.
