Star Wars Battlefront II (PC)

Of course in Battlefield 1942 "various vehicles" meant jeeps and tanks, in Battlefront II it means X-wings, TIE Fighters, AT-ATs and, for the first time, Episode III vehicles like the BARC speeder, Jedi Starfighter II and V-wing.

The biggest change to the game, apart from the new vehicles, is space battles with several of the levels taking part aboard giant space cruisers which you can exit in starfighters, have a dogfight in deep space around and then pilot back to for a bit more on foot combat. Levels include the Blockade Runner from the beginning of A New Hope, the space battle above Coruscant and Utapau and Mustafa from Episode III.

Another long awaited addition is playable Jedi, although you can only be one for a short time so as to not unbalance the gameplay. Although the emphasis is on online play the single player mode has been beefed up with better artificial intelligence and a proper story linking all the missions. "Star Wars fans, like this, they will", as Yoda would say (if he was real and wrote game previews instead of being a Jedi Master). -- Harrison Dent

This preview is based on an incomplete version of the game; features or problems mentioned above may not appear in the finished game.

Battlefront certainly doesn't belong to the darkside.


A great single player game, let alone multiplayer.   January 10, 2006
Mr. N. Stevens
18 out of 20 found this review helpful

Upon seeing reviews, vid clips, screenshots, etc., I decided to purchase this game, and I wasn’t disappointed at all.

Don’t be fooled into believing Battlefront 2 is more suited towards multiplayer. Not only is there a large campaign mode, which follows a group of Clone Troopers all the way from the end of the Clone Wars up until Empire Strikes Back, but there’s also a strategic Conquer the Galaxy mode. In this mode, you choose which ever side you want: The Separatists, The Republic, The Empire or The Rebels, and move from planet to planet, invading and defending various territory. And although the core of the game is first/third person shooter ground missions, there are also plenty of intense space battles along the way.

And what happens when you complete all that? You still have plenty of mission points to gain for your player profile, which unlock special weapons and bonuses that you can use in battles.

To be honest, there’s not much I can find wrong with it. With the above modes it’s a decent length, the graphics aren’t bad, all the memorable characters and vehicles are there, the ground battles are very entertaining and the space battles are spectacular…well, aside from having to bomb an enemy command ship’s critical systems over and over to win most space battles, which can get a little tedious after a while. But even if you get bored of that, just fly into their hangar, run around their ship and bring them down from the inside.

Basically, this is a very well designed, entertaining game, whether you are a Star Wars fan or not. Not only is it huge, the bug testing, apart from a few minor things, must been pretty much spot on (which is a rarity these days).


Please Don't Buy This, I Guarantee You Will Regret It   February 16, 2006
18 out of 28 found this review helpful

Unless you are a fanatically devoted Star Wars fan willing to blithely throw money at Lucasarts in exchange for an unsatisfactory product (i'm close, but apparently not that crazy), then this game is not for you.
This is because behind the marketing spin and product licensing lies a game with crippling flaws and poor gameplay.
Of course, in order to experience the sorry state of the gameplay you must first be able to run it; this can be a challenge in itself. Many people including myself have experienced not one, but several obstacles in achieving a working game. There is a copy protection issue which can result in the game telling you the disc is not in your drive. Dual core processors and recent nvidia graphics cards seem to baffle the program, despite having been available before the game was released. Indeed, most hardware configurations seem to take the game by surprise. There are fixes to these problems, however. I don't know about you, but i resent forking out for a game, then being expected to trawl through technical forums and edit game files to get it to work. Don't think that once you've got the game working your troubles are over, because running this game is far from stable. For a more detailed picture of this game's issues, i recommend the official forums, where unlike most games there is little talk of actually playing the game, rather people trying to play it.
You may expect that a game with so many problems would warrant a patch. You would be correct, a V1.1 patch has been released, however, this has failed to resolve the issues it was intended to fix and for many people has actually made things worse.
Now lets address gameplay, which can be divided into ground and space engagements. Ground gameplay is repetitive, unchallenging and glitchy. The the developers seem to have modelled the AI on their own limited intellect. Enemies stumble blindly into your fire and make no use of the limited tactical options (ie, heroes) available to the player. Whilst the available maps look great and immersive they are glitchy and too few.
Space combat looks fantastic and is fun if you can get over the fear that you'll soon be staring at your desktop. There are different space maps, but this is irrelevant as your objectives are always the same, against the same one capital ship per empire. You'll get bored of it rather quickly and find yourself doing the same thing over and over.
Multiplayer is ok, but with some tedious exploitable glitches, to be honest I haven't played it much because there are far better gaming experiences available.
If it wasn't for the Stormtroopers, John Williams music and other compelling Star Wars motiffs then hundreds of copies of this game would be languishing in bargin bins across the country right now.
To conclude, i'm sure there's a great game in there somewhere, but i'm afraid it's hidden behind rows of buggy code and unfulfilling gamplay. Yes, Star Wars rocks, but this game is so bad it does the franchise a disservice and does nothing for the Lucasarts brand image. Unfortunatly this game has the feel of a sloppily coded tie-in rushed into production to coincide with the release of the Revenge of the Sith DVD. It is simply not of the quality gamers expect in 2005, if not for the stunning graphics, you'd guess it was made (badly) a few years back.


best game ever !   May 7, 2006
Edward (Oxfordshire, UK)
13 out of 19 found this review helpful

when i first got this game i was worried i thought it would not work on our computer and that it would be rubish but then i was amazed by the graphics. you run arround as a jedi or a clone or in vehicles and starfighter even the first level is brill
reviewed by edward age 8


p.s.buy it, it is fab



Game this is not, begun the disapointment has.   November 7, 2005
12 out of 26 found this review helpful

When i started to play battlefront i was expecting the faults of the previous game to be fixed, the inability to go prone, the plastic feeling of the weapons, the innacuracy of the vehicle weapons when comapred to the films, the glitches, not to mention the fact that it was extremely easy.

To my disapointment very few if any of these things have been fixed, all this game does is improve upon the graphics of an ageing game engine slightly and add a few novelty items. The addition of a new character class is a pahetic attempt at making the game more interesting it fails miserably at this.

Space combat is the best part of the game despite it being exremely slow, considering that it takes place in space. The ability to baord and take control of an enemy ship had big big prospects when presented as an idea for the game, but this has been squandered, the larger craft are seriously undersized and contain as little as 4 or 5 rooms with easly destroyable features.

The ingame AI are dumb and badly programmed, they often hang around in small groups, as if waiting to get hit by genades.

The singleplayer campiagns are gltichy and dull and offer little challange, the addition of heroes and villans to thier repsective sides is a nice idea, but seriosuly inbalances the game giving you almost God-like control over an already easily conquerable battlefield.

This is a game to keep the kids quiet, nothing more.