Star Wars Battlefront II
Yes, it's better, and yes, you need to play it.
Published: March 13, 2006
Ever since PCs got a solid online multiplayer component to first-person shooters, there's been some variation on the King of the Hill mode. It's a simple concept: arrive at a spot and pick off any chumps trying to move into your territory, whoever can do it longest wins. The simple capture-and-hold dynamic is a blast, but it wasn't until Battlefield 1942 came along that an FPS was merged with more strategic squad-based elements like specific classes and multiple capture points and more action-oriented additions like vehicles.
The first Star Wars Battlefront more or less lifted these elements and gave them new life in the Star Wars universe. Same basic concepts, but now you had Jedi and AT-ATs to goof around with. It worked, and worked well, becoming the most popular Star Wars game ever, and in this industry, that can spell but one thing: a sequel.
Battlefront II is, for all intents and purposes, the same formula as the first game. In much the same way that Battlefield 2 on the PC offers new maps and fancier graphics, this BF2 heaps on more controllable special characters for both the light and dark sides of the force, lets you play through nearly every single major battle throughout the first three movies, with plenty of appearances from the latter (or, uh, first) trilogy.
Thing is, if you played the first Battlefront, you already know about all this stuff. There are improvements (and I'll get to 'em in a second), but the sensation you'll get isn't déjà vu, it's a case of things being almost completely freakin' identical. Is that a bad thing? No, of course not; any opportunity to play through more maps with rebalanced vehicles and ultra-powerful heroes is ever a bad thing when the core gameplay is already this fun, it's just, well, familiarity breeds contempt.
At the very least, the game does introduce two things that the previous offering didn't: space battles and an actual story-driven single-player game. The latter lets you drop down into the fancy helmet and stark white duds of a stormtrooper in the 501st, the one battalion that managed to go though every major fight as the Empire slowly formed under the twisted machinations of Senator-cum-Emperor Palpatine.
As a nameless soldier, you're divvied out orders in a thinly-veiled extended tutorial that teaches you the basics of the game before you inevitably discover how much fun the online game is, and this is important, because depending on the server you eventually hop onto, you can get creamed in a matter of seconds if you don't know what's going on or what to do. You'll learn the different classes, experience taking control of a hero character after slaughtering enough enemies and generally just learn the ins and outs of both the tweaked elements from the first game, and space combat, which actually requires a bit of training.
The first Star Wars Battlefront more or less lifted these elements and gave them new life in the Star Wars universe. Same basic concepts, but now you had Jedi and AT-ATs to goof around with. It worked, and worked well, becoming the most popular Star Wars game ever, and in this industry, that can spell but one thing: a sequel.
Battlefront II is, for all intents and purposes, the same formula as the first game. In much the same way that Battlefield 2 on the PC offers new maps and fancier graphics, this BF2 heaps on more controllable special characters for both the light and dark sides of the force, lets you play through nearly every single major battle throughout the first three movies, with plenty of appearances from the latter (or, uh, first) trilogy.
Thing is, if you played the first Battlefront, you already know about all this stuff. There are improvements (and I'll get to 'em in a second), but the sensation you'll get isn't déjà vu, it's a case of things being almost completely freakin' identical. Is that a bad thing? No, of course not; any opportunity to play through more maps with rebalanced vehicles and ultra-powerful heroes is ever a bad thing when the core gameplay is already this fun, it's just, well, familiarity breeds contempt.
At the very least, the game does introduce two things that the previous offering didn't: space battles and an actual story-driven single-player game. The latter lets you drop down into the fancy helmet and stark white duds of a stormtrooper in the 501st, the one battalion that managed to go though every major fight as the Empire slowly formed under the twisted machinations of Senator-cum-Emperor Palpatine.
As a nameless soldier, you're divvied out orders in a thinly-veiled extended tutorial that teaches you the basics of the game before you inevitably discover how much fun the online game is, and this is important, because depending on the server you eventually hop onto, you can get creamed in a matter of seconds if you don't know what's going on or what to do. You'll learn the different classes, experience taking control of a hero character after slaughtering enough enemies and generally just learn the ins and outs of both the tweaked elements from the first game, and space combat, which actually requires a bit of training.