Star Wars Battlefront II
Yes, it's better, and yes, you need to play it.
Published: March 13, 2006
It's a little weird, because these are the kind of issues that you'd expect in a PC game (well, back in 1998, maybe), but whether it's the fault of the GameSpy matchmaking or just the game itself, finding servers with a ping under 100 can almost always be counted on one hand. Of course, when things happen as God/Lucas/Pandemic intended, the game is glorious in its addictive qualities, instantly relegating itself to must-play status -- so long as you can go online, have a fast broadband connection and haven't played the first game to death, which can be a steep combination.
Online or off, the game does look fairly good. It's not terribly different from the first game in aesthetics, and the rigid nature of the controls really becomes apparent when you try to attack targets as a Jedi with controls that were not really meant for melee combat (watching from afar is even more amusing if it's a lightsaber duel, as characters will strafe and sprint past each other while flailing around wildly). Things like death animations and climbing in and out of vehicles, too, are a little too stiff at times.
Then again, we are talking about fairly epic 24-player battles here, and when things heat up, Battlefront keeps up for the most part. There are some framerate issues here and there, but the scope of the fights and the texture work does help things at least feel bigger than something you'd expect to see on the PS2.
Having any sort of ties to LucasArts and plumbing the deep depths of the Skywalker Sound libraries must be an audio engineer's wet dream, and the game reflects that. All of the blaster whines, the flat radio chatter, the massive explosions, the lightsaber hums, it all sounds fantastic. The Dolby Pro Logic II support is sound (ouch, bad pun), and the sampling of John Williams' scores is done with plenty of respect, but comprehensively too, so you'll hear old and new major tunes. And hey, any game with Temuera Morrison's thick Kiwi accent automatically earns bonus points from me.
So the question, then, is if the game is worth playing through again. This is, for better or worse, just Battlefront with a few added bits. The balancing that was done was minor, but welcome (AI is still, well, retarded, leading to plenty of team kills), and space combat adds a much-needed bit of variety to things, but is it really a sequel? No, it's at best an add-on pack, but none of that is going to matter for Star Wars fans, as it adds planets and areas that give you the kind of rush that only seeing things that were previously on film in an interactive medium can give you.
For everyone else, this is a definite must-rent. It's new enough that even if you blew dozens of hours playing the first game, you'll still enjoy the additions, and at the core so damned fun to play when things go well online that you can't really get this experience anywhere else. Familiar or not, it's still a blast, and if nothing else should replace the first game in your collection if you already have it. If you don't, you'd better find a way to experience it -- even if it's just a for a few days. You'll be glad you did.
