It never felt that credible, and always seemed angled towards a console audience than either a Battlefield or X-Wing Vs TIE Fighter PC fanbase. When, exactly, did Wampas start attacking Rebel turrets on Hoth?īut then, this slightly obscure stuff sort of makes sense as part of the language of a rough shooter like Battlefront II. It's amazing how Pandemic extrapolated this ludicrous scenario out of those six films, but I almost admire the audacity of an idea that's this entertaining to watch. They actually look like job-for-hire extras wearing costumes, especially when you activate the sprint animation. Today, for example, I watched twenty Wampa ice creatures plod through Echo Base on their way to take out a Rebel outpost, which is made ten times worse by the human-like animations on the Wampas. In this, the species of the chosen map fight the invading forces.
One mode no-one seems to be interested in (and for good reason) is Hunt, which I admit I've only ever played offline. I must admit, I hate Assault in Mos Eisley, but it seems to be a mode with enduring popularity among the game's online audience. It's what would happen if Dark Horse commissioned me to draw a Star Wars comic at the age of 10: fan service channeled through unrelenting waves of awful. I'm not a stickler for Star Wars canon or anything like that, but I'm sure someone got angry about it in 2005. It's amusing, seeing Darth Vader force choke Yoda to death, or killing Emperor Palpatine with a laser pistol as Han Solo while two Chewbaccas contend with a Darth Maul and a Jango Fett.Ĭharacters jump to Spider-Man heights, force powers toss budget-looking models of silver screen icons around and every single death is greeted with an identical bowing animation. There's a Mos Eisley Assault mode in Battlefront II that is a hero character-only melee, where Jedis, Sith, smugglers and bounty hunters cross timelines to all fight in this construct of identical buildings. Then again, we live in an age where this happened alongside a no doubt wiki's worth of merchandising nonsense. Īnd it is still Star Wars, though what it does with Star Wars is so silly and what I would assume to be off-brand that it should theoretically make the licensing team at Lucasarts hurl.
They are, however, still the best looking bits of Battlefront II, as illustrated by my X-Wing foolishly going to battle with an Imperial Fleet up top, plus it's still fun to land an A-Wing in a Star Destroyer hangar and blow their systems up from the inside, even though that never happened in the films ever.
As we noted in our review at the time, X-Wing this ain't, as players spin round in circles trying to lock each other in their sights amidst a fleet of larger vessels. Space battles are slightly more refined to control, but even more throwaway. What it means is that 2005's Battlefront II is still somehow the best way of having large-scale Star Wars multiplayer battles on land (not so much in space), but despite that merit it's been outstripped by most modern class-based multiplayer shooters.Īrriving just over a year after the original Battlefront, Battlefront II added new classes to the original's straightforward soldier-heavy-sniper focus, notably the overpowered fire-spewing menace that is the Bothan Spy (I don't recall Mon Mothma mentioning invisibility cloaks and flamethrowers when remarking that many of them died to bring the Rebels information, but as I'll get into, it's far from the daftest off-brand offence in Battlefront II).
Lucasarts' changes in management, Free Radical's collapse and EA's purchase of Pandemic probably didn't help matters, even if DICE's version is at least in production now.
There's been some serious money left on the table with Star Wars: Battlefront III's ongoing non-existence in the last ten years.