Battlefront Forces a New Perspective

The new Star Wars-themed game sticks you on the front lines of major cinematic battles.

Andrew Brandt, PC World

PC World Senior Associate Editor Andrew Brandt took a break from playing games to coauthor How to Do Everything In Windows XP Home Networking (Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 2004, 877/833-5524).

Back in November, I warned you that I might spend the subsequent two months playing Half-Life 2 exclusively. That didn't quite turn out to be the case. While I did spend a lot of time wending my way through the twisted HL2 storyline, I also spent a considerable number of hours in the service of the Empire--George Lucas's empire, that is.

So what was the game that could tear me away from HL2 for any length of time? It might surprise you that Star Wars: Battlefront, the new(ish) first-person shooter, took up as much of my free time as did any other game. But then again, Battlefront (which costs $50 and is available for the PC, Xbox, and Playstation 2) is no ordinary game.

Battlefront puts you in the front lines of nearly every major battle of the Star Wars saga (save for the big, climactic arena battle at the end of Episode 2). The game transforms you from a passive observer of the big battle on the ice planet Hoth, for example, into one of the Rebel foot soldiers, dug into the snow and defending the shield generator against an onslaught of Imperial walkers.

Unlike the turn-based strategy game Knights of the Old Republic, Battlefront doesn't demand that you choose only the light or the dark side of the Force. You can play either side--and switch allegiances instantly.

The conflicts are set during either the Galactic Civil War, otherwise known as the Luke and Leia era, or the Clone Wars in which the modern trilogy is set. Best of all, you can play just a few, quick rounds of Battlefront and then get back to everyday life; HL2 demands a lot more time.

Work Alone or Together

Battlefront's mechanics are heavily derivative of another company's first-person franchise. Dice, which wrote both Battlefield: 1942 and Battlefield: Vietnam, seems to have set the rules for Battlefront, even though Dice didn't have anything to do with the LucasArts project.

You choose one of five character types, each with different skills and vulnerabilities, just before you enter a battle area. You enter the game world by choosing a "spawn point"--a location that your team controls--on a small map. You appear in a random location within a certain radius of the spawn point each time your character returns to the battle after a death. As your team gains control of the map territory, you gain additional spawn points, closer to the front lines, by killing members of the opposing team who are near the spawn point, then by standing close to the point while a counter ticks down. Control gradually transitions from the enemy camp to your own.

The red spawn point is just behind the two characters.

Spawn points change hands faster--the countdown runs more quickly--when more members of your team stick close to the location, so it makes sense to attack in groups. But if you want to be a lone gunman, so to speak, you can. It just doesn't often make sense to do so.

Bad Guys Have More Fun

Of course, the time period in which you play determines whether your Stormtroopers are good guys or bad guys. But I can't deny that I love playing as a clumsy blaster-wielding Stormtrooper, no matter which time period. There's something deliciously foolhardy about fighting guerrillas in a jungle while wearing bright white armor with no camouflage whatsoever.

Besides, the Stormtroopers get to use the coolest vehicles, all of which can be commanded instantly: the monstrously large, hulking AT-AT walkers (and their puny cousins, the AT-STs); squirrely TIE Fighters; and tanks and armored personnel carriers from the Clone Wars era. Despite the incredible slowness of the giant walkers, can anyone seriously argue that the Rebels had, er, a snowball's chance in hell of beating the heavily armored Empire divisions on Hoth?

Meanwhile, Rebel sympathizers get to fly X-Wing fighters, Snowspeeders (the squat aircraft best used to spool cables around the legs of AT-ATs), and those incredibly fast, unbelievably dangerous hovering motorcycles that you should never, ever fly in a heavily wooded forest. In the Clone Wars era, the Droid Army of the Galactic Trade Federation gets a few additional vehicles, including some oddball tanks that look like a Patriot missile system mounted between two enormous bicycle wheels.

For every advantage a vehicle provides the owner, there's a countering disadvantage that helps balance the game. Ewoks, those cute, fuzzy teddy bears, unleash massive swinging logs that can take out an AT-ST with one crushing blow. Aircraft are potent weapons, but they are enormously difficult to fly using a keyboard and mouse. And players with antitank weapons can take out speeders and armored vehicles in a few shots.

A Few Nagging Problems

The game isn't perfect. In fact, a problem that exists in Dice's Battlefield games made it into Battlefront: AI characters, the "bots" that operate any character that you or another player aren't controlling, are just really stupid sometimes. They don't do a great job piloting tanks or AT-ATs. They drive the wrong way and get stuck in corners, unable to turn or move. And they follow instructions only up to a point, after which they go off and do their own (stupid) thing again. In the single-player game, the AI is so stultifyingly bad at driving that I often am forced to wrest control of a vehicle from the computer-controlled character just to prevent a vehicle's imminent and easily avoidable destruction.

While I've enjoyed taking the controls of most of the vehicles in the game, the flying ships--TIEs, X-Wings, and Snowspeeders, among others--are pretty much off-limits to me. I've never felt the need to get a flight stick to accessorize my first-person shooter games, so I'm stuck piloting craft with a mouse and keyboard. That's a bad idea: These are the worst flight controls you can use. On the bright side, I'm getting really good at ditching my aircraft into a platoon of enemies, so at least I take some of them out when I go down.

I'm also waiting for some new maps to appear: The originals are getting a bit old, and many of the custom maps that have been released online are just modified versions of the original maps--although one, called Jundland Wastes, is a real blast.

Battlefront isn't a perfect first-person shooter. But all in all, despite its shortcomings, the game makes for an entertaining romp that doesn't take too much of your precious playing time to complete.