Battlefront

Mat came round yesterday and we spent most of last night playing Star Wars: Battlefront on his Xbox in splitscreen mode. It’s a truly excellent game that really captures the feeling of ‘being there¹’, and I can’t wait to try it on Xbox Live when I finally get broadband.

Gameplay is similar to other squad based shooters – pick a class and try and meet objectives. In all of the missions I played, the objectives are essentially ‘Domination’ from Unreal Tournament – convert all the ‘bases’ to your colour. Like UT, you have to hang around the bases (or command posts) for while to capture then convert it to your side.

As usual with these sort of games, the ‘grunt classes’ are the best all rounders, but you can make use of the other classes, especially the snipers. I can imagine the classes being more use on Live where you’re actually playing with people and can plan attacks.

You also get to control vehicles, from AT-STs to Snowspeeders to Speeder Bikes.

We mainly played the ‘Historic Campaign – Galactic Civil War’ which is episodes IV – VI. You get to play set pieces from the films – routing the rebels from Mos Eisley, the battle for the shield generator on Endor etc. – which are intermixed with footage from the films. The Hoth battle is fantastic, with Snow Speeders flying between the legs of the AT-ATs and Tauntauns running around.

In campaign mode, your side is chosen for you – one level you may be the Imperial Forces, the next the Rebels.

I recommend playing it, especially if you’re a fan of the films.

Update

Got a bit confused between my UT game types – in Domination you just had to run over the base to capture it, in Onslaught you had to destroy and build the base to capture it (and build a link). Battlefront is more like Domination in that you have capture the bases, not link them, but also like Onslaught in that you have to ‘destroy’ and ‘build’ the bases by hanging around them, rather than just ‘touching’ them.

¹ As best as you can capture the feeling of being in an imaginary world using imaginary weapons to fight imaginary enemies :)