In the olden days of 2004, George Lucas and his friends at LucasArts released a Star Wars warfare game that let gamers play out their favourite conflicts from the galaxy far, far away.
In the olden days of 2004, George Lucas and his friends at LucasArts released a Star Wars warfare game that let gamers play out their favourite conflicts from the galaxy far, far away. Star Wars Battlefront was released for an ancient generation of platforms; Playstation 2, Xbox, Windows and Macintosh. The game stood out from most due to its extensive online play, which was best enjoyed on the PC. The game was developed by Pandemic Studios, which unfortunately closed down in 2009. Pandemic were responsible for such memorable and successful games, such as; Destroy All Humans!, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction and more recently The Saboteur,which was to be their last release. Battlefront's gameplay was based upon that of DICE's Battlefield 1942, a much more realistic shooter based in various settings throughout World War II. Battlefront takes the solid and engaging gameplay from Battlefield 1942 and applies it to the much-loved Star Wars universe. Instead of fighting Nazis with rifles in the Battle of Britain, players can fight Storm Troopers with lasers in the battle for Hoth. The two opposing teams must fight to gain control of the various command posts scattered throughout each map. A bar at the top of the screen keeps score of the amount of reinforcements available for that team, once the reinforcements have been used up, that team looses the game. This style of game makes for some great gameplay, as each player is not only trying to kill the opposing team, but to capture command posts and get into better positions. It is this gameplay that make Battlefront such a great online experience. The players had the choice of character classes; each class differed depending on which team you were on. There was a lot of range within each class, which gave the player a plethora of abilities to choose from. The flying jet pack of the Clone armys Jet Trooper and the CISs rolling machinegun robot Droideka demonstrate the diversity between the classes. Masters of the online play would inevitably prefer the abilities of the ARC Trooper, or its alternative classes on other factions, this was due to the troopers rocket launch, which in the right hands, was the most devastating weapon in the game. The game spawned a sequel; Star Wars Battlefront 2, which gave more of the same gameplay with added features, such as the ability to play as Jedi or Sith. Developed by Rebellion; Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron saw the series take to the handheld market, but this game did not pack the lunch of its console based brothers. Despite leaked gameplay footage of a new Battlefront game in early 2009, rumours of a third instalment in the series have stopped more recently. A chance to play the through the battles of the Star Wars universe in glorious HD, on the current generation of consoles would be a welcome relief from the modern shooters of today.
