Versions Played: Xbox and PC
Time Played: About twenty hours
Overall Score: 7/10 for Xbox, 6/10 for PC
While I don't own any iterations of Battlefield 1942, I did tremendously enjoy the demos for both the original and the Secret Weapons expansion. When I heard that Lucasarts was putting out a Star Wars version of these games, I got excited (duh..)
Graphics: Graphically, the game is a mixed bag. On the Xbox it looks great. The animation is mostly smooth, though pretty generic. Everyone has the same running, jumping and (except for the CIS) same dying animation, which although excellent, gets boring after awhile. There's a good bit of eye candy, the models are nicely detailed, etc etc. I noticed that some levels seemed to have a bit of a 'blur' effect applied to them, but it wasn't too noticeable. I could tell it was present on the snow and sand maps, and it seemed to be appropriate on those.
When I played the PC version, it became apparent that some nut had gone absolutely crazy with the pixel shaders. Every Single Dang Level has this annoying blur effect applied to the whole blasted thing! It looks fine on the snow levels, in fact, I think it's a great effect to simulate the loss of sight one would experience from all the glare of snow. Same for the sand levels. But in a forest? After awhile I started to get a headache from the glow. I don't notice it too much now, but it's still annoying.
Another thing that I noticed only on the PC is the lame draw-distance effects. I cranked the draw limit all the way up, but there's still this stupid distance blur effect. It's noticeable mostly on the Kashyyk 'Docks' level, from either end looking out to the other end distant objects appear as if they are old-fashioned 2D sprites. When you get closer (or use your scope) the objects clear up, luckily. It's still pretty annoying though.
Graphics for the PC score an 8/10. They're nice, but there are a few issues that shouldn't be present on the PC version. For the most part you don't notice these issues on the Xbox version, so that copy gets a 9/10.
Sound: It's Star Wars, what do you expect? Sound is excellent, as usual. For the most part. Battlefront has all the usual sounds, blasters, ION engines, ligthsabres, and John William's scores. It sounds nice.
The intro page on the PC has an issue. When you fire up the game, and click 'Play Battlefront', Darth Vader breathes. At the end of the effect the audio is distinctly distorted with white noise.
The voices in the game, on both PC and XBOX versions, get repetitive. They're well done, but there's very little variation. "Come with me." "Back me up." Whee.
Weapon effects, ship sounds, those are all done very nicely. The music in the game plays in the background, and fits well. I usually turn game music off, and effects all the way up, but I didn't have to here.
Sound gets a 9/10 for the PC. XBOX version gets a 10/10.
Control: Control is great on both the XBOX and the PC. It might just be me, but I always have to turn the sensitivity of the mouse up on just about every game I play. Battlefront is maxed, and it still isn't sensitive enough for me. I'm getting used to it.
Xbox control is great. The semi-auto-aim is very useful, and well implemented. You can tweak your crosshairs slightly without breaking the auto-aim, allowing you to line up headshots while leading the target. The auto-aim also only kicks in when the target is fairly close, which is good.
The option to define views per-state would have been nice. I like to use 3rd person view in vehicles, and first person when I'm on foot. Not a big deal though, since I assigned the left thumb stick click to switch views.
Control gets a 9/10 on both platforms.
Gameplay: It's fun. For a while. The harsh fact is, Battlefront feels more like a glorified Demo, rather than an actual game.
There's only one game-type, and that is team deathmatch. Yeah, you could run around capturing control points, but there's really no point. Holding seven control points doesn't mean the enemies ticker goes down seven times as fast, it just means that he can only spawn from the few control points he owns. The motivation to play a 'capture and control' style game is purely in the interest of being able to spawn closer to the battle. Since capturing a control point (theoretically) removes a point or two from the opposition's ticker, it's a heck of a lot easier to simply run around and shoot the enemy, rather than bother capturing and defending control points. And since on Hard I typically average 40+ kills, it's not too difficult to win the levels.
Battlefront is a game of team-deathmatch, with some movable spawn point elements added. It's fun, but it's the only game type available, and it gets old after awhile. I can imagine so many really fun game types. The Hoth level is completely under-developed. An Assault style map would have been much more fun than the pseudo-assault thing that they included. You can almost feel the assault elements coming out, but sadly, it's just another Team DM map.
Object-oriented maps would have been awesome as well. How's about an ISD and a MC Cruiser standing off, firing their turbolasers at each other. Players can either man a turbolaser, or grab a fighter and do some strafing. You win when the enemy cruiser is destroyed.
The Team DM levels could have used a lot more variety, too. You have three basic level types. There are the generic infantry levels, which are smaller, and result in many chances for massive grenade kills due to the AI being bunched in a clump in a doorway. There are also infantry levels with a few vehicles for the lucky guys who manage to snag them. These are fun, especially if you can get your AT-ST into the actual battle, where it will completely dominate. And lastly you have Vehicle levels, with Infantry added for those who don't snag a ship. There are only a few of these, in fact as I type this I can only think of one (Bespin Platforms). This level is my favorite. Flying starfighters is fun, and simple albeit a little too simple. It's easy to get on someone's tail and completely waste them. There's almost no way to get someone off of your six, there's no rolling, no looping, and no quick turning in a fighter. The only chance you have of loosing the bugger is diving below the platforms, and hoping he crashes before you as you dash and duck around platforms (which, I must say, is a lot of fun). Unfortunately for those of you who enjoy fighters, all the levels are too small for proper aircraft maneuvering. Bespin Platforms is the largest, and it's pretty limited. You can zip all the way across the level at full speed in under ten seconds.
And that's it. There are sixteen levels on eight planets, two from each planet. Whooo. All are ground-based. There are no space battles.
To add insult to injury, there is absolutely no customization allowed for each level. You can't modify how many bots there are. You can't eliminate the bots. You can't adjust the ratio of bots to good guys. You just select which of the sixteen levels you want to play, and you're stuck with the pre-defined amount of bots. I wouldn't mind this limitation on the Xbox, consoles have never been good for level and game customization, but this is completely unacceptable for the PC. Why bother publishing the game for a superior gaming platform if you basically clone the inferior console version?
There is also no level editor available, nor are there any additional maps available for download on the internet. I expect this will change, as all three publishing platforms are internet-capable, and now have hard-drives. I expect more than one mod-maker would kill to get his hands on the Battlefront SDK. I can't imagine how much goodness we would get if that happened (just look at all the great mods for UT2k4). But I doubt it'll ever happen.
Gameplay gets a 5/10 on the PC, and a 6/10 on the xbox.
Fun: It's fun. I enjoy it. It's a lot of fun playing split screen on the xbox, especially on a team. Grabbing a cloud car or a TIE Bomber, and going around the map together is very satisfying.
But it gets old. With only one game type, very few levels (all of which are rather bland), and zero customization, the game just isn't going to last long for someone who isn't in an organized online clan, or has a dozen xbox's sitting around hat home.
Fun is 7/10 for both platforms.
Time Played: About twenty hours
Overall Score: 7/10 for Xbox, 6/10 for PC
While I don't own any iterations of Battlefield 1942, I did tremendously enjoy the demos for both the original and the Secret Weapons expansion. When I heard that Lucasarts was putting out a Star Wars version of these games, I got excited (duh..)
Graphics: Graphically, the game is a mixed bag. On the Xbox it looks great. The animation is mostly smooth, though pretty generic. Everyone has the same running, jumping and (except for the CIS) same dying animation, which although excellent, gets boring after awhile. There's a good bit of eye candy, the models are nicely detailed, etc etc. I noticed that some levels seemed to have a bit of a 'blur' effect applied to them, but it wasn't too noticeable. I could tell it was present on the snow and sand maps, and it seemed to be appropriate on those.
When I played the PC version, it became apparent that some nut had gone absolutely crazy with the pixel shaders. Every Single Dang Level has this annoying blur effect applied to the whole blasted thing! It looks fine on the snow levels, in fact, I think it's a great effect to simulate the loss of sight one would experience from all the glare of snow. Same for the sand levels. But in a forest? After awhile I started to get a headache from the glow. I don't notice it too much now, but it's still annoying.
Another thing that I noticed only on the PC is the lame draw-distance effects. I cranked the draw limit all the way up, but there's still this stupid distance blur effect. It's noticeable mostly on the Kashyyk 'Docks' level, from either end looking out to the other end distant objects appear as if they are old-fashioned 2D sprites. When you get closer (or use your scope) the objects clear up, luckily. It's still pretty annoying though.
Graphics for the PC score an 8/10. They're nice, but there are a few issues that shouldn't be present on the PC version. For the most part you don't notice these issues on the Xbox version, so that copy gets a 9/10.
Sound: It's Star Wars, what do you expect? Sound is excellent, as usual. For the most part. Battlefront has all the usual sounds, blasters, ION engines, ligthsabres, and John William's scores. It sounds nice.
The intro page on the PC has an issue. When you fire up the game, and click 'Play Battlefront', Darth Vader breathes. At the end of the effect the audio is distinctly distorted with white noise.
The voices in the game, on both PC and XBOX versions, get repetitive. They're well done, but there's very little variation. "Come with me." "Back me up." Whee.
Weapon effects, ship sounds, those are all done very nicely. The music in the game plays in the background, and fits well. I usually turn game music off, and effects all the way up, but I didn't have to here.
Sound gets a 9/10 for the PC. XBOX version gets a 10/10.
Control: Control is great on both the XBOX and the PC. It might just be me, but I always have to turn the sensitivity of the mouse up on just about every game I play. Battlefront is maxed, and it still isn't sensitive enough for me. I'm getting used to it.
Xbox control is great. The semi-auto-aim is very useful, and well implemented. You can tweak your crosshairs slightly without breaking the auto-aim, allowing you to line up headshots while leading the target. The auto-aim also only kicks in when the target is fairly close, which is good.
The option to define views per-state would have been nice. I like to use 3rd person view in vehicles, and first person when I'm on foot. Not a big deal though, since I assigned the left thumb stick click to switch views.
Control gets a 9/10 on both platforms.
Gameplay: It's fun. For a while. The harsh fact is, Battlefront feels more like a glorified Demo, rather than an actual game.
There's only one game-type, and that is team deathmatch. Yeah, you could run around capturing control points, but there's really no point. Holding seven control points doesn't mean the enemies ticker goes down seven times as fast, it just means that he can only spawn from the few control points he owns. The motivation to play a 'capture and control' style game is purely in the interest of being able to spawn closer to the battle. Since capturing a control point (theoretically) removes a point or two from the opposition's ticker, it's a heck of a lot easier to simply run around and shoot the enemy, rather than bother capturing and defending control points. And since on Hard I typically average 40+ kills, it's not too difficult to win the levels.
Battlefront is a game of team-deathmatch, with some movable spawn point elements added. It's fun, but it's the only game type available, and it gets old after awhile. I can imagine so many really fun game types. The Hoth level is completely under-developed. An Assault style map would have been much more fun than the pseudo-assault thing that they included. You can almost feel the assault elements coming out, but sadly, it's just another Team DM map.
Object-oriented maps would have been awesome as well. How's about an ISD and a MC Cruiser standing off, firing their turbolasers at each other. Players can either man a turbolaser, or grab a fighter and do some strafing. You win when the enemy cruiser is destroyed.
The Team DM levels could have used a lot more variety, too. You have three basic level types. There are the generic infantry levels, which are smaller, and result in many chances for massive grenade kills due to the AI being bunched in a clump in a doorway. There are also infantry levels with a few vehicles for the lucky guys who manage to snag them. These are fun, especially if you can get your AT-ST into the actual battle, where it will completely dominate. And lastly you have Vehicle levels, with Infantry added for those who don't snag a ship. There are only a few of these, in fact as I type this I can only think of one (Bespin Platforms). This level is my favorite. Flying starfighters is fun, and simple albeit a little too simple. It's easy to get on someone's tail and completely waste them. There's almost no way to get someone off of your six, there's no rolling, no looping, and no quick turning in a fighter. The only chance you have of loosing the bugger is diving below the platforms, and hoping he crashes before you as you dash and duck around platforms (which, I must say, is a lot of fun). Unfortunately for those of you who enjoy fighters, all the levels are too small for proper aircraft maneuvering. Bespin Platforms is the largest, and it's pretty limited. You can zip all the way across the level at full speed in under ten seconds.
And that's it. There are sixteen levels on eight planets, two from each planet. Whooo. All are ground-based. There are no space battles.
To add insult to injury, there is absolutely no customization allowed for each level. You can't modify how many bots there are. You can't eliminate the bots. You can't adjust the ratio of bots to good guys. You just select which of the sixteen levels you want to play, and you're stuck with the pre-defined amount of bots. I wouldn't mind this limitation on the Xbox, consoles have never been good for level and game customization, but this is completely unacceptable for the PC. Why bother publishing the game for a superior gaming platform if you basically clone the inferior console version?
There is also no level editor available, nor are there any additional maps available for download on the internet. I expect this will change, as all three publishing platforms are internet-capable, and now have hard-drives. I expect more than one mod-maker would kill to get his hands on the Battlefront SDK. I can't imagine how much goodness we would get if that happened (just look at all the great mods for UT2k4). But I doubt it'll ever happen.
Gameplay gets a 5/10 on the PC, and a 6/10 on the xbox.
Fun: It's fun. I enjoy it. It's a lot of fun playing split screen on the xbox, especially on a team. Grabbing a cloud car or a TIE Bomber, and going around the map together is very satisfying.
But it gets old. With only one game type, very few levels (all of which are rather bland), and zero customization, the game just isn't going to last long for someone who isn't in an organized online clan, or has a dozen xbox's sitting around hat home.
Fun is 7/10 for both platforms.
