Star Wars: Battlefront (2004) (VG)

User Rating:

8.7/10   

Director:

Eric 'Giz' Gewirtz

Release Date:

20 September 2004 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Thriller

Plot:

Battlefront is a multiplayer online first-person shooter which allows players to choose from a variety of armies (Stormtroopers...

Plot Keywords:

War Zone | Fictional War | Space War

Cast

G.W. Childs	...	Imperial Infantry (voice)
Chris Cox	...	Alliance Infantry / CIS Infantry / CIS Officer / Gungan Infantry (voice)
Nick Jameson	...	Alliance Officer / Darth Sidious / Emperor Palpatine (voice)
Tom Kane	...	Admiral Ackbar / Yoda (voice)
Temuera Morrison	...	Republic Infantry / Republic Officer (voice)
David Robb	...	Imperial Officer (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Margo Apostolos	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Ray Armstrong	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Eileen Baker	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Michael Henbury Ballan	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Bobby Bell	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Patty Bell	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Alan Bennett	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Sarah Bennett	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Pamela Betts	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Danny Blackner	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Linda Bowley	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Peter Burroughs	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Debbie Lee Carrington	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Maureen Charlton	...	Ewok (archive footage)
David W. Collins	...	Briefings Officer
Willie Coppen	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Sadie Corre	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Mike Cottrell	...	Ewok warrior (archive footage)
Tony Cox	...	Ewok (archive footage)
John Cumming	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Peter Cushing	...	Grand Moff Tarkin (archive footage)
Jean D'Agostino	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Luis De Jesus	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Debbie Dixon	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Malcolm Dixon	...	Ewok warrior (archive footage)
Sascha Draeger	...	Additional Voices (voice)
Margarita Fernández	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Carrie Fisher	...	Princess Leia (archive footage)
Phil Fondacaro	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Sal Fondacaro	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Harrison Ford	...	Han Solo (archive footage)
Tony Friel	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Daniel Frishman	...	Ewok (archive footage)
John Ghavan	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Michael Gilden	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Paul Grant	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Lars Green	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Lydia Green	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Pam Grizz	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Alec Guinness	...	Ben Obi-Wan (archive footage)
Mark Hamill	...	Luke Skywalker (archive footage) (voice)
Andrew Herd	...	Ewok (archive footage)
J.J. Jackson	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Glynn Jones	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Richard Jones	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Trevor Jones	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Karen Lay	...	Ewok (archive footage)
John Lummiss	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Nancy MacLean	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Peter Mandell	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Carole Morris	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Stacie Nichols	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Chris Nunn	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Barbara O'Laughlin	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Brian Orenstein	...	Ewok (archive footage)
Harrell Parker Jr.	...	Ewok (archive footage)
John Pedrick	...	Ewok (archive footage)
David Prowse	...	Darth Vader (archive footage)
Billy Dee Williams	...	Lando (archive footage)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Pandemic Production

Goofs:

Miscellaneous: When using the "Jub Jub" small character cheat, the rebel pilot's head appears above his body. If an Ewok is 3 feet tall, the rebel pilot's head would be 2 feet above his body.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Troldspejlet: (#32.7)" (2004)

Might as well have been called Battlefield: Star Wars... but not bad

I'm getting increasingly tired of major franchises making games based on other games. Not long ago, in a video game store quite near... sorry, couldn't resist. Anyway, another Star Wars game was recently released. It was a real time strategy game. It didn't take more than one quick glance to tell that it was basically a SW version of Age of Empires II. Same case with this game... it's just the Battlefield games covered in a thin coating of Star Wars. They hardly put anything new in the game, well, as far as I can tell... I haven't actually played the Battlefield games, only occasionally and briefly watched as other played, due to my strong, venomous hatred for the typical war game(mainly fed by the lack of realism and intensity... come on, people, they're basically just class-based multi-player games in levels that are so large that you're far more likely to get lost in them than actually find an enemy). However, the game isn't bad, and now that I've gotten that out of my system, here comes the review itself. The game-play is pretty good, though far too repetitive for my tastes. I would have preferred if you had some kind of goal, other than to just win the mission... because you can do that just by making sure your team kills more than the opposing team. How about some perks for every tenth enemy killed without getting killed yourself, or something along that general line of thought? Maybe some more goals? Granted, capture the flag probably wouldn't fly here(though Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy pulled it off quite nicely), but still. What's there is far too limited, leaving the game-play as basically team-based death-match with a Star Wars theme, and that, alone, is just not enough for an entire game. Also, whose idea was it to only make the Jedi(and various other units, including Ewoks and Geonosians, but those don't really matter as much, for obvious reasons) heroes that your team gets as bots? No fun in watching Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker run around fighting your enemies when you can't actually use light-saber and force powers yourself. And exactly why are they made invincible? No fun in an enemy that you can't fight by any means. Lastly on that, who programmed them? They fight... *not well*. The AI programming is reasonably good, apart from that; I mostly play solo with the rest of both teams filled up by "bots", and I get fairly decent opposition and support, from the enemy combatants and my team-mates, respectively, both groups entirely controlled by the computer. The different units are pretty cool, and you get to use most army units shown in the movies, including a few made and thrown in to balance the game. But then there's the issue of some units being far stronger than others... the Destroyer Droids, for instance. Fast, heavy, shoot fast and do a lot of damage... how exactly are you supposed to fight them? The only downsides to them are the somewhat poor aim and the lack of the ability to commandeer vehicles. Sure, it's darned cool to control one yourself, but when you're up against one you're gonna curse them until long after you've been blasted to tiny little bits. The weapons are cool, and they work pretty much how they seem to work in the movies, and there are even a few additions that we haven't seen in any of the six(though only five, at the time this was released) films. The vehicles are a pretty good touch... but too many of them are overly hard to control and more often than not, they're useless if you're not at least two inside of it, rendering the single player part somewhat dull and pointless(well, the vehicles in them, at least, and the control of them). But yes, all the vehicles from the films are there. The main things that annoys me about this game is the fact that it's entirely made to be multi-player... as if single player was unimportant. The single player consists of the multi-player levels put in particular order. They half-heartedly try to disguise this by making several 'campaigns' and a portion called 'galaxy conquest'. This is made worse by the fact that there are hardly more than two dozen or so levels, that get boring too fast. Most of them are based on famous battles from the films, though, which partly makes up for this. Fight in the epic battle of Endor alongside Ewoks or take part in the first battle of the Clone Wars. The fact that it does manage to span over both trilogies, and incorporate a rather voluminous amount different units, vehicles and weapons helps make it entertaining, too. Not only can you fight your favorite battle, you also more or less(with some limitations, as described earlier in this review) get to play as the battle unit(robot, creature or human), using your favorite gun and/or vehicle in all the mayhem. As far as unplayable characters go, in the defense of the game(and its makers), it should be mentioned that the majority of them are self-explanatory as far as why they weren't made available; some wouldn't fit in with the game-play(team and weapons-based fighting), some wouldn't be much fun to play as, as they'd be more limited in abilities than the other units, etc. The graphics are quite good, and the demands are reasonable for how much they provide. The levels are relatively faithful in recreating the huge scenes from the movies, and remain highly entertaining to fight in. All in all, the game is pretty good, and I suppose if you enjoy multi-player gaming and you can borrow it from a friend, it's worth it. Only buy this if you're a huge fan of the franchise and/or this type of game. Fun for a while, but more goals would have helped. I recommend this to fans of Star Wars, war games and multi-player game-play. 7/10