Star Wars: Battlefront (Xbox)

This is a pretty slick game and is perfect for X-Box Live. I'm a major fan of the Star Wars films and have been waiting for a studio to make full use of the licence and translate the epic battles from the films into a decent game. There have been several half-baked attempts so far for the X-Box which have all been disappointing for me. I'm glad to say - with the exception of a few niggles - that this is great fun.
The primary aim is to capture all checkpoints to cut off enemy reinforcements and prevent them pushing forwards. You can win by killing all enemy troops instead of course!
You get to play 3 different single-player modes - "Instant Action" (where you charge into a battle straight away), "Historical Campaign" (a story-based game where you follow a timeline of events and try to win battles on each planet at a time, unlocking exclusive bonus goodies along the way) and "Galactic Conquest" (where you get to choose the planet to attack next, and on winning a battle you get to choose a planetary bonus like bringing a Jedi Hero - like Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker - into the battlefield to support you!)
There are different factions you can play as, including Rebel Alliance, Imperial Forces, Trade Federation CIS and Clone Warriors, each with their own different weapons, vehicles and soldier types. Sadly no chance to play the Gungans, Ewoks, Sand People or Jawas, although they do make their appearance on the battlefield.
You have to win two battles to conquer a planet. There are many different planets from the Star Wars universe here, including Kashyyyk and Rhen Var, alongside well-known ones like Tatooine, Mos Eisley, Cloud City, Naboo and Geonosis. There are dozens of different vehicles which are fully useable, including X- & Y-Wings, TIE fighters and bombers, AATs, AT-ATs and AT-STs, Hailfire droids, Snowspeeders and speeder bikes etc etc. There are many many different weapons - you have one primary and one secondary (usually a laser pistol) weapon, plus a limited supply of thermal detonator grenades. Weapons include missile launchers, blasters, EMP grenade launchers, sniper rifles and you even get to use stationary gun turrets as well.
There are different spawn sites on the battlefield which you can use to gain control of the battlefield and flank enemies and try and plan your attack.
In-game presentation is excellent, with cut screens of actual film footage, e.g when you conquer a planet as the Imperial forces, you get to destroy it using the Death Star, and watch as the planet explodes, in the scene taken from Ep.4 - A New Hope. Brilliant you might say!
The list of features goes on and on....the only thing is, despite this mind-boggling amount of detail is if it makes any real difference to the playability. I'm just not so convinced how playable it is after a few weeks or so of solid playing.
There are 3 levels of difficulty, and after a week I've already completed the Galactic Conquest mode on Medium Difficulty and close to completing the Historical Campaign on the same level.
I wish they'd used extra capacity on improving game animation, smoothness and handling rather than cut-screens. I've lost count of the number of times I've been shot in the back as I hear a shot behind me, want to turn round quickly and can't. Unresponsive and frustrating game mechanics put this game to shame.
Also, there's very little strategy to the game. Generally it's a tiresome and simple point-and-blast-a-thon. I've found that most of the weapons are ineffective and tend to stick with a blaster-wielding soldier, but your trigger finger gets tired after a couple of hours playing.
There's no way of controlling your teams either - it might have been a good feature to send one unit to attack one checkpoint while another tries to flank and attack from the other side. As it is, there are only limited controls using the D-Pad (e.g. "Follow Me", "Hold Position" etc), and these are pretty ineffective, only controlling a handful of troops in your immediate vicinity.
The online multiplayer via X-Box Live is fun and improves things a bit, but it's frustrating too, and a lot tougher than the single player. At the end of the day most X-Box servers online are just too jerky, with little or no accuracy to your shots.
I've ended up going back to Counter Strike instead, impatiently awaiting the release of Halo 2!
If you're a die-hard Star Wars fan though, it's well worth a punt for some mindless blasting fun - and you'll be hard pushed to find a better SW game on the market right now. Not great, but good - try before you buy.

I bought this game partly because I'm a Star Wars fan, partly because I love shooters and partly because it was flying off the shelves. Forget most of the other reviews - I never understand why people write a review for a game they've never played!! (Obviously this comment doesn't apply to the reviewer who played it at a games fair.)

The basic premise (as stated by Amazon's preview) is that you get to play as a soldier in one of four armies (Rebel, Imperial, Seperatists and Republic).

The single player campaign is great. The object of the game is to capture command posts, while blasting the opposing soldiers to bits. Depending on how well your army is doing you'll have more or less re-inforcements and more respawn points (i.e. the command posts you've captured) and your own actions do affect the outcome of the battle e.g. if you keep ordering soldiers to follow you to a certain enemy command post they will keep attacking it and more AI soldiers will follow.

There are a few varieties on the basic game but the whole focus is get out there and kill stuff. Each time you get killed (and you will often) you get to choose which of five types of soldier you want to be next each comes with different weapons and abilities (basic trooper, heavy weapon, sniper, pilot or special - specials include wookies, troopers with jet packs and destroyer droids).

The real fun is in the feel of the game when you're playing - it's very fast, frantic with the sense of impending doom. Plus you get to fly/drive a number of familiar ships a la Halo if you want, and to blow them up! This is not Halo 2 and doesn't pretend to be - it's a different focus; crazy battles in Star Wars world.

Make no mistake this is a game designed for multiplayer battles, it supports up to 16 players!!. It's different to other shooters like Rainbow Six 3 as although you can issue commands to those around you there's less sneaking and more charging across no mans land (Hoth) or darting through bushes (Endor) and loads of other Star Wars planets eg Tatooine, Yavin, Kamino etc. I've had the game a week now and the replayability is good as no two battles are the same.

The beauty of the single player game is due to the fantastic AI it's probably the closest to being in a multiplayer online game you are likely to get without actually going online.

The beauty of the Xbox live game is that you get to blow people to bits in a genuine Star Wars style (not as artificial as Jedi Academy) in a game designed specifically for online play.

P.S. You have the option to turn 'Heroes' off or on. When on you get joined by Luke, Darth Vader, Count Dooku or Mace Windu depending on your team. They do kill enemies but they are also indestructible (well almost).

Overall it's a game that's great for a blast as long as you realise you're going to die often and horribly and this won't frustrate you. For the snipers out there, there are lots of places to camp too!

I'm back off to Hoth as that's my favourite, just love those snowspeeders.

I highly recommend this game to all viewers as you can play on almost every planet in star wars including Bespin, Tatooine and Naboo. You can be the rebels, empire, clones or droids each force with its advantages and disavantages.

Each type of soldier has different weapons and equipment used for different tasks and after selecting your force you will be able to pick a troop type from super battle droids to clone commanders.

You also have an array of vehicles at your disposal including the enormous At-At's and and star fighters like the famous
x-wing.

The campaign covers pretty much every part of all the major battles in star wars with enormous 500 troop battles on every match.You can also do galactic conquest in which you select planets to attack until (if your successful) you conquer the galaxy.

You can also do instant action in which you select a planet and play an instant game.

You can also do multiplayer but you can only have 2 people playing it. On multiplayer you can do everything that you can do on single player apart from you have 2 people playing rather than one.