Star Wars Battlefront II (Xbox)

REVIEW:
I had high expectations for this game, being that the first Battlefront was one of my all-time favorite Star Wars gaming experiences. The sequel takes this already-excellent formula, and makes it even better in a number of ways! Let's see how it fares.

-THE GAMEPLAY THAT MADE THE ORIGINAL BATTLEFRONT SUCH A GREAT GAME MAKES A COMEBACK HERE. The original game was a Star Wars fan favorite, and I'm not at all surprised that the basic gameplay concepts, for the most part, remain unchanged in most modes of play.

-THE STORY MODE HAS GOTTEN A REVAMP. Rather than just generic battles aroun the galaxy, it has become mission and objective-oriented. The alteration makes for a refreshing change of pace from the standard battle games.

-TONS OF NEW LOCATIONS TO TAKE THE FIGHT TO. The locales you'll explore in this game have greatly been expanded. Now, you can fight in a great deal more places than the first game. Episode III worlds like Utapau and Mustafar are now playable, as well as other classic Star Wars scenes like Dagobah and the interior of the Death Star.

-SPACE COMBAT! This is the thing the game is getting a lot of hype for. You can now do your battles in space! The sheer amount of options in such a battle makes these some of the funnest things the game offers. You can fly a starfighter and attack enemy ships from the outside, or land in their docks and cause destruction from the inside out (and maybe even steal an enemy fighter!) This is definitely one of the game's best features.

-JEDI/SITH CHARACTERS NOW PLAYABLE. Such characters were just "extras" on the battle scenes of the first Battlefront, but now they are playable! In your battles, sometimes you'll get an option to play as one if you fulfill certain objectives. Now a whole cast of them is available for play, and it definitely makes your fights more interesting.

-LOTS OF OTHER NEW STUFF. For instance, in some battles, you can earn points by killing foes, and my killing them and getting these points you can choose from other character classes that weren't available at the beginning of the battle. There are also tons of new vehicles, including many that premiered in Episode III.

-GRAPHICS ARE BETTER THAN EVER! If you thought the first Battlefront had great graphics, you haven't seen anything yet. This is about as good as a game of this type could possible look.

Overall, the sequel to the best-selling Star Wars game of all time is even better than its awesome-in-its-own-right predecessor. If you liked the first Battlefront, you're bound to like the second one even better. I give it my highest possible recommendation if you're a fan of Star Wars. Pick this one up. It may be a little hard to learn if you're new to this sort of thing, but ultimately, you should agree that this game rocks.

It's not that this is a bad game, it isn't, but you get the feeling that it should have been so much better. I suppose that when you think about it, it's always going to be difficult to improve on a genuine Classic (think HALO 2 and KOTOR 2), the fact that the original was so good is always going to make improvements to the sequel difficult.

In this case, they've tried, and have succeeded in some aspects; the introduction of useful Awards (in the original Awards meant nothing but bragging rights) giving better weapons etc, a Story Mode with varied objectives and a far more in-depth Galactic Conquest mode but they forgot about improving (or at least maintaining the Satus Quo of) the most important part of any game...basic GAMEPLAY.

The fantastically smooth scrolling and clear detailed individual characters have been replaced with a stuttering scroll and characters about as clear as Manic Miner was.

AI which was pretty good in the first one is now very dodgy, and when in trouble a quick run away will often do the trick as the eneny character resets himself in his original position.

Far too often publishers of a successful title will make a few superficial changes/improvements and forget about the important stuff such as gameplay, knowing full well that it'll still shift a million copies or so off the back of the original even with not so good word of mouth.

Not a bad game but should have been better!