Star Wars Battlefront Two

Star Wars Battlefront 2 for the play station 2 and x-box is the inevitable sequel to the successful star wars battlefront. The basic game play mechanic and premise is the same, though polished up a little more. You’re a grunt soldier who has to fight against the enemy faction, but Lucas Arts made several changes to this game, both good and bad.

Like the first game you fight on familiar worlds from the movies attempting to deplete the enemy reinforcements by killing them and taking over command posts. The five previous playable classes return with one new addition to each of the four factions. My favorite of these is the clone commander who wields a chain gun with unlimited ammo. The droid magna guard fires an odd rocket launcher, the imperial officer has a mortar launcher, and the rebels have the bothan spy who can turn invisible and uses a flame thrower weapon.

Unlike the first game that gave you access to every class from the get go, in battlefront 2 you can only access the two specialist classes after earning enough points by killing enemies or taking command posts. This ruins many of the old strategies involving the soldiers who use jetpacks and droidekas to race to a strategic point before the enemy, but since they count as more than one reinforcement when killed, I suppose it’s a good idea for the player to earn the right to use them.

Sadly many of the first game’s maps are gone, though you can now download a few of them from online, but even that wont provide my favorite level, the Bespin platforms. Despite this, battlefront 2 actually has more maps than the original, though now every world only has one, there are more worlds, and you can fight in space and inside ships and the death star. Some of the old maps, such as those for the wookie world, have been replaced with battle scenes from episode 3. Although these new maps are welcome, it would have been nice to keep the old ones as well.

Another new addition are the Heroes which can be played in this game. This is a somewhat mixed bag that boils down to, if your hero has a light saber you are a walking death machine. If you have a blaster, you’re probably not much better off than a normal soldier. The Jedi can move insanely fast, kill with one or two hits from their light sabers, and use force powers on the other characters which allows for one of the cheapest moves in all of gaming: the force choke double team. This occurs when a player uses the emperor or darth Vader to force choke someone which makes that person float in the air helplessly while their health slowly drains. While this happens another play shoots the suspended victim, killing him. I have never found a defense against this move other than to have friends near you when it is happening so they can shoot the enemy hero before you die.