First let me say that I am not a huge Star Wars fan, unless you count the original trilogy. The latest three episodes failed to meet my expectations, and even made me wrench once or twice. The best of the three was the third, which was a stunningly beautiful movie, with amazing special effects and jaw dropping fight scenes. It was the essence of perfection.....until someone opened their mouth. The words that came out sounded as if daytime TV would turn up their nose at such soppy, poorly written crap. So again, I don't consider myself a fan of the series.
I was somewhat hesitant to purchase the game, since I vowed never to buy a game that came out after the movie for which it was made because typically the publisher relies on the movie's popularity for sales, instead of the game's own attributes. You tend to end up with the worst games the industry can churn out. The only reason I did grab it was that my brother had showed me the original version on XBOX, and it seemed somewhat interesting, and I was bored.
So, I loaded up the game, which took a bit of time since it required 4.5GB of drive space. I opened the tutorial and found that it gave you a good basic understanding of the game. It will not go into some of the more complex details though, such as how a Botham spy uses his sneak ability.
The storyline follows a contingent of clones through the battles that carved out the Empire from the Old Republic. Every battle is one that was a part of the movies. There are short clips from the movies between battles and brief journal excerpts from one of the 501st division of the clone army.
I found single player gameplay to be extremely enjoyable. The graphics are good, the AI is decent, and not every map is a piece of cake in normal mode unless you already know exactly what to expect. The shear number of vehicles that you can pilot is impressive. Each vehicle has unique abilties and some require different skill sets than others.
Every map was nice, with great attention to detail. You'll find yourself smiling, goggling, or chuckling at something constantly. It was a real thrill to see the movie's settings brought to an interactive environment, with Jawa's running around repairing everything or the Sarlak whipping its tongue out to grab an enemy.
In fact, I was so impressed with this game that I couldn't wait to play it online. And that's when the reality check came. Battlefront2 has the potential to become an amazingly popular online game, but I just didn't see as many servers as I expected. There were only 5 or 6 that had more than 10 people currently playing that I ping below 50ms on. That might seem fine to some of you, but when I play Counterstrike, I expect to see no fewer than 30 servers that meet those criteria.
I chose a server with 24 people playing and began my online experience. First, even on the best servers I could find, lag was a big issue, which normally points to poorly written netcode. Lag even froze the servers from time to time even though half the players were bots. Second, there seem to be some bugs in the system including a very annoying bug that prevents you from respawning and problems with the way the server handles the initial spawning in rounds. Third, everything moves too quickly. It is impossible to aim shots because everyone has the ability to change directions instantly at top speed and bullets have horrendous travel time. The combination means that any hit is more luck than skill.
All in all, I highly recommend the game to someone who likes single player games, or any fan of the Star Wars series. I advise online gamers to wait and see if a patch comes out to fix the issues with online play before purchasing.
