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Star Wars Battlefront Released Today
JimLynch writes "Everybody's jazzed up about the DVD releases but Star Wars Battlefront came out today too. There are reviews at IGN and GameSpy."
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And the marketing machine marches on....... Should be a good game though.
I want my Total War fix!!!!
At least in the US where I am, it was in stores yesterday, haven't had a chance to play it yet as I went to see GiTS2:Innocence last night (I was disappointed with it).
oi!
So, um, besides requiring the game UT2004, what are the differences between the Troopers: Dawn of Destiny mod and this game?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Being a geek doesn't mean you have to keep giving Lucas your money. You can stop anytime now.
You're just encouraging him.
... we get the chance to shoot an Ewok in the face.
These days I want to try before I buy.
Bah, who needs another iteration of the Battle of Hoth?
Actually, I really do want this game, I'm just miffed that it's on every system but the Cube.
included with the bonus disk in the DVD collection is an demo for the Xbox version of battlefront. Most of what I've read says that the console versions of this game are better than the PC version... :/
Get Virtual.
The game is almost exactly like Battlefield 1942, almost tit-for-tat. Battles are fought on the ground. There are two sides, obviously, with a possibilty of a third party indigenous to the area stepping in. Vehicles are sometimes available, but those who are flight-capable are rather... shifty, and difficult to control. Each battle, infact, is based on a ticket-counter-system (Thank you, BF1942).
The game is riddled with _major_ balance issues, from the five classes of warrior you can choose and their respective weapon configurations, and weapon lag. (Weapon lag is sighting a target, firing your weapon, and somehow, the target having enough time to SIDE STEP OUT OF THE WAY OF YOUR SHOT, even after it's been fired). I do have to respect the way the game is modeled, giving the player the ability to experience almost any battle, in sequence, throughout any generation of the Star Wars galaxy. That's neat.
Final opinion: The game needs serious polish, and rebalancing. If you've played Battlefield 1942, and liked it, give this a shot. 4/5? Yeah, that'll do.
On a side note: the version of DirectX that came with the game was MASSIVELY BROKEN and lead to SERIOUS STABILITY ISSUES with Windows XP. Downloading the (allegedly) same version of DirectX (9.0c) from the Microsoft website seems to have fixed the problem.
Informatus Technologicus
I'd have to say it was "released" days ago when people I know were downloading it via torrents on Saturday.
Fully playable too, despite the copy restriction mechanism they put on the CD.
Does George not imperially seal everything that comes out of his studios? Where's the consistency?
For the record, I thought the "Shoot" bit was funny and appropriate. And I don't think I'll be rushing to buy the DVD boxset anytime soon... Perhaps I'll spend that money on Battleground!
GTRacer
- Using the Light Side to offset his Dark...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
It requires BF1942, but if you have it, you need to check out the Galactic Conquest mod.
Concidering SW Battlefront is a Battlefield CLONE set in the SW universe, it stands to reason that there's a nice parrallel in the Battlefield MOD set in the SW Universe.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
There was talk of a Linux port. Anyone have an update?
http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/news/articl
I'm not much of an FPS guy; I bought this for the Star Wars aspect. I really was stinking up things single player until I got to play the droids vs the Jar-Jars; suddenly the kid gloves came off, the sniper rifle came out, and we won that battle by a mile.
:-)
You're not buying SWBF, you're buying "Kill Jar-Jars".
-Jeff
P.S. Storming through Mos Eisley with my buddies in white shooting chewbaccas is a close second.
P.P.S. Anybody know what good Chewbacca is over the standard issue rebel guy?
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
Actually, the game was released Tuesday in the U.S., timed with the release of the DVD trilogy set. RedAssedBaboon also has a review up of the game. It got a 91.
... But I have much higher hopes for this game than I do for Episode 3.
Though there were a few flops, Lucas has had a great track record with their games. Many of them actually had more depth to their stories than any of the movies.
my password is private, but unchanged.
Keep in mind that many of the issues you describe existed in BF1942 1.0 as well. After a couple point releases, I'm sure the game will be more than up to par.
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
I pre-ordered this game and quickly installed it when I got home from work. One of the first gripes I had about the game was the ATROCIOUS in-game browser. I am not a GameSpy fan (I use ASE, ASE usually releases support the day after a game is released), so I decided to try the in game browser. Forget about a buddy list, searching by server name, or even getting an actual number for pings. None of that. Nor can you stop the servers refreshing. You just have to wait until all of them refresh. Absolutely terrible.
Once in game, the graphics were absolutely horrible, and I have a 6800! Come to find out, it was because of certain default settings the game will put on depending upon your graphics card. Once I disabled "motion blur" things looked a lot better; however, they're nothing to write home about.
As another poster commented, the game is pretty much like BF:1942, except that when you are contesting a spawn point, enemies still seem to spawn, which is extremely frustrating. In addition, the play balance is awful. The Imperials literally walk all over the Rebels on Hoth and Endor, due to their mechanical advantage. There was another level (I forgot the name) where the Imperials have three walkers and the Rebels have absolutely nothing except foot soliders.
Personally, I don't think the game should have made it to the public in this format, but that has been the trend in the gaming industry as of late. With some patches, the game could possibly be good, but the state it is in now, the game is very mediocre.
Respect It.
I bought the game yesterday and played it late into the night. I'm a big fan of Battlefield, so I was curious if the xbox version could stand up to a PC fps. One of my main fears was the fact that the game defaults to a 3rd person view. Luckily you can switch to 1st person if you wish. Unfortunately for some unknown reason they made this function buried in the options menu instead of as a controller key. This isn't as much of an issue when your on foot since the game plays basically the same in both views but it is a problem when driving vehicles. In Battlefield I grew accustomed to switching quickly between 1st and 3rd person views depending on the situation and vehicle. In Battlefront if your using a 1st person view, your vehicle will only be seen in first person too. Its ok for some vehicles but when driving an AT-AT and especially an AT-ST its a bit too cloister-phobic. So I like to play in 1st person view on foot but mostly use vehicles in 3rd person view, which means each time i enter a vehicle i have to pause, go to options, and change my view options, all while being a sitting target. (this of course only applies to Multiplayer since the single player game will freeze the action on pause.)
I picked up the game for Xbox yesterday (yes, I'm a heretic I know) and I am really pleased with it. I played through some of the solo campaign to get a feel for the controls before embarrasing myself on Xbox Live. But running around killing Jar Jar Binx is a RIOT... thats my new favorite shooting gallery. I can imagine how fun this will be co-oping with a bunch of my friends who will have this game by week's end.
:-D
After hearing about all the problems with other Star Wars games, I have to say that everything from the Vehicles to the weapons seem very impressive so far. I've not had a chance to drive many of the vehicles, but I'm really looking forward to it!
My friend and I both picked up the XBox version yesterday. I have to say, it is pretty fun. One of the best parts is shooting Ewoks and Jar Jars. We had too much fun taking them out.
:)
I'm not too sure about the game types, but the only ones were played were Onslaught (UT2004) style games. They are pretty fun and the maps are huge.
I had some problems controlling some of the flying vehicles (X-Wings, Ties, etc.), but I'm sure it will get easier. Some of the battle areas seemed a bit too confined for flying (Cloud City maps), but other ones were great. I was actually moving toward the shield generator on the Hoth map and saw one of the AIs fly a snow speader in to take down an AT-AT with the cable. That was pretty cool from a distance.
The AI at the non-hard levels is far to easy. In order for us to actually have to work we had to kick it up as high as it would go. Just FYI.
I'm also not sure how it works if you don't have Live, but when you put in the disc, it connects immediately to Live. Not sure if it just recognizes your account and starts it up on Live or what.
We had a pretty good time playing, but had to quit to watch some poker on ESPN.
Now if I can just figure out how the heck an Ewock an kill me with one damn rock I will be happy. Lets just say that once I got my AT-ST he was toast.
Oh, one other note. I picked my copy up at Target and got a $10 gift card with the purchase. My friend got his at EB and if he got another game they were giving $20 off. He used his on a pre-order so if you want Halo 2 or something, you can get the $20 off then it comes out next month.
I gave up on BF1942 when I realized I was spending more time downloading patches(and having to search for them) and trying to connect to servers, downloading maps, than actually playing the game.
Then the patches got up to a point where if I connected to any server(if I was lucky) it just booted me out of the game.
Makes the "lock up when you d/l a new map" in UT2004 seem okay.
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 10:48:07 -0700
From: LucasArts Technical Support
To: ant@[snipped]
Subject: RE: STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT DEMO (JG)
Hi,
Thank you for your message,
We have not been told when it will be released.
Sorry I couldn't be more help.
LEC JAY
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...they actually show that in the TV ad. Guess it's a more common fantasy than I'd realized.
Exerpt from my blog: I had Star Wars Battlefront on preorder for months. And after this wait how do I feel about the game? Gameplay: (7 with a lean towards 8) Graphics: (8) Sound: (8) Originality (6) Originality: Let's dive first into the Orginality of the game, as this is the area that I rate the lowest for the game. Let's face it, it is very hard to be an original First Person Shooter (FPS) these days. Add on to the fact that the game is set in the very well known Star Wars universe and it gets even hardly to be unique. Of course it's later is also a plus as it is a negative. The reason being, is that the game keeps to the feel of the Star Wars universe. Ever wanted to be a Storm Trooper kicking Rebel butt? What about being a Roger Roger droid? If so then this game is for you. The Star Wars franchise has had many successes and an equal number of failures when it comes to the gaming world. Fortunely the game has done better in the business than other ventures such as Star Trek and the likes. All in all most games that have came out that are set in the Star Wars universe usually manage to hold their own. SWBF is no execption. While the game itself doesn't add anything truely new to the FPS scene, it doesn't cause it to go stale either. Gameplay: As touted, SWBF's gameplay is very similar if not nearly identical to Battlefield 1942. You are an indivdual in and often large scale battle, you can choose one of 5 classes of characters, each with it's own pluses and negatives. There is the common soldier, which while well balanced, is very powerful of character. There is the rocket soldier class, which while has the ability to wreck havoc on enemy crafts, can do little in regards to one on one combat. Then there is the pilot class. These guys also are ill-equiped to go head to head against most other classes, but have advantages of being able to fix equipment and give health pacs to collegues. Then we move into the Sniper class. I must say that one thing I noticed is unlike the Snipers in many games such as Call of Duty and CounterStrike, the Snipers in SWBF are not all powerful. It will usually take at least two shots to put someone down. I didn't witness many if any one shot kills during my four hour first play session. And finally you have the Special Weapons class as I like to call them. These are characters like the Wookies with their Bowcaster, and the Dark Trooper with their jet packs. So as you can see, all in all, the mechanics is similar to what has been coming out for the last few years. Nothing ground breaking. Like Battlefield 1942, you can hop into one of a dozen or so craft and fly them around. The classics are all here, the X-Wing, the Y-Wing, The Tie Fighter, and of course what real Star Wars game would be without At-Ats? But here in lies a problem similar to Battlefield 1942, it is just freakishly hard to use the flying crafts as the maps are too small for any type of real dogfighting, and controls are too touchy for any real flying as well. But like BF1942, where the aircraft fails, the landcrafts make up the difference. Of course sometimes, they are really scary. Take the At-At, remember the first time you saw the battle scenes on Hoth? Remember how you could almost feel the Rebels impending doom against them? Well the game maintains this feel, but making the At-Ats hard as all get out to take down. In one game I played, the Rebs where getting their asses handed too them by one At-At. Pretty much all of us ended up spawning again and again as Rocket soliders, but we had little effect on the At-At. After dozens of deaths, finally we managed to take down the At-At. Scary stuff. Graphics: Graphics seemed on par with the typical FPS these days. It isn't going to be praised as being as pretty as Farcry, or as unique as Doom 3, but all in all, it played well, and with smoothness on my P4 2.8mhz, 512mb Ram, with Radeon x300 in 1024x768 res, with all options set to High. So if your graphics card is at least a Radeon 9200 or GeForce FX I think you will do fine. Sound: I am not an audiophile. I just have a $2
In case no one noticed, Best Buy has been selling the game for almost a week. I bought mine on Saturday. Ha Ha Ha Ha. I'm on the east coast if that means anything.
You can also see a reveiw of Star Wars Battlefront here http://www.mmgn.com/review.php?id=32 at MMGN.com.
Justin Nolan PDALive www.pdalive.com
LA used to mean something - true they've always done rip-offs of other genres by setting them in the SW universe... but at least they were GOOD rip offs.
This game is SUB-PAR compared to all the other FPS's out there.