Star Wars: Battlefront Hands-On

Large-scale, team-based shooters are all the rage right now. With the Battlefield series spawning more and more sequels and offshoots on what seems like a daily basis, other companies are starting to get in on the act. LucasArts and Pandemic are making a game that falls into a similar category.

Star Wars: Battlefront is a multiplayer-focused third-person shooter. The team-based mode on display at E3 2004 works on a node-based system. Rebels and Empire troops go at each other in an effort to control all of the nodes on the map. Once you control a node, you can respawn there after dying. Additionally, vehicles will occasionally spawn at these nodes, giving you alternate methods of transport that include speeder bikes, AT-ATs, snowspeeders, and taun tauns. In addition to having to capture nodes, each team also has an overall point total that reduces when players die. When one team runs out of points, the match ends.

Gameplay and control are pretty standard for a team-based shooter. The game is class-based, so before every spawn you have the option to change classes. This will give you access to a heavy-weapons character that can launch rockets, a sniper with a high-zoom scope, a general assault trooper, a spy character, and so on. You're able to shoot, toss grenades, and roll out of the way of enemy fire, which is crucial for breaking free of the auto-targeting found in the console versions of the game.

Graphically, Battlefront looks pretty cool. The game portrays several classic Star Wars environments, like Endor and the ice planet of Hoth, quite faithfully. The characters look solid and move pretty well, and the game is good at delivering the proper sense of scale. At one point you'll be one man trying to take down an AT-ST with your torpedo launcher, and the gargantuan AT-ST feels as huge as it probably should.

Star Wars: Battlefront looks like it's shaping up pretty well. Fans of the series as well as fans of team-based shooters should probably keep an eye peeled for this one, which is scheduled to ship on the same day that the classic Star Wars trilogy comes to DVD: September 21.