Has potential, and much room for improvement
You are a soldier fighting in the Star Wars universe. Be it empire, clone, rebel or droid - your pick.
WHAT?
It's Star Wars! You need to travel to critical locations and gain strategic control of them in order to turn the war's balance in your favor.
WHY?
Because if you don't lend a hand, the enemy is assured to win.
HOW?
By capturing control zones in the area and defeating as many enemies as possible to deplete their reinforcements.
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GRAPHICS
Simple and elegant has been a staple in Star Wars games and Battlefront is no exception. While not the prettiest visuals ever to be seen, the game still has the worlds marked down pretty well, with a simple look that does the job. Character animations somewhat lack fluidity, as it's often possible to see troopers literally teleport from standing to crouching position, or simply teleport around if they come across a wall.
SOUNDS & MUSIC
Like all Star Wars game, we're given the traditional Star Wars songs and sound effects with no clear innovation. It's a gamble between those who love Star Wars anytime anywhere and those who eventually get sick of the same songs coming back over and over.
NAVIGATION
This came as a pleasant surprise. The menus are beautiful, simple, fast, and well-designed. The spawn screen shows exactly the required information, including equipment, game status, and a map of the area to gauge where to spawn. The HUD is also easy to figure out, although it'll take a game or two to get used to every part of it.
GAMEPLAY
Let's make no mistake: Battlefront is a LAN game. And as such, both the Internet and the single player modes are severely lacking. Single player pits you in different battles across the galaxy, set in both the Clone Wars and the Civil War eras, therefore giving you a feel of each team and a tour of each planet or almost. The mode is also completed by a sort of conquest mode, in which you repeatedly choose a planet to invade, in an attempt to gain control of all planets in the sector. Internet-wise, the battles are simply unplayable, as every game is constantly plagued by extreme lag, making kills seem more like lucky shots than anything else.
DIFFICULTY
Single Player gets you to meet a largely inconsistent AI that'll snipe you from behind half a dozen layers of thick, opaque foliage, lob grenades at walls, or shoot through its own ranks in an attempt to kill the enemy. The overwhelming stupidity of the AI is shown in the end results of the battle, as a player alone can score well over 40 kills and the second placer having done less than ten. Even more disturbing are the many people who actually shot down more teammates than enemies. All in all, the fate of the battle depends on the player. While this is the point of the game to a degree, in order to prevent people from sitting back and watch the battle unfold, it's also frightening to the point of thinking "If the Star Wars army hired idiots like these, no wonder a dozen Empire sharpshooters can miss Han Solo from a distance of a hundred feet." Player involvement should have been calculated so that he can tip the balance just enough to help his side and win, not by assuring complete and humiliating defeat unless he kills more enemy troopers than his teammates combined.
REPLAY VALUE
Being a multiplayer game, it has potential for LAN play, and the premise of the game, with its control spots and everything, is pretty easy to get into, be it for a quick game or a full-length campaign. It's not a "do the plot then it's over" game. It's something one can pull out anytime and play.
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GOOD
-Well thought out menus and navigation.
-Good variety of areas to fight in.
-Ability to pilot several different vehicles.
BAD
-The AI is completely symbolic.
-Impossible to create an anachronistic game (i.e.: Empire VS droids or Clones VS Rebels etc.)
-The Internet play mode is a thing to forget about.
SO WHY A FIVE?
Milking the Star Wars franchise is all right as long as the games are done well. Just for the frustrating AI, the game loses a lot of points. The rest of the job is done by its limited multiplayer and unpolished feel.