The Star Wars Battlefront games were some of the most entertaining Star Wars video games that you get to play either offline with AI Bots or with dozens of players online and have had quite a change and history with players throughout the years. The first ever Star Wars Battlefront came out in 2004 for the PC, PlayStation 2 and the original XBox and it was a team based FPS with the option of playing in Third Person by allowing players to step into the boots of their favourite troopers and vehicles. It was released around the time when Cartoon Network and Lucasarts were working on the Clone Wars Cartoon series and it was a well received game for it's time. So you are properly wondering if the very first Star Wars Battlefront game holds up in 2019 as supposed to me talking about latest instalments like the recently released Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order then let's get out there and see what Star Wars Battlefront is about.
Star Wars Battlefront is a team based shooter where the game pits you and your squad-mates against enemy forces on the battlefield. In each of the game's maps the goal is too take over the various command posts by eliminating enemies that are around it and then taking the command post for your team. Each command post your team takes depletes the enemies reinforcement counter as well as taking out other enemy troops and the team that manages to depletes the enemy reinforcement counter is the winner.
The maps in the game have numerous vantage points and turrets that can be setup and used against other enemies and as well as that your team has different trooper classes to play as. You have a basic trooper that has the basic automatic blaster rifle, you have also a sniper trooper class, a heavy weapons trooper who uses missile launchers which are great for taking out vehicles, an engineer based class that can build turrets for their allies as well as offering health and ammo supplies as well as some classes that are exclusive to a side you are playing on. Speaking of health the health system is a simple fixed health bar much like in Star Wars Battlefront II (2005) where you have to relay on healing droids and health pickups to keep your health up otherwise once the health bar reaches 0 you die. The side exclusive classes are Wookies for the Rebels, The Empire having Dark Troopers and the Republic having Jet Troopers allowing them to fly across the map as well as the unbalanced Droidekas that deploy a shield to protect itself from damage which make them extremely tough to take down. All of the classes in the game are very useful and impactful that can offer strategy that can give the team an advantage against the other plus also some classes like Jet Troopers can take advantage and get around the map quickly given a surprise ambush on the enemy. Some of the maps also offer vehicles like AT-ATs, Speeders, AT-TEs, and so on which also provide good assistance to ground troopers. The game manages to bring the some of the famous locations from the films such as Tatooine, Geonosis, Hoth, Kamino, Kashyyyk and Yavin 4 into the game and they are designed very well and are fun to play plus you can play most of them with troops from the Clone Wars or the Galactic Civil War eras as well.
The idea is to use each of the classes' various weapons and abilities and to make use of the layout of the maps to take out unsuspecting enemies and then take over the command posts while defending yours. With skill and patience and making use of the right classes and vehicles it's possible to take all of the command posts on a map and win the match if you can hold all of them for 20 seconds without the enemy team taking back one of your precious command posts that you just took from the enemy. You can spawn to whatever command post that is available to you during your next spawn which does give you plenty of options of which other enemy command post you should possibly take down next.
Now I know what you are thinking. “What about the Jedi Hero characters?” Well this is where I talk about the shortcomings and problems which make the game not age well as it should. Yes you do get the Jedi Hero Characters like Luke Skywalker, Darthvader as well as Count Dooku and for some reason Mace Windu instead of Obi-Wan Kenobi but that's fine by me cause Mace Windu is a good character nonetheless. These guys can help you out in fights and can kill a single unit with just one hit making them just unstoppable even if they never use any of their force powers. The issue is that you cannot play as any of them in the game at all and neither can you kill them because they always deflect blaster shots like they do in the films, and explosives like missiles and grenades deal no damage to them but you can use them to knock Jedi Characters away from you and if you have the skill knock them out of the map which was something I somehow managed to do. While it's cool to have the Jedi around the majority of matches are manageable without them and thankfully for Instant Action matches you can turn them off to make matches more easier and manageable.
Controls for the game is great and they can be customized to the player's preference which is nice and the units and vehicles control really well plus the game allows aim assist for the console versions making aiming easier. However the character movement is very slow and you cannot Sprint in this game meaning that you have to take long slow walks across the battlefield to get to the action. The game can either be played in First Person Mode or a Third Person Mode but usually I play in First Person and can do very well playing the game like that.
People often give the game criticism with the AI but to be honest I found the AI to be surprisingly useful. They are somewhat capable of holding their own and provide assistance in combat, can navigate maps very well and can spawn in different command posts to surprise the enemy, plus also they make use of turrets and other vehicles and classes to their advantage. I can see why some people have issues with the AI as their accuracy with weapons is really bad like how Stormtroopers aren't able to hit things in the films. On higher difficulties however they do become more aggressive and they become more of a challenge to take on but the real difficulty aside from some OP trooper classes like Droidekas are often the amount of enemies that happen to appear near a command post or right in your face rather then actual combat tactics which actually makes up for the AI actions. You end up dying quite a fair amount of times against a squad of more then 5 enemies or against a sniper that you might not have seen coming. Personally I don't think the AI is all that bad and they can be challenging to take on even on Normal and can make the most important decisions in battle.
Now you have the Single Player Campaign called the Historical Campaign which has two separate storyline scenarios the Clone Wars which has fights from the prequel trilogy just without Episode III Revenge Of The Sith and also the Galactic Civil War focusing on battles from the original trilogy. All you do to complete each battle and move on to the next is to take over the command posts and wipe out the enemy reinforcements and do the same in the next battle. Some battles will give you a Jedi to help you out and some fights switch out some units for some scenario exclusive units like giving the player regular Clone Droids instead of a Super Battle Droid which is honestly not bad but they could have been an option to have in the other modes as well. The Historical Campaign does use cutscenes taken from the films allowing you to see the storyline unfolded and the film quality isn't all that bad all things considered.
In addition you also have the Galactic Conquest Mode where you pick one of eight scenarios which determine which era and side you play as the goal is to take over eight planets by completing each match and then finally conquer the enemy's main base to win the scenario. Each planet you take allows you to have a planetary bonus that you can use in the next battle, these include extra garrison of troops, sabotage enemy vehicles which causes them to start at half health, Jedi Hero which allows the Jedi to help you out in fights and so on. This mode isn't bad but the four other scenarios that unlock when you beat four main scenarios in the mode just feel tacked on and seem utterly pointless as you go through the same maps per planet just that some of them removed but on the positive side you can pick your favourite side in what era it is picked out.
Now a lot of people played the game by mostly spending their time online and yes you can go online and play with other players on the PC version. However on the consoles the online functionality is no longer available and you can only play the Single Player and Split Screen modes and also the Instant Action mode which allows you to select maps that you want to play and with what era you want as well.
The presentation for a game released in 2004 is pretty good especially for one released specifically for the consoles. The environments are pretty big and well designed and all of the explosion, special effects and character models aren't too bad for it's time. It's also able to handle all of the gameplay on screen, maintaining a stable 30/25 Frames per second depending on which region and console version you are playing or if you had a powerful PC at the time of the game's release you can get the full 60 FPS experience. The issue is that up close the models can look rather blocky and the film quality during the cutscenes look like they were ripped straight from a VHS tape without cleaning it up and it can doesn't look all that clear.
There are plenty of enjoyable moments to be had with the original Star Wars Battlefront like fighting waves of Droids with with Republic, using the Speeders' cable to take down the AT-ATs in the Hoth fight, but most important for me is storming through waves of Rebel scum either on foot as a Stormtrooper that can actually shoot and hit things and also on vehicles, all whilst that John Williams soundtrack plays out to the heat of the action is just pure awesome stuff.
But obviously this game is dated in some aspect, I already talked about not being able to sprint and your character moves slow and also that you can't use any of the Jedi characters but there are also other things as well. This game doesn't have maps where you would have fights in space with Tie-Fighters and X-Wings. These don't make this game outright bad or anything cause the overall gameplay is pretty good and it is still enjoyable to an extent, it's just that in comparison to the sequel Star Wars Battlefront II in which I reviewed the 2005 version on the PlayStation 2 the differences between this and the sequel is night and day. The sequel added sprinting, space battles, being able to play as Jedi characters and other heroes as well and lastly a progression and record system which allows to view your kills, deaths, streaks and K&D ratio which is something this game is also missing as well. But there is a lot to take into consider with this game, this game's popularity would become one of the bigger milestones in the Star Wars franchise of video games and it would help to go make a sequel which would do a lot better and it will sell just as well as this game did.
So do you think that this game holds up well? Well in a way it kind of doesn't, the reason I say that is that while it did set the stage for Star Wars Battlefront II (2005) which was a much better game and it would come out following the release of the third and final prequel film Star Wars Episode III Revenge Of The Sith, in comparison to this game it is inferior on a few levels. There is more content in Star Wars Battlefront II (2005) and I already did a review on that game and the gameplay mechanics are improved in a lot of ways. But if you do want to experience the first ever Star Wars Battlefront game then yeah I'd say it is worth it. It's really cheap to pick up a physical copy second hand and also it's cheap to download digitally for either on PC which you can get from GOG.com or on the XBox Store. The XBox version is backwards compatible on the XBox 360 and while it does have some graphical glitches in some maps it remains playable for the most part, also if you have an XBox One you can either download a digital version for a small price or if you have your old physical copy of the game you can pop the game into the XBox One and then play it because the game is also backwards compatible with the XBox One as well and you do the same with Star Wars Battlefront II (2005). Again though the online play for this game is over so you are left with Single Player modes with AI bots. Then you can see what the old Star Wars Battlefront games where like before EA ruined the series by their evil greedy manipulative practices that I'll eventually get to sometime soon.
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Game Score: 8.0/10
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Game Title: Star Wars Battlefront
Platform: Xbox/PS2/PC
Developer: Pandemic Studios
Genre: First Person Shooter/Third Person Shooter
Age Rating: PEGI: 12+
Release Date: 21st September 2004
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The Good Points:
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Plenty of famous locations from each of the Star Wars films
Various trooper classes that are impactful and useful in any situation
It has the Prequels and Original Trilogy eras
Has the cutscenes from the films
The Bad Points:
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You can't play as any of the Jedi Characters and you can't kill them either
Slow Character Movement
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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