Daily Archives: Monday, October 31st, 2005

This Week’s Releases (Oct 31-Nov 4, 2005)

  • Reading time:17 mins read

by [name redacted]

Week seventeen of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Monday, October 31st

Star Wars: Battlefront II
PSP/Xbox/PS2/PC
Pandemic Studios/LucasArts

I recall a day when LucasArts had something to show for itself aside from Star Wars. For the record, I have never been fond of Star Wars. And from the perspective of someone who is not particularly impressed with the ability to play as Yoda in a duel versus Darth Vader, it is exceedingly difficult to find useful information on this game. After twenty minutes of research I can’t even tell what genre it is, although people keep talking about a new “space battle” mode.

IGN spends three pages comparing the game to its predecessor and going into specific detail about exactly what every character in the game is able to do. GameSpy is able to tell me that the original Battlefront was the best-selling Star Wars game ever, which tells me exactly nothing, actually. The site does talk about “capture the flag” mode, which suggests to me this is a first-person shooter. It then goes into detail about all the mega-cool things the writer was able to do in the game. Finally, GameSpot tells me right up front that this is “an online multiplayer [first/third-person] shooter with new levels and reworked AI”. So there we are.

I think this exercise probably says more about the game and its market than anything I could add.

I OBEY

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I have been requested of more Dalek footage (as referenced here). Far be it for me to overlook a chance to show off.



The colors are deeper now, and more in line with the New Series Daleks. I don’t know if it’s obvious from here.

As before, this fellow is a product of Graffiti Kingdom. I’ve now beaten the game; it’s short, and intentionally easy. There’s a lot more that could have been done, in the end; I kept waiting for a few tools that never presented themselves, like the ability to rotate and move pieces you’ve already drawn, or to define a “body” element, or to set multiple attachment points. Or to set individual portions of arms and legs. Or light-up or “hover” pieces. There’s a lot of overlap, and not much organization. The versus mode is a wasted opportunity, too.

Still, it’s pretty neat for what it is; these are all just details. If someone’s paying attention, a DS sequel could be one of the niftiest games around. Come to think of it, maybe the map drawing feature I proposed earlier would work even better if the levels were 2D. That would bring this game even closer to Cocoron. And that could hardly be bad!