Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005)

From Wikipedia Star Wars: Battlefront II is a first-person shooter/third-person shooter video game developed by Pandemic Studios, and published by LucasArts. The game is the sequel to the successful Star Wars: Battlefront and features new vehicles, characters, game mechanics, maps, and missions. The game was released in PAL regions on October 31, 2005 on the PC, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, and PlayStation 2 platforms, and in North America on November 1 of the same year. It was later updated to be backwards-compatible for the Xbox 360. It was also released on the Playstation store on October 20, 2009 for download on the PSP. Unlike its predecessor, Battlefront II features a more narrative-based campaign, retelling portions of the Star Wars storyline from the point of view of a veteran Imperial Trooper, reminiscing about his tour of duty in service of both the Galactic Republic and as part of the Galactic Empire. Gameplay additions over Battlefront include the use of Jedi and the chance to fight in space while piloting starfighters. Battlefront II was fairly well received, with the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions scoring in the mid 80s at aggregators GameRankings and Metacritic, respectively. The PC version scored slightly lower at both sites, scoring a 76 at GameRankings and 78 at Metacritic. The PSP version was the worst received, scoring 71 at GameRankings and 69 at Metacritic. Reviewers generally praised the narrative-based story, however some felt that the upgrades from the original sequel were not enough to merit the price. attlefront II is fundamentally similar to its predecessor, albeit with the addition of new gameplay mechanics, units, and vehicles. The general objective in most missions is to eliminate the enemy faction. Besides simply killing enemies, players fight for control of 'Command posts', where units respawn after death. Most command posts can be captured, by killing nearby enemies and standing by the command post for a period of time. Controlling a majority of the command posts results in the faster depletion of enemy forces, and allows the player to respawn in more locations. If all command posts are captured, the losing team has only twenty seconds to recapture one before the game ends in their defeat, regardless of their reinforcements count. There are two eras from which to choose; Galactic Civil War, or Clone Wars. Each era features two opposing factions; in the Galactic Civil War the Rebel Alliance and Galactic Empire vie for control, while the Clone Wars features the Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS) and the Galactic Republic. While most character classes are similar to classes of the other factions, each faction has two unique classes, which are unlocked gradually. Players have the ability to choose between six classes throughout the game. Four class types common to all factions are Regular Infantry, "Heavy Troopers", Snipers, and Engineers. All have different specialties as well as certain weaknesses. In addition to the four standard classes, each faction has two special classes. The Confederacy of Independent Systems has the IG-100 Magnaguard and the Droideka for their special classes, the Rebels have a Wookiee Warrior and a Bothan spy, the Old Republic has a Clone Commander and a Jet Trooper, and the Empire has the near-equivalent Imperial Officer and Dark Trooper. Battlefront II also features a special class referred to as "heroes", which are found sporadically throughout the game. The hero each faction receives is entirely dependent on the map. In addition to having un-lockable heroes on the normal Conquest maps, there is an additional Game Mode on Mos Eisley called "Assault." Much like Space Assault, each team is given a number of points to reach before the other team, but all of the Unit Classes are now the heroes. Some examples of heroes include Boba Fett, Mace Windu, Luke Skywalker and Yoda.