20170408:
Motivating and conditioning myself to play games off of lists I've created ("Recommended By Filter" and "List to Play... For Reals"), I decided to check off Star Wars: Battlefront II.
Setup: Keyboard and Mouse.
Gameplay Log:
I started off by playing the tutorial and the game sets up a campaign that introduced me to several different classes (if not all). I liked playing as a sniper and as a Jedi. I would note, however, that using a light saber to deflect enemy fire in LEGO Star Wars (or LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy) is simpler yet more satisfying.
In any case, after completing the tutorial and watching the short video on flight missions, I started up the campaign: Rise of the Empire. I played until I completed the first mission.
Steam Game Time: 62 minutes
Thoughts:
Pros:
+ The tutorial was friendly and helpful.
+ Hopping into a Star Wars vehicle and destroying enemies is satisfying
Neutral:
~ The HUD and some other standard mechanics confuse me; however, I don't often play third-person shooters.
~ The game lacks some clarity on how many lives are left.
~ The game lacks clarity on accepting/passing the opportunity to be a Jedi
Cons:
- Playing the game on my screen's resolution makes a lot of the font annoyingly small
- I wasn't fond of the frequency and/or location of the enemy spawns. It made the game frustrating. Sometimes the enemy seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Perhaps they were.
Comments and Summary:
At first I thought I was disappointed by the game's graphics, but instead I think the game either had flawed mechanics or was short on the execution. Alternatively, the game might have just been too advanced for my taste.
Whatever the reason, I played until I completed the first mission and I felt unsatisfied with the experience.
Trying to think about the matter for a while longer, I started thinking about a game I highly enjoyed, Dead Space 3 (2013). Certainly Dead Space 3 has many differences and it might not be fair to compare the two. But just to mention a couple of differences anyways, Dead Space 3 has a horror element making it thrilling, it has better graphics (after all it was released in 2013), and the enemies don't endlessly spawn.
Perhaps the last difference got to me most. I got the feeling that the enemy AI would spawn and target just me. I think instead, I'd have been fine with the enemy AI spawning endlessly, but their aggressiveness should be equally distributed towards myself and my allies (other Stormtroopers, etc.).
At the end of the day, the main reason I would continue playing the game would be to experience the story which integrates the story shown in the movies.
Star Wars: Battlefront II (PC) (2005)
Relevant Links:
Star Wars: Battlefront II (Wikipedia.org)*
Star Wars: Battlefront II (PC) (MetaCritic.com)
STAR WARS Battlefront II (Steam Store Page)
*Apparently there was a reboot to the Star Wars Battlefront franchise in 2015 and so now there's Star Wars: Battlefront (2004) and Star Wars Battlefront (2015), and eventually there'll be Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) and Star Wars Battlefront II (2017).
