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LIKE A BEST-OF box set released at the end of a singer's career, this is the perfect time for a retrospective game on the completed Star Wars movies (so what if the console version came out a year ago?). Star Wars Battlefront recreates nearly every battle on land from the series of films, as well as constructs tussles only alluded to in the movies, such as Clone War struggles. It's enough to make grown men giddy.
In each fight, you can play as one of five characters in either the fully armed and operational imperial war machine or in a pitiful band of rebel scum. This means that you can trip up imperial walkers on the ice planet Hoth, unleash Wookie fury on stormtroopers on Kashyyk or thin out the numbers of Ewoks on Endor as one of those cool forest scouts of the Empire. You may even be lucky enough to run into Jar-Jar Binks on Naboo… literally run into him with a speeder. Yay!
There are several single-player modes that drop you in the middle of the familiar battles of the original trilogy or let you imagine some of your own backstory in the Clone Wars campaign. A Galactic Conquest mode lets you choose the order of planets to take armies to for power struggles. However, the Instant Action modes cut to the chase and lets you go directly to one of 17 battles on ten planets and fight on either side, in case you just can't wait to liberate Cloud City or slice through the wretched villainry on the streets of Mos Eisley on Tatooine. A robust multiplayer mode also allows team skirmishes with up to 32 players. Each battle begins with equal numbers of troops—usually 200—on either side. You often start with strategic suggestions to use enemy vehicles against them or flank your opponents for an advantage. It's best to follow these suggestions. Each of the five characters on either side has his special weapon, such as a sniper rifle or missile launcher, and some have jobs and abilities, like distributing health, ammo and repairing canons. You can toggle in at out of first-person and third-person views, as well as crouch, lie down and zoom in your view. Depending on the battle, you can board aircraft, deadly AT-STs, speeder bikes—even the two-legged tauntauns—in order to levy a heavy toll on the enemy.
Even though you have a couple hundred stalwart warriors on your side, the battle often hinges on your actions, which is a good thing. If you loaf around, you'll often pay with a defeat. On the other hand, if you're a deadeye with a sniper rifle or inflict major casualties with a gunship, you can sway the tide of the battle your way. With the F keys, you can also give commands to your teammates to follow you, advance, etc., and these commands are occasionally effective. Complaints we had heard about lousy artificial intelligence on the console version did not seem to apply here. Enemies follow you if you run and notice you on their maps if you try to sneak up on them.
Even though the variety of battles and characters feels enormous at first, the strategy and actual game play can sometimes become repetitive. Each character only gets a few weapons, and aside from operating vehicles (which are very fun) there are no other variations to the gameplay like in many shooter games.
However, in some respects, this is the perfect shooter game for Star Wars fans. The backstory is already built in; you already feel a connection to the characters. Shooter fans not loyal to the movies may want to try before they buy. We know Yoda said "do or do not; there is no try," but is he going to pay for the game for you? Likely that is not.
–MARKKUS ROVITO
Star Wars Battlefront: 
Aspyr | www.aspyr.com | 512-708-8100 | $50
Pros: Fight on either side of all the classic—and some new—Star Wars battles, beautiful recreation of environments, competent AI, 25 funto- use vehicles.
Cons: Certain battle strategies can become repetitive.
Requires: OS 10.3.6 or higher, G4 1GHz or faster, 256MG RAM, 2.7GB free hard disk space, ATI Radeon 8500 or Nvideo GeForce4 MX or better video card with 64MB VRAM
macHOME recommends: G5, 512MB or more RAM, 128MB VRAM
Issue reviewed: September 2005
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