Star Wars Battlefront II: The Legend Of Curly's Gold

On Grandma's recent trip to rent ...stuff, she picked up a copy of Star Wars Battlefront II to become Yoda and blow shit up for a temporary, structured, fee based period; unable to commit the full $50 dollar donation to George Lucas' second pool. She played as a Rebel, murdering Storm Troopers, she played as a Storm trooper, murdering Jedi and she played as a funny looking pilot dude that once again proves to us all that a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away- old timey space pilots dressed like assholes.

The fundamental goal in the single player ground based missions usually is a massive game of King Of The Hill. If one stands long enough by an enemy held red glowing ...thingy, it turns blue. If you do this enough, somehow the battle is turned and they admit their defeat; their decision obviously influenced by the humiliating number of glowing blue lights on the fields of carnage. Grandma would get pissed when enemies would spawn right next to the damn things, stopping your take-over timer for a moment until you kill them.

Other objectives include the obvious "go take out this very important thing" or "don't let this very important thing explode." These were easy enough; just find a vehicle or switch to a heavy trooper with an ammo droid somewhere close by and you can get the job done fairly quick on Normal mode. Aiming is a bit tricky if you're going for headshots and can't discern where the head of the droid is exactly. If you've ever played another Pandemic Studios game before, say- Destroy All Humans, it's roughly of the same sort, only with the added confusion of tons of folks running around you doing their own thing; just as we imagine a real skirmish with a division of droids would be.

The space battles were cool enough, but not the impressive display of X-Wing dogfighting we were hoping to see. Grandma's old copy of Star Wars Arcade for the Sega Genesis 32x, now lost to time and trade-ins, was more of a challenge than the skippable fleet missions on SWBII. The controls were reminiscent of Crimson Skies; the PS2's "O" button followed by a single or double press in a direction executes a special maneuver. The fact that you don't even have to play some of them reminded Grandma of all things- Jade Empire without the insane Contra-like scrolling battles.

The sound was spectacular for the most part. Grandma could tell a Tie-Interceptor from a Tie-Fighter flying over her head very easily, and the dialogue screamed by sergeants of the Republic ("For The Chancellor!") reminded us of the tragic futility of war, ESPECIALLY against an army of droids and certainly when your fearless leader turns out to be a douche. The voice acting was of course fantastic, because- come on; it's fucking STAR WARS.

The game was fairly easy, which is probably it's biggest flaw. That can be changed with a flick of the difficulty however, so it all evens out in the end. The multiplayer mode is a lot of fun for Grandma and I to screw around in for a while, and chopping at each other with lightsabers is always enjoyable.

We liked it, but we probably won't buy it just yet. Grandma is holding out for KOTOR 3, if ever the lords of Bioware would again agree to the task.

Game on!