Star Wars Battlefront (2004) & Star Wars Battlefront II (2005) | Breadballer Retrospective Ep. 1

but let me tell you all about the original Star Wars Battlefront games developed by pandemic Studios these were two of my favorite video games when I was a kid they came out back to back in 2004 and 2005 for the PlayStation 2 Xbox and PC they were shooter games that technically can be played in first or third person but I think most people chose the latter while these games did feature online play I'm gonna focus on the single player since that's where most of my time was spent I actually played the second game first it was at a friend's house on the PS2 my family had a GameCube so I missed out on many of the action games that were popular at the time being a late 90s kid I grew up with the prequel trilogy as my introduction to Star Wars I loved the clone troopers and Jango Fett and when I found out I could actually play as them in a video game it blew my [ __ ] mind of course I'm talking about Lego Star Wars the video game but the second more impressive time was Star Wars Battlefront 2. I eventually got my own copy of the game for PC and although this game is the one I started with for Chronological sake I think it'd be better to talk about Battlefront 1 first I seem to have misplaced the Box in manual but I still have the original disk only problem the activation code was in the manual so this is useless my copy on PC came bundled with Republic Commando and Jedi Knight 2 but there exists a compilation called Star Wars the best of PC that has those three and Empire at War and Knights of the Old Republic damn Star Wars Battlefront contains battle scenarios from the original trilogy and episodes one and two as this game actually came out before Revenge of the Sith it had three single-player game modes campaign Galactic conquest and instant action the campaign is split into the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War with each taking place in their respective trilogies in all honesty the campaigns are not very impressive it's essentially just a pre-made set list of maps with scenes from the film sprinkled in to provide a loose story every level plays the exact same as the game only has one game mode the objective is simple deplete the enemy reinforcements there are command posts around the map which you and your AI teammates use as spawn points holding a majority of these is essential to achieving victory and holding all of them will end the game outright in some levels an AI Control Jedi or Sith will help your team in combat sort of like Conquest from the battlefield Series in fact in Battlefront 2 this mode is called Conquest but I'm not sure if it was also called this in Battlefront 1 since it was just the default mode Galactic Conquest is a turn-based strategy mode where you get to pick the era in faction you play as basically you have to take over all the planets by winning battles which of course is just the standard Conquest mode every planet has two battlefronts or Maps so winning ones on an enemy controlled Planet will give it a contested State and winning a second time will give you control each planet you control allows you to choose a bonus for your team in future battles but only one planetary bonus can be used per match you may have noticed these counters on the side of the home planets these fill up every time you win a battle after winning four battles you enable your faction's special ability when playing as the Republic of rebels the ability will automatically take over the next planet you choose to attack the separatists and Empire's ability erases one of the planets from the map [Applause] once you control all the planets you can attack the enemy's home planet and win the conquest it's not that complex but does add a bit of a strategic element to the game instant action lets you pick whatever map and error you want although some maps are only available during one era like kamino Geonosis Hoth and Endor unfortunately eras can't cross so you can't have clones fighting stormtroopers or rebels fighting droids for example moving on to the actual gameplay first of all check out this loading screen [Music] so simple but so addicting it's almost hypnotic the movement is pretty basic there's no sprinting but the default speed isn't too bad you can jump Crouch and prone you can also roll sideways by hitting the jump button while moving left or right there is a zoom feature for most weapons but I believe only the sniper gets an actual scoped View the game uses a class system that weapons are locked to so whatever weapon or equipment you want to use determines what class you'll be playing each faction has the same five classes a standard infantry an assault Trooper an engineer a marksman and a special Trooper the standard infantry across all factions are the same they have a fully automatic Blaster rifle a basic pistol that has an overheat meter instead of ammo thermal detonators and concussion grenades for use against vehicles and turrets the clones have VMP grenades instead of thermal ones which is basically just a grenade for Droids instead of a standard Droid the separatists use super battle droids which have fully auto fire a tri-shot secondary and wrist Rockets instead of grenades despite this a standard Droid is playable in the Clone Wars campaign during the first few levels that take place during The Phantom Menace the assault Troopers all of a rocket launcher however the rebel Vanguard is the only one capable of firing off two during one attack this makes him good against vehicles but since both infantry died on Rocket it's a bit unnecessary I actually find myself burning through Rockets too fast with him the Clone assault Trooper can load two at a time but fires them independently this is much better in my opinion assault Troopers carry a basic pistol and mines in addition to Thermal detonators you can only place four mines at a time as they will begin to despawn starting with the oldest one placed the mines are useful in locking down choke points as they will one shot any infantry that comes into contact with them if you play with friendly fire off you can just roll up to enemies and drop them at their feet blowing them to smithereens [Applause] The Marksman has a sniper rifle a basic pistol thermal detonators and a Recon Droid the recondroid can fire bullets and trigger a self-destruct sequence that causes an explosion if the enemies do not destroy it before it goes off the engineer carries a different Primary in each faction but the rest of his equipment is the same the Clone engineer has a bolt Caster that you can charge to shoot a big beam of electricity the Droid engineer has a radiation launcher that is basically a grenade launcher but instead of grenades it's like little balls of [ __ ] or something I don't know the rebel engineer has a blast Cannon which is more or less a shotgun the Imperial engineer has a mortar launcher which shoots grenades that detonate on impact as for the rest of their gear they all have a basic pistol health and ammo kits and a repair tool that can be used on turrets Supply droids and vehicles the engineer is one of the best classes to use solo since he has the best tools to survive where each faction differs is in their special classes the clones have a jet Trooper he has a jet pack an EMP launcher which is basically a small rocket launcher a Commando pistol that shoots faster than the basic pistol and thermal detonators the separatists have the droidica and if you've seen one of these you know it's just rolling shield in the main guns the rebels have a Wookie that has a bow Caster a grenade launcher and time bombs the bow Caster is pretty powerful and has good range when single firing you can also charge it to release a wide spread you can only drop the time bombs but they do a [ __ ] ton of damage so they're useful for destroying stationary targets the Empire has a Dark Trooper which has a jump pack a shotgun basic pistol and thermal detonators unlike the jet Troopers jet pack the jump pack is unique in that it's a less controllable thrust and can carry through charges I figured the intended strategy is to jump in and out of Engagement but that aside it makes flying around the map super fun your health doesn't regenerate in this game to heal you either need to kill enemies and pick up dropped Health canisters have an engineer drop one for you or stand beside a medical Droid in Galactic Conquest there is a planetary bonus that provides Regen to you and your AI teammates the game has several vehicles to use in combat including star Fighters it's honestly pretty impressive given how old this game is most Vehicles will one shot infantry making them insanely potent during battle each faction has an announcer that live commentates things that are happening during the game and the Infantry all share the same voice actor in each faction I love that they actually got to Maura Morrison to voice all the Clones in instant action there is an option to spawn an AI controlled Jedi or Sith for each team for the Clones it's Mace Windu the separatists get Count Dooku the rebels Luke Skywalker and the Empire Darth Vader they don't use any force abilities and can only attack and block with their lightsaber the lightsaber instantly kills Infantry most of the time the heroes are pretty good and end up getting lots of kills but sometimes they get lost on the map somewhere and won't do anything they also take no damage even if they appear to not block blaster or explosive hits they will despawn if reinforcements for a team Falls too low otherwise the only way to kill them is by knocking them out of bounds landing on top of them with a ship or running them over with the speeder in that last one I have not been able to do so if you want to try be my guest they do respond by the way and they even show up on the scoreboard complete with stats and everything the Jedi and Sith don't have any voice lines but you can hear Darth Vader's famous breathing did he just reload his lightsaber you may have noticed the hilarious animation that plays when infantry get knocked around by explosions since self-inflicted explosions from equipment cause knockback one of my favorite things to do is to turn friendly fire off and use thermal detonators to launch myself around the map if you use the Dark Trooper you can time your jump pack right at the apex of the explosion to get some serious air there is a pretty long get up animation though so you got to be careful where you're sending yourself ah [ __ ] God damn it let's talk about the maps Battlefront 1's map selection is honestly pretty stellar top to bottom they're all pretty different but are all fun to play some maps have a third faction that is either neutral or helps one side if you've seen the movies you probably have a general idea of what these are for example on Geonosis the geonosians help the separatists on Endor the Ewoks will help the Rebels on Dune sea there are Tuscan Raiders that attack both teams they even have their own control points that you can capture the funniest third faction are the Jawas on Moss Eisley they don't attack either team and just kind of lumber around occasionally fixing broken droids and building turrets and if you kill one of them it's marked as a team kill I also want to briefly touch on Jabba's Palace this map is only available on the PC and Xbox version of the game and originally released as DLC that's right downloadable content in 2004. blows my mind really unfortunately PlayStation didn't get PSN until next gen which means both battlefronts on the PS2 missed out on any DLC what's interesting about this map is that it actually had the rancor in it it also doesn't have a loading screen want to see how fast Maps load with the game installed on an SSD overall I'd say I prefer the maps of Battlefront 1 over Battlefront 2. I'll elaborate more once we get to the Battlefront 2 part of the video but this is a major reason why the first Battlefront is the one I tend to revisit more before we transition to Battlefront 2 I need to talk about this now what the [ __ ] is this well back in the day Sony used to compile several demos for upcoming games onto one disc which would then come out as this jam-packed thing and in volume 11 one of the games was Star Wars Battlefront I had the first version of the PS3 that had backwards compatibility but it got the yellow light at death so I can't show you any of my own gameplay there is a great video about the Battlefront demos by a legendary Battlefront player named gamertag tally that does a pretty deep dive on them but to sum up the only playable level was Endor despite there being a screenshot of Hoth on the box some of the classes had different items but the craziest to me was the disguise kit the rebel Marksman had if you held in the left trigger she would look like uh Stormtrooper and you could infiltrate with it so that's all pretty cool seems like PlayStation finally won out on something after all but wait what's this that's right Xbox got their own demo of the game strangely it was included in this box set of the original trilogy again I have no way of playing this but it was an even earlier version of the game than the PS2 demo all right it's finally time to take a look at Battlefront 2. but before I say anything else I just have to point out what the [ __ ] kind of main menu is this the menu on PC looks completely different than the one on consoles which leads me to believe one thing for whatever reason they couldn't get it to work they were probably pressed for time and had to whip up something else so what we got was this and to make matters worse the menu doesn't appear to scale with the resolution setting so no matter what you pick it looks like [ __ ] [ __ ] and while we're at it the in-game UI also appears to just lose all sense of scaling past 1080p here it is running in 1440p look at how small the text is you need a magnifying glass to read all that now normally I wouldn't expect to game this old to scale up perfectly to HD but Battlefront 1 scales up fine all the way up to 1440p so what happened here anyways gameplay wise it was very similar to the first Battlefront they improved player Mobility by adding sprinting and a dedicated roll button allowing you to roll in any direction however you can't go prone anymore there was also still the option to play in first person but again I don't think many people did the game would also feature Space Battles and playable Heroes this game came out the same year as Revenge of the Sith so naturally a large Focus was placed on the events of the movie the campaign follows the 501st through Order 66 and their eventual transition into the empire in this game they used in-game rendered cutscenes featuring narration from a 501st veteran voiced by tomorrow Morrison doing the waning hours of the Clone Wars the 501st legion was discreetly transferred back to Coruscant what's weird though is that they didn't use tamura for the Clone voices the guy they got instead David Boat was pretty good and gave us some iconic lines but if you have tamura why wouldn't you use them unlike in Battlefront 1 where it was all just conquests Battlefront 2's campaign actually contained some unique objectives it's still nothing amazing but at least they made a more deliberate attempt at a unique single player experience the Queen's personal Jedi bodyguards have broken from the palace destroy them like the last game there is also Galactic conquests and instant action the galactic Conquest mode in this game looks a lot more risk-like than the last one you move your capital ship to different nodes which represent the planets if you move your ship to a planet that belongs to the enemy faction a standard battle will occur same thing happens if the enemy moves their ship to one of your planets if the two Capital ships meet it'll become a space battle you start off with only the basic trooper and have to buy the rest of the classes with credits you get from battles you can also buy bonuses which are similar to the planetary bonuses in Battlefront 1. you can spawn additional Capital ships to control multiple points of the map at a time it's honestly pretty fun and definitely a step up from Galactic Conquest in the previous game instant action has a few new modes one of them is called hunt which lets you play as the previously unplayable factions such as the geonosians Ewoks Jawas and tuscans there was also one flag and two flag CTF as well as a hero assault mode which pits all playable heroes and villains in the game against each other the only map for this mode is moss Eisley although the Xbox version got a patch that added the mode to more maps I wasted so many hours playing this as a kid I even remember this glitch spot where you can spawn an infinite supply of canisters unlike the last game the heroes now have voices and fans of the animated Star Wars shows will probably recognize several of the voice actors Obi-Wan Kenobi here I've engaged the enemy Yoda I am fight I will yeah let's get this over with this is Dooku what is the situation Mace Windu reporting for Duty space maps have captured the flag and a special version of assault basically the first team to reached the point limit wins you earn points by killing enemies or destroying parts of the capital ship you can actually land inside the enemy's capital ship and destroy the parts from there it's riskier but much faster than trying to destroy things from the outside you spawn in your team's Hangar and there are usually several starfighters to choose from there are two classes a pilot and a Marine the pilot carries a pistol Fusion cutter and time bombs the pilot automatically repairs the ship during flight despite his limited Arsenal the pilot is the best class for sabotaging on foot as the time bombs do crazy damage the Marine carries a blaster rifle rocket launcher and thermal detonators the Marine is obviously good for fighting other Infantry this is quite an Innovative game mode but unfortunately once the novelty wears off it ends up getting a bit repetitive the class system got a bit of an overhaul there's a few differences in equipment compared to the last game but it seems they standardized the loadout for the four main classes across each faction I think the only new Gadget worth mentioning is the debt pack which is essentially C4 with friendly fire off the engineer is now even more powerful and can obliterate most infantry with ease each faction still has the same special trooper from the previous game but they added another one so now every faction has two they also required the player to accumulate some points to play as them which they could get by capturing command posts and killing enemies the points don't reset it's basically just a small time gate to prevent players from starting the match with these classes the Republic's new class was the Clone Commander I always thought these guys looked like the Executioner from Shrek in the game they have this big ass chain gun that utilizes an overheat meter instead of ammo it also looks like it's firing actual bullets which is kind of strange in a Star Wars game the equipment is also kind of weird they had a defensive buff called rally that affects both the commander and nearby teammates he also had a Recon Droid as all the Marksman classes had the Recon Droid replaced by an auto turret the droid's new class is the Magna guard which sounds awesome but they don't have the electro staff instead they have a gun that fires rockets and a radiation launcher they also have a Recon Droid and a buff called neurotoxin it's basically like an AOE poison it's cool that they included this guy but I feel like without the staff and even the cape it just kind of misses the mark the rebels new class is the Boston Spy this guy is pretty interesting his primary weapon is an incineration gun it's pretty powerful but it just looks like you're shooting a flurry of pixels instead of a secondary he has the ability to go invisible as a countermeasure they made this guy incredibly squishy the equipment includes Health regeneration and a time bomb the Empire's new class is the Imperial officer he's got a Dark Helmet helmet and carries a Sonic pistol and mortar launcher the Sonic pistol is similar to the Sonic blasters that geonosians use for his equipment he has a Recon Droid and rage a supportive AOE buff that provides a damage boost to nearby teammates each team also gets a playable hero which differs on every map only one player can play as the team's Hero at a time and it is usually awarded to the best player at some point during the match each hero will gradually lose health over time but can recover some by killing enemies the heroes are pretty overpowered against regular infantry but an overwhelming amount of them can still kill you I don't want to individually inspect Ichiro so I'll keep it brief all the lightsaber Heroes have some kind of force ability most of them can throw their lightsaber and Dooku Insidious can shoot lightning there are a few Blaster Heroes that are pretty good against infantry but kind of suck against other Heroes the last thing I'll say about the heroes is regarding Jango Fett what the [ __ ] happened to his blaster what is this why'd they give him some little pea shooter he's got the coolest sounding blaster in all of Star Wars may be rivaled only by padme's and it's nowhere to be seen even the Lego game got it right [Applause] [Music] what an absolute travesty this game added an award system that provided performance bonuses in game which would give the player Buffs or a better version of whatever gun they were using nearly every award requires achieving some kind of streak in one life whether it's points earned or kills with a specific weapon for example the most common award endurance requires you to get 12 points in a single life and awards you with improved stamina regeneration accumulated awards are lost when you die unless you've earned that individual award 64 or more times to achieve legendary status on it if that didn't make sense let me give an example say you get the endurance award and then die when you respawn you lose the bonus from that award however if on this profile you got the endurance award 64 times or more across any game mode then you start every match with it and it stays even if you die one of the best quality of life features added in this game is the ability to change classes without respawning by walking over a command post and pressing the enter vehicle button you can freely change classes as much as you please Health enamel are not restored after changing but most command posts have health and ammo droids if they are broken you can switch to the engineer and fix them and then switch back to your desired class surprisingly only a handful of Battlefront 1 Maps appear in Battlefront 2. due to the tie-in with Revenge of the Sith a majority of the new maps are centered around locations featured in the film such as the Coruscant Jedi Temple Felucia the kashyyk beach Mustafar megiddo paulus Massa and yudapow there were also some new original trilogy locations such as Dagobah inside the Death Star and inside the tan of four while I do really like some of the maps in Battlefront 2 I found a lot of the new ones to be a little too boxed in what I loved about the Battlefront 1 Maps were how open they felt the Battlefront 2 maps feel a little too hectic at times some people might enjoy that kind of constant action but I prefer there to be a little more space the Xbox version got DLC that added Cloud City both renvar maps and Yavin for Arena from Battlefront 1. the craziest thing of all was that this DLC added two new Heroes Kit Fisto and asajj Ventress hot damn asaja's lightsabers were connected to each other which gave her some really cool attack animations they were almost like nunchucks unfortunately I never played this game on Xbox there are PC mods that add the DLC maps and heroes but it seems they'll never be able to perfectly replicate the original animations a minor thing I preferred in Battlefront 1 was that the victory screen usually gave you a free cam shot from somewhere on the map [Music] in Battlefront 2 the game just freezes Wherever You Are it's a small thing but feels a bit anti-climactic I also think the UI was dumbed down quite a bit compared to the first game it just looks so generic in this one sure Battlefront 2 had more mechanics to consider such as stamina and hero health and abilities but to me the Battlefront 1ui was just so much better from the menu to the loading screen to the hutting game everything just worked so well it also pains me to say that with friendly fire off they got rid of explosive knockback between the added mobility and the Myriad of explosive devices I kind of get why they made this change but it's still a bit sad that I can't do grenade jumps anymore thank you I know it sounds like I'm [ __ ] all over Battlefront 2 here but I still think it's a great game it had a lot to live up to and I wouldn't argue with anyone who prefers it over the first game I will say thanks to its improved movement it feels much more responsive to play the fact that this game came out just one year after Battlefront 1 is enough to applaud over packing playable Heroes additional classes new maps and modes and Space Battles into this game was one hell of an accomplishment and I haven't even mentioned that these games use a ton of great music from the films but due to copyrights I had to record most of the gameplay without any music put these two together and you have two of the finest Star Wars games ever made a third major Battlefront title was in development by a different Studio free radical and over the years bits and pieces of it have been leaked onto the internet from what we've seen it was pretty ambitious in Combined land and space combat so in theory you could fly a Starship from the planet's surface up to a capital ship and begin roaming around up there for whatever reason the game was canceled and all that was left were the leaks and some assets that got reused in the PSP version of Battlefront Elite Squadron it's a very sad end to what could have been a great follow-up to Battlefront 2. if this game had actually come out I would ship my pants but hey we still got two great games today Battlefront 1 and 2 are nearly 20 years old and their creator pandemic Studios has been defunct for almost 14 years but if anyone who's worked on these games is watching this consider this my personal thanks these games were a major part of my childhood and I will remember them forever [Music] [Music] we've [Music] [Music] come [Music]

Channel: Breadballer

Views: 533,716

Keywords: star wars battlefront, star wars battlefront 2004, star wars battlefront original, star wars battlefront 2, star wars battlefront ii, star wars battlefront 2 2005, star wars battlefront 2 original, pandemic studios, review, retrospective, in 2023, breadballer, breadballer retrospective, bread baller, breadballer games, star wars battlefront 3, star wars battlefront iii, free radical, star wars battlefront pc, steam

Id: vnf4bVUnTN0

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 20 2023