I am an avid fan of the first game ( on the PC at least ) so I had great expectations for the follow up.
To begin with the graphics from the first PS2 game have been improved upon and ( at last ) the game runs at lot quicker, you even get to run and have a stamina bar !
The plus points to the game are :
Game modes and choices at last ! Play a tradional conquest or hunt mode ( take out ewoks, sand people, wookies ),capture the flag.
The " story mode " has a far batter presentation to it and you have to earn points to unlock extra troop types and bonuses.
You get to retain stats, kills, loses, medal awards.
Everyone and everything, including repair droids and vehicles have energy bars.
Medals are awarded for completion of certain things, certain kills or diabling enemy vehicle will earn you medals. Once you reach legendary status, you unlock a award, health regeneration, ungraded sniper rifle or blaster, vehicle repair re-generation, you do end up trying to comple various tasks in order to gain a reward, making each game different. You need, for example to kill 8 bots with a shotgun or 6 headshots with a sniper so you don't always use the same tactics.
The space levels are utterly fantastic and you get a great sense of size, flying along side a star destroyer without using a speed boost takes almost a minutes. It also gives you the choice of taking out external items or you have go into the enemy hangers and destroy their critical systems from within.
You can change your character at any of your bases, by using the triangle button,need to repair a vehicle, just change to the engineer, use a fusion cutter and change back to a trooper, this makes the game more diverse so at least you are not stuck using a character until you die.
The bad points :-
Although some of the levels have returned from the first game, many have been left out.
The map is now tiny and you struggle to see which command post you are selecting ( they have changed your troop posts to blue and it blends in to the map too easily.)
Troop commands have been severely reduced down and are very difficult to activate ( try pushing up on the d-pad during a battle ), it seems to activate every command so you rarely have the time to read which command you have asked to perform.
In instant action you STILL have to earn sufficiant points to get to use some of the characters,i.e the dark trooper / wookie. WHY ? Although the Dark Troopers shotgun has been removed and replaced with a electrical charge gun...eck !
This could just be me, but there always feels like there are less bots on the screen than the first game, it still " feels " like a busy battleground but with a handful of bots against you.
Poor computer bot A.I. Your CPU bots do have a tendancy to stand about, you may also notice that in a crowded corridor ( the Death Star ), an enemy trooper can wander past several of your troopers, neither of which take any interest in each other and then shoot at you ?!?!
I don't have access to on-line gaming so trust that this wouldn't be an issue.
So to sum up, improvements to almost all areas, the bad points are greatly outweighed by all the new improvements from before. Definately worth buying, it will take months to unlock all the rewards.
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