Did you ever read Redwall books as a kid?

Tails of Iron absolutely RIPS. What an incredible little adventure! I didn't expect it to be what it was, and only tried it because it was a PS Plus monthly game. It's not a full-blown Metroidvania, but it borrows enough from the genre that, when combined with its solid combat-focused gameplay, it scratched the Silksong itch quite nicely.

I loved the setting and aesthetic, the art is perfectly grotty and messy, with rats, frogs, bugs, and moles cleaving heads and covering each other in viscera. The narration is also incredibly well-done, reminding me a lot of Bastion. Everything works together beautifully to create a compelling experience from start to finish, as you fight off invaders in your kingdom and rebuild what they've destroyed. The narration does a great job of describing everything from the rat protagonist's POV, and I couldn't have been more engrossed by the end.

Playing on PS5 was the right move as well, as the game makes great use of the Dualsense's adaptive triggers, and allows map navigation via the touch controls. I was a little annoyed by the rumble, however, as the intensity doesn't differentiate between getting struck by a massive boss or landing after a standing jump. But that was honestly my only negative of the entire experience, and at just under 5 hours to 100%, I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoys challenging combat.

There seems to be a prevailing expectation that as games evolved, they also became exponentially more approachable. Higher budgets resulted in smoother graphics and fewer bugs. More complex controls (adding left/right triggers, then adding one/two joysticks, then dabbling with motion inputs, etc) gave players a firmer grasp over their characters. AI became more predictable as their algorithms became more intricate to capture a wider range of responses. In a sense, as the technology expanded, the resulting products seemingly became more streamlined to better suit the player’s needs while more thoroughly capturing a developer’s vision.

Team Ico has never been about following tradition, however. If anything, the evolution of their titles embodies the regression of player control, choosing to instead utilize technological advancements not just to refine its premise via "design by subtraction" as chump has pointed out, but to deliver an entirely new experience altogether. Ico was a classic tale of boy meets girl; the girl had to be freed from her cage and pulled around the castle, as the boy protected her against everything in her way to prevent her demise. Shadow of the Colossus, however, was a story concerned with the struggle over control. The lone wanderer, in his quest to revive Mono, hunts down various several-story colossi capable of swatting him about like a fly. In the resulting desperate dance of death, he at first struggles to climb their hulking figures, hanging on for dear life until he discovers their weak points and stabs the colossi while they helplessly flail about. In other words, it's a game about trying to regain any semblance of control until you realize after the fact that the only shadow left was the literal shadow cast by Wander over their fallen corpse.

The Last Guardian then, can be thought of as the natural evolution of Team Ico titles, in that it melds previous design sensibilities and thrives off of disempowering the player throughout its entirety. Trico, the player’s companion and a cross between cat and bird, is essentially the analog to Wander’s horse in Shadow of the Colossus, Agro. Fumito Ueda designed Agro as a companion rather than just a vehicle, and had his team develop specific movement algorithms that would allow Agro to steer herself without the player’s explicit control, forcing players to put their trust in their steed during certain fights emphasizing bow aiming. Ueda and his new team at GenDesign iterated upon this idea, explicitly creating environments where the player was forced to rely upon Trico’s actions to progress and thus establish dependency between the boy and his companion.

While the game can be thought of as an inversion of Ico in this sense, its design influence upon The Last Guardian should not go overlooked, particularly in how the game captures Ico’s physicality. Ico’s key strength was establishing a sense of presence through minimalist puzzles that lacked overly gamey elements, namely in how Ico interacted with his surroundings. Players are subtly guided into climbing chains, pulling levers, sitting on stone sofas to save, and most importantly, holding down R1 to hold Yorda by the hand around the castle and pull her out of danger whenever captured. The Last Guardian innovates upon this by combining several of the traversable elements and the companion into one. To better navigate the vast ruins, the boy must guide Trico and utilize their tall body of climbable feathers in order to scale heights, while occasionally dragging around their large tail and dangling it over ledges to safely climb down. Most importantly, you get to pet Trico whenever you feel like it to comfort your friend in both their happiest and most emotionally taxing moments. In both Ico and The Last Guardian, the player’s constant contact with both the environment and their companion keeps them firmly rooted within its constructed sense of reality by regularly reminding them of their companion’s physical presence.

This physicality would not be as significant without the lessons learned from Shadow of the Colossus however, not just regarding AI behavior but also specifically in how it adapts the game’s sense of scale. Trico is large, and the boy is small. As mentioned previously, Trico can utilize their size to lean against walls and give the boy a step up, but they can also utilize their weight to hold down large chains and swipe away at imposing bodies of armor. Meanwhile, the boy is much more agile and can fit into otherwise inaccessible small spaces by Trico, squeezing through narrow tunnels and gaps in metal gates to pull switches and let his partner through. This obvious difference in size creates consistent room for contrast, not just in how the two characters differ in terms of functionality but also in terms of their scale when measured against the traversed liminal spaces of the ruins, constantly transforming from immense empty rooms to constrained and suffocating tunnels and corridors.

What is particularly interesting is not just The Last Guardian’s disempowerment or sense of scale, but rather what it manages to achieve with said elements and the resulting contrast to establish interdependency between the two characters and solidify their relationship. The combat, an almost complete inverse of Ico’s combat, is the most obvious example. Rather than defending Yorda by whacking shadow enemies with a stick, the roles have been reversed, in that the player must rely upon Trico to guard against scores of possessed armor as to avoid getting kidnapped himself. Even so, the game plays around with this idea of vulnerability, shifting the onus of responsibility about as the boy often finds himself in positions where he must actively support or protect Trico, such as disposing of glass eyes that scare his friend or scrambling to pull a nearby switch to lower a bridge and give Trico room to climb up to safety. The game is even willing to occasionally break its own rules to demonstrate how this sense of caring evolves past its defined guidelines. In almost any other game, this mechanical inconsistency would be regarded as a flaw, but it is this sense of doubt that creates room for the relationship to build from in the first place, and is perhaps the game’s most understated strength.

This is not to say that The Last Guardian was bereft of limitations regarding the execution of its ambitious scope. The most pressing challenge that Ueda and his team faced was how to balance its constructed sense of reality with regards to player expectations; that is, it had to find meaningful ways to commit to its vision of establishing the relationship between the boy and Trico while also acknowledging and appeasing players that would otherwise get lost or frustrated. Perhaps the most obvious downgrade from Ico is the presence of constant button prompts appearing on-screen to alert the players on how to better control the boy and instruct Trico; while the frequency of the prompts lessens over time, it is a slight disappointment that the game doesn’t simply force the players to experiment with inputs and commands as a more subtle and trusting substitute. This downfall however, is an anomaly amongst The Last Guardian’s other shortcomings, as it manages to successfully disguise many of its other concessions and limitations. There’s a classic “escape from the collapsing structure” sequence where all you do is hold forward and jump, but the game gets away with it because the player is used to being framed as a helpless participant. There’s occasional voice-over dialogue hints whenever the player has been stuck for a while in the same area, but it feels far less intrusive than Dormin’s repeated and booming hints in Shadow of the Colossus because the game has already established itself as a retrospective re-telling from the now grown boy’s point of view. Trico doesn’t respond immediately to the boy’s commands when being told where to go, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t function like clockwork and would need time to spot and process the situation from their own point of view, so the lag in response feels justified. It doesn’t matter that certain isolated elements of the game would crumble under scrutiny. What matters is that the situational context to allow players to suspend their disbelief is almost always present; in other words, the illusion holds up.

I’m still learning more about the game to this day. There are so many little details that I wouldn’t have spotted upon a first playthrough, and it’s an absolute joy finally getting to gush upon spotting them in replays. Of course it makes sense that you can’t just issue specific commands to Trico at the very start as a sequence-break despite not being taught by the game; after all, Trico hasn’t had time to observe you and mimic your actions to carry out such commands. Of course the hostile creatures that look exactly like your friend behave similarly; how can you then use your preconceived knowledge of their physiology to aid your friend in a fight against their copycat? I also can’t help but appreciate how GenDesign condensed so much learning within its introduction; in the first ten minutes alone, you’re hinted on how to later deal with the bodies of armor (the magical runes that appear before waking up are the exact same as the runes that appear when grabbed, and are dispelled in the same manner of furiously mashing buttons), you get to figure out how Trico’s eyes change colors depending upon whether they’re mesmerized or hostile, and it quickly establishes the premise of building up trust with a very wary creature that’s more than likely to misunderstand or ignore you at first. Combine all of these nuances with the game’s ability to destabilize and diversify playthroughs via Trico’s innate curiosity and semi-unpredictable instincts, and you get a game that becomes easier to appreciate the more the player familiarizes themselves with its inner workings.

I think a lot of criticism for The Last Guardian ultimately comes down to less of what we perceive the game is and more of what we perceive the game isn’t. It’s not a fully player-controlled puzzle-platforming game like Ico, it’s not a puzzle-combat game with spectacle like Shadow of the Colossus, and it’s certainly not a classic companion escort-quest game where you can just order Trico around like a robot and expect automatic results every time. Instead of focusing on the progression of more complex controls and puzzles, The Last Guardian is focused on the progression of a seemingly more complex relationship. I’m not going to pretend that everyone will get something out of this game, as it definitely requires a good deal of patience and player investment to meet the game halfway. It’s certainly more difficult to appreciate given its lack of influence unlike Ico or its lack of exhilarating boss encounters unlike Shadow of the Colossus. That said, it’s this element of danger in its ability to commit to its vision while alienating impatient players that makes it such a compelling title once it finally clicks. Many before me have pointed out how powerful the bond between the player and Trico felt upon learning from others that improperly caring for Trico results in your companion stubbornly ignoring the player’s commands; after all, volume swells cannot exist without contrast to provide room for growth. Perhaps this is why at the end of the day, I find myself transfixed by every word that Fumito Ueda has to offer. In an era where developers feel overly concerned with the best and brightest, he doesn’t seem concerned about what video games mean so much as what video games are. I can only hope that someday, he and GenDesign will return to bring us a new title that captures our imagination as thoroughly as many of his works already have for me.

Tetsuya Takahashi: "i skimmed the abstract of like 5 different philosophy books and arthur c clarke novels and i'm here to just vomit all that back at you for 70 hours without saying anything meaningful about any of it"

Me: "sounds bad"

Tetsuya Takahashi: "i've also included kung-fu and robots"

Me: "sounds sick"

Yoko Taro: (furiously taking notes)

[Pros]
-Aside from the slow intro, the game has no downtime. It surely is action-packed.

-The continue system of this game is not only conceptually intriguing but also shows the evolution of arcade games' continue system. It makes people WANT to master the older levels, but with their own phase.

-defensive options(dash, block, perfect parry, weaving&short-jumping) are varied and each has its own clear merits.

-perfect parry has a really short window, which means it's not easy to always rely on it. It also means that people won't likely go with one single method to deal with every problem.

-Environmental hazards (fall-death, stair-fall, wall-crash, throwable objects) are the true king of the grand game design. Every countermeasure and combo you will make is chosen, or amplified by these objects. You can engage in the fight against defensive enemies by kicking the bottle or chair to destroy their position and punish. You can throw the enemy off the ledge or stair by using throwing and sweep attacks. Since there are a lot of dangerous enemies coming toward you at the near-end level, this environment manipulation becomes the main ammunition of your gun. And I really love the chaotic situation I can pull off with that.

-Healing system is simple but very fitting to this game.

-There's a hidden spare-the-boss mechanic in this game, which is kinda gimmicky, but it also makes you have an additional goal that changes your strat. (you have to destroy their structure twice in their second phase before their health goes down to 0) Pretty neat I should say.

-Not related to the mechanics, but the third and fourth levels are truly eye-festival. The art direction is fantastic.

[Middle ground]
-Yes, this game's combat system is entirely built upon automatic move assists like gliding enemies and kinda inconsistent tracking speed, but most of the time they can be negated by good positioning. I wish the vertical attacks didn't track the players tho.

-There aren't many enemy types, but the normal goons themselves can change their attack patterns by holding the weapons lying around(I know it's a classic AI behavior that has been made since the older beat-em-up games, but it's still fantastic), and some random super-saiyan mode can stir the arena in a fun way. (Imagine the devil transformation from God Hand, but much more lenient) So, yeah, even with the low amount of enemy variety, the arenas are pretty dynamic. Though I wish there were more champion enemy types.

-Bosses are pattern-heavy and very punishing when we interrupt their combo(which is why they seem kinda restrictive), but the defensive options and countermeasures alone can make some variations in the gameplay. For example, It is possible to destroy the structure meter of Botanist's 1st phase with the weave-punch-wall-throw combo since there are many walls in the boss arena. Surprisingly not many people didn't use that. Also, many people consider that the third boss is meant to be played with the waiting-game strat, but I realized that the structure damage she gives is quite low, so I dealt with the first phase with full-on perfect parry strat which is quite similar to Sekiro. I think some people can deal with her with constant weaving&short-jumping, which is kinda impressive in a sense. What I'm saying is, the bosses are not that DEEP in the whole action game spectrum, but they surely accept different playstyles.

[Cons]
-I think some enemy attack patterns are frustrating to deal with because of the lack of telegraphs. Note that I'm not a Fighting Game enthusiast tho.

-Yeah it is realistic that punching people irl doesn't make a bomb sound, but even considering that, the sound feedback should have been more explosive.

-The Second Boss is unnecessarily punishing considering that he is still an early game boss and the patterns themselves are quite simple.

-Honestly, The skill tree exists for the skill tree's sake. all the combat moves should have been opened from the start and only non-permanent-stat-boost from the dragon statue should have remained in this game.

-Camera collides with the wall, which can lead to some unmanageable stuff like the things in God of War Reboot.

-I hated the final boss for being too fast and hard-hitting while also providing only a small amount of window for us to express the offensive moves.

Overall, I can give this at least 4/5 for the pure enjoyment I got from this game. But I have to say, I could have loved it even more if they fixed the Cons.

The perfect Indiana Jones gaming experience in my eyes.

Nails, not just the narrative tone and visual aesthetics of Spielberg's cinematic adventure serials to a T, but the game's combat.

The way the game's combat works is what sells the entire thing. Fights feel dirty and scrappy. Indy's hat can fly off during fights and you can pick it up again after you've defeated your enemy. It's the little touches like that which make "Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb" so special imo.

It definitely has all the elements that make up the attributes of the film. There's surprisingly impactful brawling, some gun play, exotic vistas and archaeological ancient platforming.

Whilst it has all these things, it masters none. It's all quite janky, but for a game of this period juggling so many elements, you forgive it. With all the things Indiana Jones has, you're just glad to see that they tried to include them where they could. And you appreciate that it feels like a relatively natural extension of the IP into the gaming space, even though its not the greatest game.

now that we're a few years removed from the 'completion' of super smash bros. ultimate, a game i feel likely closes the book on a massive, overarching story of the evolution of this series under the direction of creator masahiro sakurai in an explosive final entry lavish in bombast and maximalist polish, it's interesting to look at the super smash bros. series as a complete works - five major entries all leading to bigger, bolder things, distinct in identity (even 4, more than it's given credit) and milestones of different aspects and fragments of my life. my "childhood smash game" was really two games, and i associate both with different aspects of that developmental period - melee was my personal smash title, the one i owned and poured dozens and dozens of hours into exploring and experimenting with... and brawl was the community game; my first major competitive outlet with my friends, my first exposure to a title with THIS much content under the hood, my first time being old enough to follow at least part of its release cycle... in a sense, melee and brawl formed two halves of a whole for me. i have easily 1,000+ hours between the two having played them both as long and as regularly as i did. and it's funny, thinking about how my tastes in videogames and art have evolved alongside these games - now, at the point where i value distinction, direction, and experimentation above objective quality, i see brawl in a similar forgiving and exciting light as i did at eight or nine years old - it's a wonderful, exciting experience and perhaps the team's best example of unbelievable scale with a hint of restraint.

a friend of mine brought up the point that brawl might've had the most "complete" feeling roster of any smash game upon its conclusion and logic at the time. thinking about 2007, 2008, and seeing who made it in, i might be inclined to agree. so many major hitters fill out the roster, with all characters feeling simple and comprehensive enough to control without getting into the complex, individualist-feeling dlc add-ons of smash 4 and ultimate. it's a roster full of characters who all feel like they're in the same game. 2 third party guests - the NECESSARY addition of sonic the hedgehog and the fan-favorite solid snake just feel... right, given the culture of the time, given the aesthetics brawl borrows from.

brawl is a defiant step away from the competitive aspects of melee's accidental execution and before the more intentional attempts with smash 4 and ultimate, and whether or not that's a good thing entirely depends on your approach. it's clearly meant to be a game enjoyed and huddled around by friends and soaked in for hundreds of hours - THE smash game for playing with items on, or messing around with the minimalist but just-open-enough stage editor (i liken this to the phenomenon of exploration that came with the limited simplicity of the wii's initial mii design constraints and the check mii out channel, or later the concept behind flipnote studio/hatena), or the plethora of events and an entire 2-player story mode in subspace emissary, which i honestly think BENEFITS from having two people as in a single-player vaccum its charm dips into monotony far too quickly in my eyes. point being, brawl was every bit the smash game the wii's audience probably needed, embracing the wii's blue-ocean market approach and creating something that felt less like a competitive fighting game, less like a multiplayer one-and-done experience, but a cultural event: a massive, overarching love letter to all that the wii, nintendo's history, and now the smash bros. canon itself stood for. there's just so MUCH to soak in with brawl; the masterpieces offered many players their first taste of retro titles to be picked up on virtual consoles, a digital release calendar and trophies painted a physical history of the brawl's referential pulp canon, contest and coin shooter modes allowed a break from the typical fighting gameplay, and a flush soundtest with hundreds upon hundreds of compositions and remixes allowed brawl to feel akin to a cultural sandbox, a playset not unlike the one depicted back in smash 64's opening cutscene.

if the original intent was to have smash bros. as a series aim for a party crowd, this was the home run of the bunch - it's a party and celebration in a way that perhaps no other entry in the series did with as much dedication, depth and intricacy. smash bros. brawl might be kusoge, but if that's the case, it's the best fucking kusoge of all time. a genuine masterpiece in the realm of casual party competition in gaming. from the first smash dojo! posts to the round of custom stage, items on, 3-stock i just played today, smash bros. brawl elevated this from a fantastic duology to a cultural phenomenon on a level encompassing the medium that no one could ever hope to achieve again.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/mod-corner-swat-4-elite-force-swat-4-sketchkov-syndicate/

While SWAT 4 and it’s expansion pack Sketchkov Syndicate had a fantastic premise and a lot of great features that were executed pretty well, it also had a notorious difficulty spike and often annoying unpredictability that made a lot of the later levels a tedious slog to get through. That’s where SWAT: Elite Force comes in, not only adding even more great features to the game, but ironing out some of the problems that I had with the game.

From the get go, the changes are immediate. While the graphics remain the same, the mod still manages to add a few new bells and whistles, such as resolutions that go up to 8K, meaning that you no longer have to deal with the 1600×1200 resolution limit, along with new features such as an FOV slider and mouse smoothing. These might seem like small things, but once they’re there, you can’t imagine playing the game without them.

When you start a Single Player game, there is now the option to play through all of the levels of SWAT 4 and Sketchkov Syndicate together, which is nice for repeated playthoughs if you don’t want to have to switch between the two. If you’re really concerned about the story of the expansion being broken up by the levels from the base game, you can still choose to play them separately.

There are also some new levels that come included with the Elite Force mod. There’s only a few of them, but they fit in perfectly with the rest of the levels. You can also choose to include these levels in your Career or play them separately.

If you’ve played SWAT 4 and it’s expansion so much that the HARD difficulty is a breeze, there are some Premadeath options. Permadeath is exactly what you think it is, in that if you die, you have to start the career all over again, and if your AI permanently die, and they’re out for the rest of the game, meaning if you want to get through the game as easy as possible, you have to make sure your teammates are safe too.

While the difficult from the base game still manages to peak through every now and again, but thankfully it’s been significantly reduced to the mod re-balancing the game by moving around the maps in a new order, easing you into the game and it’s mechanics a lot better.

The AI also got a re-balance. In situations during the base game that I know I would have definitely failed in the base game and have to spend up to an hour on a level, I managed to pass with very few tries, if any, in Elite Force, even if it was by the skin of my teeth.

Throughout any of the missions, the mod now tells you when you complete individual objectives as you complete them, meaning that you no longer have to constantly check what your mission objectives are every couple of minutes by going into the objectives menu. It makes the whole experience feel smoother.

Your fellow SWAT members can still be taken out fairly quickly some times, but nowhere near as much as in the base game. SWAT members didn’t really start getting incapacitated on my play through until at least the 10th mission. Although, SWAT members still seem to get hung up on corners every now and again. I guess that’s a bug that’s baked into the AI.

You can now also order your fellow officers to do some of the stuff that only you could before, such as use grenades, lightsticks, C2, the optiwand, the pepper spray, and even use the door wedge on both closed and open doors. It really does take some of the tedium out of playing with the AI squad mates. The mod even introduces Speech Recognition. I haven’t tested it out myself, but it seems to work from what I’ve heard. This really helps for those who more immersion, and it certainly cuts down on going through menus.

There are also several new weapons, including a SCAR-H, Aks-74u, MP5K PDW, Glock 18 Glock 19, and even the option to carry no weapon at all. I guess that’s for if you know the game so well that you feel up for a challenge and a no-weapon run. Also, there are 2 new armor pieces. The Heavy Kevlar Armor and Heavy Ceramic Armor.

When you’re tired of playing the game by yourself, there is a myriad of new features for the multiplayer, including various new commands and key binds. You can even play though the single player in CO-OP.

This mod even restores content that didn’t make it into the final game due to time constraints during the development, but were left on the disc, along with more than 100 bug fixes throughout the game.

If you’re a fan of SWAT 4, then Elite Force is a must play. It’s amazing what a few tweaks can do to make a game better. If you want to know what every change is, the mod does come with a text file listing every single little detail. It does nothing but improve the game in a lot of ways along with adding a lot of new content for you to play around with. Elite Force is now my preferred way of playing SWAT 4, and I can’t see myself ever playing the game without it.

Grand Theft Auto has inspired a lot of games and The Saboteur is one. Think of this as Grand Theft Paris in which you play as Sean Devlin an Irish man trying to help the French Resistance against the Nazi war machine. Yes, this is another WWII, but it’s different. Just read along and you’ll see.

The first thing you will notice is the game’s atmosphere. It’s set in a replica of 1940’s Paris and feels just like it. The graphics are technically looking good but artistically is where it’s at. When you liberate an area of the city it turns from black and white to color. So as you travel through the city the color will change in real time. What’s great about it artistically is that in the B&W areas only the red of the Nazi flags stands out. On resistance soldiers and leaders certain things on them are in color such as the eyes, and parts of clothing and it makes things look really unique. While this all looks great the novelty wears off pretty quick and you end up forgetting about it.


The game has stealth gameplay and shooting mechanics. When you get a mission you can jack a car or get one from your garage (you can store new ones there too) and follow a yellow route line on your mini-map to your destination. While the game is called The Saboteur this is actually the hardest thing in the game to pull off. Some missions have you trying to sneak into an enemy camp. This is marked by barbed wire on the map and if you enter it you will sound the alarm almost immediately if you are seen. Your goal is to knock out a soldier and take his disguise. This isn’t always as easy as it sounds because you have to make sure other soldiers aren’t looking. If someone sees the dead body a yellow “suspicious zone” will appear and even if you are in disguise you can trigger an alarm. Doing things such as running, climbing buildings, and walking fast will make soldiers who can see you suspicious.

The stealth element is kind of flawed because they all work against you. Trying to plant dynamite in an area to draw soldiers away doesn’t work at all since they just stand there staring around. There are a lot of times where you will be forced to just gun it out because the stealth elements are so flawed that you can’t get away with sneaking. Some missions will go flawlessly and others won’t. This doesn’t make the game unplayable, it just has you wasting your time trying to figure out a stealthy way when it turns out, after so much effort, there just isn’t one.


Gunplay is simple enough with cover mechanics and there are a ton of true-to-the-era weapons as well. You can find ammo crates all over the place, but you can only carry two weapons at a time. Between missions, you can visit black markets and use contraband to buy upgrades for resistance fighters, car upgrades, ammo etc. It’s all pretty basic with nothing special in the store, but there’s nothing crucial that you will need to buy to get past a part of the game.

The missions are pretty diverse so this isn’t the issue with the game. The issue is how you have to execute the missions and nothing ever really turns out the way you planned. All of this needs to be trimmed up and fixed for the sequel. During missions, if you raise an alarm you can run (like in GTA4) or find a hiding spot. Most are located on top of buildings and climbing isn’t very fun. This isn’t Assassin’s Creed so climbing is sluggish and a bit unresponsive. Thankfully you only climb buildings about 40% of the game.

Other than that the game is worth a purchase if you like sandbox games. There aren’t many side missions or free play missions, but the game is long enough to get your money’s worth. The story is the best part of the game with memorable characters and a gripping ending. Watching these people struggle for survival against Nazi Germany is movie quality. The writing is witty and Sean has a lovable personality. You quickly grow to love these characters and they are all fleshed out nicely. The game also has lots of boobs, but this sticks to true 1940’s Paris because nudity wasn’t as sinful as it is today. Of course, you have to buy the game new or buy the unlock DLC for the nudity and four cinematic stripper scenes.


Overall the game is solid in some areas and not in others. With broken stealth mechanics, you can’t always be the saboteur the game claims, but certain missions are satisfying enough to play out the way you want. The game is looking good for a sequel and I’ll definitely be by Sean’s side when that time comes.

no one:
me, slicing tanks outside Polis Massa to asphyxiate those Clones, or leading scrimblo bears through Endor's undergrowth to stab some fascists: "yeah I prefer Lapti Nek, but Jedi Rocks kinda bops too"

2005, a year of great changeover in the mainstream console gaming world. HD systems are just arriving, many developers are adopting extensive middleware (think Source or Unreal Engine), and giants like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts are beginning an acquisition spree. Two victims of EA's consolidation plan were first DICE, the Swedish group behind Battlefield 1942, and then Pandemic Studios of Destroy All Monsters fame, who themselves had been absorbed a couple times already. Separate from all this was LucasArts, the game software division of Lucasfilm which had juggled both Star Wars and original properties for decades. Star Wars: Battlefront and its immediate sequels sprang in some way from the influence of these companies, but its legacy has since been defined by a fanbase eager to redefine and reclaim the series' best aspects.

Battlefront II isn't quite the masterpiece my 4.5/5 rating suggests. The game loop, usually based around command point control or capture the flag, can get repetitive. Neither infantry nor vehicle controls are as polished or responsive as in the best multi-mode multiplayer military massacres. I've got more than a few nitpicks about some level and class designs, plus the instability of Pandemic's Zero Engine on modern PCs. And truth be told, its marquee single-player options, the story campaign and Galactic Conquest, aren't as in-depth as they should be. Yet this remains one of my all-time favorites not just in the genre and source franchise, but simply in general.

Pandemic found a practically perfect balance between accessible controls, involved objectives, addictive gunplay and vehicular combat...the list of "great enough" things goes on. These fundamentals which largely worked in the original Battlefront only improved after a couple more years, alongside the usual audiovisual garnishes. No longer are players stuck ambling across overly-large battlezones, also lacking in secondary items/weapons or class-based techniques with risks and rewards. This sequel delivers on the promises of its predecessor while demonstrating how ambitious a licensed take on Battlefield games can get. Being able to embody anyone from the lowliest Droid soldier to Darth Vader stomping across the hall, often within the same round of play, rarely gets better than this

Take an Imperials vs. Rebels conquest map like Death Star, for example. All these laser-congested lanes, nooks and crannies of teammates globbing into each other, and temptations of jumping over endless pits for speed—they add up into a frantic fight which one can nonetheless master. Chaining killstreaks to acquire upgrades, usually while rolling and hopping between spheres of crossfire and resource control, eventually becomes natural. I'll gladly lob 'nades into the Naboo courtyard, even as I risk drawing fire and the ire of AATs, just so I can quickly snatch those post-mortem power-ups and keep the pressure on after base capture. Wandering the backhalls of Echo Base can be tricky at first, but the end goal of taking that Rebel base from behind them justifies everything.

There's enough nuances lying beneath Battlefront II's pick-up-and-play surface, even in something as arguably tacked on as the story missions. Others have mentioned, time and again, how elegantly the Clone narrator's journey takes us from a patriotic, republican cause to fighting on the side of undeniable, structural evil. This remains fun despite the chilling themes and characters' resignation to process and subservience under Sith order. And yet this doesn't feel like glorification of the Empire because you're ultimately going through the same motions, victories, and humiliations as your opponents. There's something both mundane and admirable in retaking bastions, methodically disabling flagships, and mowing down everything in your path with saber throws and force lightning.

One of the biggest additions in Battlefront II, its space battles, illustrate this effectively. Nothing really changes between each orbital map, all consisting of two main ships flanked by frigates and supplied with endless waves of dogfighters and bombers. But the process of departing the hangar, blasting TIEs outta the skies, and then docking in hostile territory rarely gets old. Combine this with unique objectives in story mode, or modded levels adding these mechanics to otherwise earthbound combat, and you've got what feels like the full essence of Star Wars' iconic armed struggles.

What brings this indelible piece of software a half-star up is the mod scene. A cursory glance shows just the usual suspects you'd find in communities like Skyrim or Counter-Strike: player skins, new game modes, and way too much attention thrown upon the heroes and villains. (I get it, though. Playing as Jedi, Sith, and other big names in-between always feels great, especially thanks to Hero Assault extravaganzas on Mos Eisley.) Look deeper and there's almost too many custom maps and campaigns for single-player and beyond, from excellent recreations of places from the Battlefront and Jedi Knight series to all new, mechanically ambitious works like the ground-to-sky megalopolis Suun Ra. Hell, there's a whole package simply for building a brand new Galactic Conquest playlist entirely from user-added maps! It's sadly a bit fiddly to get this all working, but that's always something EA could fix if they weren't busy forcing DICE to produce disappointing new games chasing after this one.

The aforementioned Galactic Conquest points to the strategic possibilities beyond the light tactical layer already present here. Having to manage and defense multiple fleets and planets, all while balancing your per-turn income against temporary boosts for battles, makes for an engaging time...most of the time. It's when the AI wants to drown you in endless space duels, or simply fail to provide any threat to your planetary march, that I fall back into custom Instant Action sessions. Fan mods can pick up the slack, especially those which appropriate this part of the game to tell a unique plot rivaling what Pandemic made. I feel like there's still so much one can push the Zero Engine, as seen with Dark Times or the oft-discussed fan remasters full of gizmos and doodads. This scene deserves the kind of attention and critique that's benefited better-knowns like Doom for decades now.

I could go on and on and on about what Battlefront II achieves, and what it's meant to me over the years. There's a whole meta to unlocking the Elite badges and proceeding to curbstomp round after round with once puny unit classes. We could simply imbibe the bevy of memorable, often hilarious radio banter heard across each factions' grunts and officers. I have to hold myself back from doing in-depth writeups on the strats and trivia of each stage, whether original or brought forward from the original Battlefront. One cannot simply spend well over a hundred hours, part of it just fucking around on a comically huge recreation of Naboo's Theed City with all its Florentine halls and courtyards, and lack in minutiae and remembrance to share.

If you haven't yet tried classic Battlefront II for some reason or another, I hope that changes in the near-future. A few hours of trying the campaign, Galactic Conquest playthroughs, and some Instant Action will more than suffice to experience this in full. But the ease with which this remains so replayable, despite the sea of similarly invigorating big-team-battle software out there, is commendable. This remains one of my comfort food games, hardly slacking after all these years. It reminds me of a time when we got not just more Star Wars interactive media of note, but when there was still a lot of creative risk and confidence in the franchise's games. You had this, Jedi Outcast, Knights of the Old Republic, Empire at War, etc. vs. mainly Jedi Survivor and the recently middling DICE games by contrast. The era's dearly missed, but not quite missing in action, so long as we're watching those wrist rockets and 360 no-scoping Gamorreans from the depths of Jabba's Palace.