Lucas gives Joystiq hands-on with Battlefront and Mercenaries
Once in awhile Lucas crosses the Mississippi and joins us in the big bad city. New York has its share of hotels that have hosted the Lucas press events. I've gone to the last couple and seen some real winners. And some real duds. But the one thing you can say about Lucas is that they keep on trying. For years they had a drought of bad product. The Star Wars franchise was being treated like some second-tier IP, especially around the time of Episode 1. But as they saw their sales (and reputation) plummet they got their act together, and now they're providing consistently good material. This current line-up offers something for fans of Star Wars, sure; but more importantly it offers a lot for fans of fun games. This time around I was shown Knight of the Old Republic II, Star Wars: Battlefront, Star Wars: Republic Commandos, Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Light Speed, and (perhaps the most intriguing of them all) Mercenaries. Today's round up will give you my impression of Battlefront and Mercenaries.
Star Wars Battlefront. The Battlefield 1942 clone certainly looks fun, but it was definitely the least intriguing of the line-up. Don�t get me wrong, I�ve looked forward to this title for a long time and I hope it�s good. But it just didn�t jump out at me as being very original. The game was running on a PS2, so that�s a strike against it already, in the graphics department. The details on the characters and buildings just wasn�t pleasant to look at. It wasn�t awful, it just wasn�t that great. However, the fundamentals of a fun game all seem to be there. You have a bunch of different classes; gunner, soldier, medic and mercenary/specialist. Learning to use everyone to their best advantage will make a successful team � and luckily Lucas has provided enough variety in the team to make things interesting. The line-up of weapons is the standard Star Wars fare, with ships thrown in for good measure. You can man turrets, hop in X-Wings (or Tie Fighters, depending on your loyalty) and hang back for some sniping action. One thing the game clearly does well is give you a sense of being surrounded by all kinds of action. While running around the Bespin city we were as likely to get shot at by a soldier as we were by an X-Wing. The action is non-stop and the variety in settings and arsenal may well make Battlefront a winner. Lucas gave us a PC copy at the door, so look for a review soon.
Next up is Mercenaries. This one is like walking into a Disney movie and seeing sex on the screen. Lucas is not known for its risque content (now that they don�t do adventure games anymore) but the first thing out of the reps mouth was �Mercenaries was inspired by Grand Theft Auto.� Huh? She proceeded to show us a very impressive game with many copycat GTA features, and a slew of unique touches. The premise of the game is you play a mercenary for the USA, UK or, um, Sweden. Your goal is to carry out missions in North Korea for money. Easy enough, right? The complicating factor is that you have several nations vying for a piece of the chaos. You can get on a nation�s good side by doing work for them, but you can get on their bad side by doing work for their enemy. North Korea is always pissed at you, so watch your back. The dynamics of gameplay are very similar to GTA. You can steal any vehicle, run over pedestrians (at the risk of pissing off a country), and wreak havoc on the huge environments (driving from one end to the other takes 15 minutes). The stand-out in all this are the graphics. They look great. You can call in airstrikes and watch entire buildings collapse at your whim (though it�s expensive). Destructible settings means you can walk into a city block and walk out of a parking lot. Though the game doesn�t seem to offer as many minitasks as GTA, it makes up for that in depth of gameplay. This one will come out of nowhere and impress the reviewers, if our hands-on was any indication. You heard it here first.
