A closed beta of the PC version of Star Wars Battlefront II is available now to Gamespy subscribers. Been playing it a little bit, it's not bad, but definitely needs some work. The on foot bits are fun, but work far better in third person than first person view because the aiming seems so incredibly woolly. The crosshair is very fine, the graphics inaccurate, and movement jerky. I've only played the original Battlefront on Xbox, and remember thinking that it wasn't as precise as an FPS ought to be so largely sticking to 3rd person there too, but I was expecting more from the PC version.
The big new addition to BF2 over the first game is Starfighter combat. It's...meh. It's very pretty, and certainly very briefly fools you into thinking that this is going to be the multiplayer Starfighter combat experience the X-Wing series never completely managed to deliver. But pretty quickly, again, the erratic and jerky movement of the vehicles and imprecise aiming takes away a lot of the fun.
Out of interest, did original Battlefront players have any such issues? If not, perhaps the controls can be ironed out before release on November 1st.
The big new addition to BF2 over the first game is Starfighter combat. It's...meh. It's very pretty, and certainly very briefly fools you into thinking that this is going to be the multiplayer Starfighter combat experience the X-Wing series never completely managed to deliver. But pretty quickly, again, the erratic and jerky movement of the vehicles and imprecise aiming takes away a lot of the fun.
Out of interest, did original Battlefront players have any such issues? If not, perhaps the controls can be ironed out before release on November 1st.