The original Star Wars Battlefront was one of the most highly anticipated Star Wars games ever, and rightly so. What's not to get excited about a 'Battlefield' style game set in the Star Wars universe complete with all the cool characters, vehicles and locations from the movies available to battle in? Nothing, that's what! So unless the thought of anything Star Wars churns your stomach, (and yes to be honest, the recent movies will probably not have done anything to improve that opinion but that's an argument for another place), you'll be glad to know that the sequel has arrived and aims to fix every complaint raised both by fans and reviewers.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept of the Star Wars Battlefront series the main game concept is pretty straight forward sharing much in common with numerous other Xbox and P.C based shooters. Pick a class depending on what type of weapon you prefer, run around capturing parts of the map you are on and destroy the opposition. Sounds simple yes, and not overly original but what it does have behind it is decades of back story, scenarios and characters from the Star Wars 'universe' to inject something lacking in many of those other games, namely, familiarity. The first game even went as far as to assume that anyone that bought it probably wouldn't even want a story to go with it and that the mere fact that you were able to jump into X-Wings, play as Storm Troopers or those whiny Rebels on Star Wars planets would be enough.

Battlefront 2 seeks to address this and offers an all new story mode that puts you in the boots of the 501st Clone Trooper regiment as they fight their way, at first, in the name of good alongside the Jedi's against the Droid army, and then later on, after an armour change, in the name of evil against the Rebel Alliance. The story follows events from Episode 2 through to the Battle of Hoth and is nicely narrated by Temuera Morrison the New Zealand actor who played Jango Fett, and whose voice was then over dubbed into the Boba Fett scenes in the older films! It's an interesting take on a story that we're all familiar with and highly enjoyable to take part in something that we were only able to watch from afar (and catch in glimpses) during the movies.

The biggest addition to the game this time around is the space combat. Instead of being restricted to ground based battles, every few levels in the story mode take place in space in between massive capital ships such as Star Destroyers and Calimari Cruisers. Your dog fighting skills are put to the test and vehicles such as Tie Fighters, X-Wings, Droid ships, Tie Bombers, the ARC-170 and the Droid Tri-Fighters to name but a few are available. Boarding ships are also available and can be loaded up with A.I bots (or your mates online) to attempt commando style raids on the enemies capital ship. You can actually fly right in, land and then attempt to take out critical systems such as the ships life support. It gives the space battles a slightly more epic feel than simply flying around dogfighting and provides other objectives for anyone that struggles flying the ships around.

Thankfully the option is also there to skip the space missions if you don't like them and this may happen because once you've played them a few times, it becomes apparent that there isn't a whole lot of depth to these levels. They're fun, but get a bit samey mostly due to missions always being the same, and everything looking the same. I realise it is space after all but some different mission types or locations would have livened things up a lot more.

The ground battles, while mostly taking on the 'conquest' style of gameplay, at least break away from the repetitiveness of the space battles by taking place in plenty of great looking planets straight out of the films. A few of them were only briefly glimpsed and it's great to be able to run around the lush and weird looking jungles of Joralla as well as the classics such as Hoth, Endor and Tatooine. There are a few new maps such as the Death Star but some of the ones I loved from the first game such as the Naboo plains map haven't been included. The Naboo city map has returned but this time around it only takes place at night. For the games instant action mode it would have been nice to select the time of day but unfortunately it isn't an option.

A welcome change in Battlefront 2 is that if you wish to change the class of your character you can simply press 'Y' at any spawn point, no longer do you have to die before this option is available, a great feature that would be good to see make its way into other class based shooters. There's plenty of classes to choose from spanning the full history of the movies from Storm troopers and Rebel soldiers that come in basic assault or rocket launcher varieties, Snipers, Pilots, Wookies and naturally if you're part of the Droid armies their soldiers such as the standard infantry all the way up to the fearsome Droidekas and even the droids that made up General Grievous's personal body guards in Episode III are available. The biggest new addition is that now the Hero units that you fought alongside in the first game can now be controlled during many parts of the game. Jedi Knights such as Mace Windu, Count Dooku, Yoda, Darth Vader, Darth Maul, Ki-Adi-Mundi and even the Emperor himself are all now playable and each include a couple of basic Jedi powers.

The powers vary slightly from character to character but all share the ability to run at superhuman speeds and perform massive force powered jumps. The Hero characters aren't indestructible, can be killed surprisingly easily and are only available for a limited time. When in control there is a Light Sabre at the bottom of the screen and when the blade disappears you lose control of him if you don't get enough kills to replenish it. By far the coolest characters are Darth Maul and Boba Fett whose wrist rockets and blaster are great fun to use. Using Boba Fett's rocket pack to fly around, unleashing your rockets down onto unsuspecting Rebels and then landing to finish them off with shots from your blaster is extremely satisfying. As mentioned they aren't indestructible but the proper use of the Hero characters can easily turn any battle that might be hanging in the balance and while the Light Sabre controls for the Jedi's are very simplistic, they're fun to use nonetheless even if a little haphazard and lacking the normal finesse associated with them.

As well as the story mode the other offline option is the turn based Conquest mode. You're presented with a galactic map and the object is to control it by subjugating or liberating the planets. It's an interesting diversion but the action parts of the game don't differ at all from the battles that you fight in during the Story mode so again, it all starts to get a bit repetitive after a while, even with the bonuses that are available. As you control planets you earn credits that can be used to recruit new unit types and bonuses that can be selected to use as you enter the battle. The bonuses are varied and might allow you to bring in extra troops, give them extra firepower or more armour, sabotage the enemy vehicles (extremely useful in the space battles) or let you bring in one of the Hero units to fight on your side. The conquest mode gives you the feeling that you're in direct control of the events that are taking place but it isn't a terribly difficult challenge and not something that you would be coming back to play months from now.

What will hopefully keep you interested in Star Wars Battlefront 2 is the Xbox Live support. The first game included online multiplayer and if you find the A.I and offline modes a let down you can always battle away online against your mates. There still appears to be some issues with lag and the voice quality again is sketchy, some people are muffled and hard to make out, but no doubt this is just Australia's 'broadband' failing to keep up with the bandwidth requirements needed to make the experience as smooth as needed. Saying that, Halo 2 provided almost lag free gameplay but Battlefront 2 does support more players online and features much larger maps. The standard multiplayer game types are available such as Conquest and Capture the Flag but unique to this game is the 'Hunt' mode that (in what would no doubt annoy the crap out of whatever Greenpeace type organisations exist in Star Wars), sees you wiping out a planets indigenous species. If a long term goal of yours has been to finally put those cuddly little Ewoks in their place, or take out your Jar Jar Binks hatred on the whole Gungan race, now you've got the opportunity to do so.

Naturally being a Star Wars game everything sounds fantastic and being a part of the sound team on Star Wars game must surely be one of the easiest jobs around. Firstly you have all the music written for you, all the blaster effects and explosions were recorded over 20 years ago and because of that, there's nothing that you really haven't heard before. Of course it's all excellent and one of the enjoyable parts of playing Star Wars games is that they're always highly authentic to the movies in this area.

Graphically everything looks great, if a little soft, but there's also plenty of detail to be found and the framerate is always solid. The maps are great as well, especially the jungle map of Joralla and the forest of Endor, but I will admit to getting tired of Hoth. There doesn't appear to be a lot really enhanced over the first game but there are some great lighting, reflection and water effects on many of the maps. The character classes are all easily distinguishable from each other, even at a distance and even though they're animated very well while running around in combat, the bodies fly a bit funny through the air and it would have been nice to see something like Havoc physics introduced to the series.