O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! What? You aren’t familiar with obscure Jabberwocky references? Well never mind. The reason I am chortling in my joy is because Star Wars Battlefront II has been released and it fixes almost all the problems of the original and adds some extra features to boot. So let us once again either take up the cause of liberty with the Alliance Rebellion, kill a little rebel scum with the Empire, or just terminate a few meatbags as the Separatist droid army.

If you remember my review of the original Star Wars Battlefront (and why should you, so … http://www.gameshark.com/index.asp?c=xbox&a=reviews&id=1940&c=xbox) you know I was pretty impressed with the game and scored it an "A" even though the game had some problems. I felt it succeeded in bringing the Star Wars experience to video gamers like never before, and apparently rank-and-file gamers agreed with me as they made Star Wars Battlefront the best-selling Star Wars game to date. It is now only a year later and I don’t think anyone would have blamed LucasArts and developer Pandemic if they had just done a roster update to the game (like Madden often does) and only gave us new levels that reflected the new worlds seen in Episode III. But the goods folks behind Star Wars Battlefront were not content with that. They did a pretty extensive overhaul of the game.

At its heart Star Wars Battlefront was a ground shooter with limited flight vehicles. Of course they don’t call it STAR Wars for nothing. A great deal of the movies’ appeal have been the sweeping space battles. To bring the players even further into the Star Wars universe, Battlefront II has added space battles to play, allowing free movement through all three axes. Space battles can take the form of fighter vs. fighter engagements or fighter vs. capital ship engagements (best accomplished with a bomber craft like the Y-Wing or TIE bomber) and can even be the boarding of an opposing ship through its flight deck to sabotage it from within.

While the addition of flight levels is pretty impressive, the controls are less than perfect. The left thumb stick controls pitch and yaw. The right stick is the throttle and roll controls. Triggers control weapons while face buttons control target lock and evasive maneuvers. Considering how many things have to be controlled on a vehicle that is constantly moving forward, it can get a bit daunting. And the flight levels, in my opinion, are just not the most fun you’ll have in the game.

The most fun in the game is reserved for the ground combat and the new hero characters that are playable this time out. No matter which side you choose to play as, each has a roster of regular units that have different strengths and weaknesses and each faction also has certain hero characters that are more powerful individually than any of the regular unit types. As a round of play starts, each team will have regular units to choose from. As certain conditions are met during play, more regular units will become selectable and finally the hero characters. Most of the hero characters wield the Force and are pretty awesome influences on the battlefield. In other words, they mow down regular grunts like so much summer wheat. But they are also not invincible. There is a limited amount of time a hero may stay in the fight. Gaining kills will lengthen the time while taking damage will shorten it. Keeping a hero on the field the greatest amount of time possible becomes the big challenge. I foresee the great players of this game being the ones who can juggle keeping a hero alive the longest to drastically alter the outcome of battle.

One of the biggest weaknesses of the original Star Wars Battlefront was the single-player mode known as Historical Campaign. It was very short and limited to just fighting what was basically the multiplayer game with a bunch of AI-controlled bots. In each battle the player and computer-controlled opponent were each given a set number of reinforcement points and then battled it out until one side either killed all opposing forces or captured all the command posts on the map. Winning sent you to the next battle while losing meant you had to attempt the battle again.

Star Wars Battlefront II has replaced Historical Campaign with a new single-player mode called Rise of the Empire. This mode has an actual story where the rise of the Empire is traced through the 501st Stormtrooper Legion, a unit that would become known as "Vader’s Fist." (You think Lucas is trying to evoke the elite 501st Parachute Regiment of the U.S. Army or the equally elite German 501st Heavy Tank Battalion and their deadly Tiger tanks?) In it the player will play through many familiar events chronicled in the Star Wars movies, as well as some events that happened between the two trilogies. Instead of one big battle with set reinforcement points per level, this new one-player mode gives the player a set of objectives and missions that must be met to win the level. As objectives are obtained, more reinforcement points are added for the next mission. It makes the single-player mode a lot more fun – and longer.

What left the bitterest taste in my mouth about the original SW Battlefront was the multiplayer. Don’t get me wrong. What was there was good. But the devil was in the details and the details were what bothered me. Split screen was only for two players. In System Link only one player could play per console so that meant you had to have 10 Xbox consoles and TVs to get the maximum number of players. Live support was good, though a little laggy. But like System Link, only one player could play on a console. Halo 2 and its cornucopia of multiplayer options this was not. Well Star Wars Battlefront II did a lot of things better. The split screen mode is now up to four players. System Link now allows up to four players per console and 32 total players. Live support is up to 32 players simultaneous with two players possible on each console. Unfortunately the play is still a little bit laggy online, but considering that only a year has passed, I have to give full credit to Pandemic for a huge improvement.

And since the devil is in the details, it at least bears mentioning that Pandemic did quite a bit of fine balancing of units and weapons to just make the game play better. Among these small things are details like weapons overheating. This keeps someone from just running around in a vehicle firing continuously. Doing so will quickly overheat the vehicle’s weapons and leave it vulnerable. A sprint command has been added to units so you don’t trudge what seems like forever to get into action, immediately take a sniper round, and then have to do it all over again. Sprinting gets units to the action faster in the big levels like Hoth.

Of course since there has been another movie since the last game, there are a whole slew of new planets to play on that were introduced in Episode III. In all, the game touts 16 new locations to play in. All are lush and well fleshed out.