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Genre: First/Third-Person Shooter

Format: DVD

Developer: Pandemic Studios, LLC

Publisher: LucasArts

Mac Publisher: Aspyr Media

Minimum System Requirements: 1GHz G4, Mac OS X v10.3.6, 256MB RAM, 2.7GB hard disk space, ATI Radeon 8500 or NVidia GeForce4 MX graphics card, DVD drive

Review Computer: 2.5GHz Dual Processor G5, 512MB RAM, Mac OS X v10.4.1, ATI Radeon X800 XT graphics acceleration

Network Feature: Yes

Price: $49.99

ESRB Rating: Teen (violence)

Availability: Now

Official Website: www.lucasarts.com/games/swbattlefront

If ever a game perfectly encapsulated episodes one through three of the Star Wars franchise, here it is. Star Wars Battlefront has some great action, some exotic locales, a lot of nifty hardware and outstanding visuals, but there's not a lot there to make you care about any of it.

You should understand before reading this, though, that I quit being a Star Wars guy about halfway through Return of the Jedi back in 1983. And although I do enjoy myself a good first-person shooter, I prefer those that try to involve you in the game; that understand connections are made with story and character, not with fancy guns and the opportunity for head shots. And so, Star Wars Battlefront is not aimed at me. It's aimed at gamers who prefer Unreal Tournament over Unreal...Quake III: Arena over Quake.

I find this disappointing. Two of my top ten favorite Mac games of all time, X-Wing and TIE Fighter, were both nothing more than individual battles played out step by step, as with Star Wars Battlefront (SWB). However, they were directed along a story line that made you feel like you were part of something as you played through the game. You mattered in those games. In SWB, you don't. You're as expendable as, well, as a Stormtrooper.

Done right, this could actually be pretty cool. Whether playing single player or the multiplayer version (the way the game's meant to be played), there's something refreshing about not having to be the hero. In SWB, there are massive battles going on all around you, and you only need to do your part. You're a soldier, not a hero, so just hold your own while your comrades take care of their duties.

How you hold your own is up to you. Before each mission, you can choose which soldier you want to be, giving you different capabilities and limitations for the battle. Once on the field, it's up to you to utilize your strengths with the terrain given to you. You can even take advantage of the different vehicles you come across during the battle. In fact, you'll often have to in order to make it to the next level.

You want diversity in a game? SWB offers action on ten different planets, lets you play as 20 different soldiers (choosing from the Rebel Alliance, Galactic Empire, Republic Clone Army and Separatist Battle Droids), gives you over 30 weapons to use and scatters about 25 ground and air vehicles you can pilot. There are three single player modes, and you can go online to compete against up to 31 other gamers.

Sounds great, huh? Well, again, this could have been pretty cool if it'd been done right. As it stands, unless you just really love ongoing online battles, you may find yourself growing bored quite quickly. You see, it works thusly...

After starting up, you select the type of game you want to play. Historical Campaigns takes you through preset maps ordered historically, of course, through the Star Wars universe. Galactic Conquest orders the maps by planet, allowing you to conquer them before moving on. Planets can be owned by you or the enemy, or they can be contested (owned by both). If you win two battles on a planet, you take over ownership of that planet and reap whatever benefits that planet has to offer. And finally, there's Instant Action, in which you simply pick the map of your choice and fight a battle. It's really more of a practice mode than anything else, or a quick diversion if you only want to play the game for a few minutes.

Having chosen your playing mode, you then select your character from those offered. The soldier you chose will determine how you play the game, as obviously different types of weapons come with different characters. If you're not the type who enjoys sniping people from a distance, don't select the character with the sniper rifle. On the other hand, if you enjoy rushing headlong into the melee, make sure you're equipped with a good blaster.

Finally, you're dropped at a point on the map, and the action starts. The AI is pretty decent on both sides of the battlefield. Your comrades will often help you out or request that you assist them, and your enemies can be fairly intelligent as they seek to gain the advantage. I've read some complaints about the stupid things the computer controlled characters do every now and again, but I often did some pretty dumb things myself. I guess that's war.

Unfortunately, this is where the game breaks down for me. The single player version plays like the multiplayer, meaning that when you die, you simply re-spawn and hop back into the fray, either as the same soldier or a different type. This is fine for multiplayer gaming where you wouldn't want to sit out of a game waiting for a battle to finish before you could play again, but it makes your role in the single player version pretty pointless. No point in working hard to develop a great strategy when I can just correct after dying. This didn't bother me in Unreal Tournament or Quake III: Arena, but because it's Star Wars, I know there's a story going on around me, and it bugged me that I couldn't follow that. The Historical Campaigns do tie the battle scenes together with clips from the movies, but all they do is make you feel like you're watching a movie, not living it.

And so, it's the multiplayer version in which you'll want to spend your time, simply because that's how it plays. The good news is that Macintosh gamers can play both Mac to Mac and Mac to PC, meaning there is no shortage of servers to join. The trouble is that Mac to PC gaming requires you to know the PC server's IP address, so you can't just randomly search for a game to join; you need to know exactly where to go. Mac to Mac play in GameRanger can also be frustrating, as you have to set up your game outside of Star Wars Battlefront, meaning you have to set everything up from scratch each time you join a server. If SWB can't offer in-game multiplayer set-up, it could at least offer the ability to save your settings.

I would normally describe the graphics and sound quality here, but honestly, that's becoming pretty pointless. Just try to find an A-list game that doesn't look and sound great these days. You've got your John Williams soundtrack, which is always a plus, and you've got graphics that look as good as (but not better than) most other first-person shooters out there these days. It's not as detailed as DOOM 3, but it's not as dark, either.

I can't deny the attraction of playing through pretty much every Star Wars battle of note throughout the entire series, and I like that you get to choose how you want to play through them, but that's really all this game offers. You'll never feel like you matter while playing Star Wars Battlefront.

But maybe that's the point.