Star Wars: Battle for Hoth

Star Wars: Battle for Hoth – Feel the force!

A long, long time ago in a distant galaxy... Darth Vader and his various dark forces are making it pretty tough for the Rebel Alliance. Hoth, a pretty chilly planet is turning out to be a stage for one of the toughest battles.

Much like the movie you have wave after wave of enemy soldiers, droids, tie-fighters and AT-ATs to deal with using only the rather basic soldiers and laser turrets. Using your commanding skill, tactical prowess and just a touch of luck, you’ll be able to hold out against these seemingly endless waves of attacks and progress to the next stage.

You launch into the thick of it right from the start, learning to use the most basic soldiers to protect your base from the enemy infiltrators. Swiftly you will learn to wield more advanced soldiers and weaponry but at the cost of more expense to you and additional drain to your resources. Before long you start to realise that it’s going to be quite difficult challenge – even in the easy setting.

Foot soldiers are cheap but not very strong in attack or defence, laser turrets are tougher but slower rates of fire but more powerful in attack but require a generator to operate (so if you lose your generator this can leave your defences wide open).

To intersperse and break up the almost monotonous battles you have the video sequences from the movie. If you win you get to see a bit more of the film and a victory shot, and similarly if you lose, you watch your forces scatter from the advancing war machines.

To be honest I didn’t know what to expect when I loaded this game up. I was imagining something a little more like Age of Empires as an RTS (real time strategy) type of game but it ended up being more of a cross between the old retro centipede game (blasting away at rows of moving targets) just set in a frozen tundra and with the tell-tale sound effects we all know and love from the movies.

I won’t say I was disappointed but repetitive attacks you repel does get fairly dull. The funny thing is, you can get nearly to the end of the level just to have a final flurry of attacks which will typically finish you off if you’re not careful. This means you’re fate will be to replay the level again which can take about ten minutes or so (or possibly half this if you speed the game up – arguably the only way to play it).

If you enjoy strategy style games you will no doubt be pretty intrigued by this and possibly you will find it very enjoyable. If you’re more interested in RTS style games then the novelty will wear off quite swiftly. The movie clips do keep you playing through the game as do the advanced technology that you unlock with almost every step of the game.

Rating 75%

Positives

It’s Star Wars and has movie clips

Quite addictive and challenging even at the easy setting

You zoom in and out of the map and move around quite freely

No Jar-Jar Binks

Negatives

Placing your forces isn’t always easy

Long periods of repetitive gameplay (where you are more of a spectator than a player)

Quite a shallow game