For all it’s recent bad press and for all the problems with implementing a new set of game mechanics, there are some things which Star Wars: Galaxies does surprisingly well. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that there are elements of SWG which can only be classified as simply outstanding elements of game design. I’ve come to this conclusion because over the last week or so, prior to my City 17 exploits, I’ve been playing Star Wars: Battlefront 2, a tactical, class based FPS.

On the whole, I quite like it. The single player portion of the game (I don’t have the cojones to join an online multiplayer game yet) throws you into the role of a clonetrooper fighting during the last days of the Old Republic and then becoming a stormtrooper after the Emperor takes control. It largely takes place on recognisable planets from the trilogy and has some space battles thrown in for good effect. It’s great being able to play on the side of the Empire again too, something that hasn’t really been offered since the original TIE Fighter game back in 1996 or something. But I have one major gripe about the game so far.

I haven’t been able to kill any Gungans.

There’s a level set on Naboo, in the capital city of Theed no less, but the aim is to quell the resistance and kill all the RSF guards and eventually take out the current Queen herself (almost, but not quite, making up for Natalie Portman’s abysmal performance in the last film). But as of yet I’ve been unable to find a single Gungan I can slaughter mercilessly. I can accept the fact that in this day and age they don’t have an option to torture your enemies and I can live with that. But the fact that you can’t gun down hordes of Gungans with your blaster rifle or stomp on them in a AT-ST is definitely a design deficiency.

It’s something that SWG does get right. I spent a happy afternoon a while back standing next to a lake outside Keren spaceport gunning down Gungans. Every now and then I’d holster my gun and wade in with my fists and give them a damn good pummeling. And the best thing was, the more I killed, the angrier they got and the angrier they got, the more they tried to attack me. More fool them. Admittedly, it would have been nice to be able to get into a hovertank or walker and stomp on them but nevertheless, they were dying by my hands. And after I’d wiped them out, all of them, I headed over to Endor and laid siege to the Ewoks as well.

The only other game to come close to this level satisfaction is Lego Star Wars. In that game, you actually get to play Jar Jar. Now that sounds like a terrible design decision in itself but in fact it’s better than it seems because of the level design. Remember how there always seemed to be a large amount of bottomless pits all over the place? Well that’s a large part of Lego Star Wars. You get to repeatedly switch to Jar Jar and throw yourself into one of those pits and plummet to your doom. If there are two of you playing, one person can take the role of a Jedi and because you can do damage to your partner, you can use your lightsaber to hack Jar Jar to pieces.

Battlefront 2 actually lets you play a Jedi in some levels. You even get to play Yoda for a bit, much like you do in Lego Star Wars. My favourite section so far is playing Anakin Skywalker when he’s just been annointed as Darth Vader and goes to the Jedi temple to slaughter all the Jedi. This is probably making up for the fact that every other bugger in SWG plays a jedi and there are far too many about. However, BF2 lets itself down again by not including a room full of “younglings”, the infant jedi trainees. You know that scene in Revenge of the Sith: the clonetroopers go after all the adult jedi while Anakin “I’m horrible and nasty and can beat anyone with a lightsaber” Skywalker goes after the defenceless children. Still, for all the lack of youngling slayage, there is plenty of use the-big-tank-on-the-jedi action.

Despite this critical flaw in BF2’s design plan, it more or less makes up for it in one key area: you get to play as Boba Fett. To my knowledge (and player made mods aside) you don’t get to play Boba Fett in any game released to date. There was a PS2 and Gamecube title called Star Wars: Bounty Hunter where you got to play Jango Fett and it is possible to unlock a young Boba Fett character in Lego Star Wars but aside from that, you generally only got to fight him (in Dark Forces, Jedi Academy and possibly Shadows of the Empire). In SWG, you get to run missions for him but in Battlefront 2 you actually get to play as the legendary Boba Fett himself, complete with highpowered blaster rifle, flamethrower, wrist rockets and jet pack. That level in itself almost makes up for not being able to kill Jar Jar’s relatives.