Sometimes, I Miss Pandemic

Sometimes, I miss Pandemic. Not literally, of course, as this would create images of me delighting in news of a new bird or swine flu outbreak.

No, I obviously mean Pandemic Studios, which EA closed down in 2009. It was the studio responsible for Star Wars: Battlefront 1&2, as well as Destroy All Humans and Destroy All Humans 2.

Perhaps it’s just nostalgia, but some of my best Gaming Memories are playing Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and both Destroy All Humans games. I can remember watching the adverts for the first Destroy All Humans game between shows on Satellite TV and knowing that’d have to be one of the first games I got when I got a Playstation 2, and I did.

Destroy All Humans was cartoony and parodied Sci-Fi shows/movies, but that was what made it enjoyable. The voiceovers were amusing, as was running or jetpacking around towns collecting brain stems and Crypto’s comtempt for the human race, whilst bizarrely lusting after human females.

It was a fun game, not to be taken seriously, and I kind of regret that we won’t see another Destroy All Humans game. Having said that, I think it had its time on the Playstation 2 and that’s passed now. Thankfully, we’ll always have Destroy All Humans 1&2 to go back to.

I think it’s safe to say, though, that a lot have people have been waiting for Star Wars: Battlefront 3 forever. It’s one of those development hell titles that are in and out of the Gaming news, with people seeing multiplayer lobbies appearing and disappearing, with different developers unofficially attached and yet nothing actually seems to happen.

Perhaps this is because Pandemic aren’t in charge anymore. I played Star Wars: Battlefront 2 until the disc sadly broke, but I liked the Third-Person perspective of the game, I liked the expansive open world, I liked the different classes you could play as from multiple factions, including Geonosians, Droids, Clone Troopers and Jedi, and also the different kind of vehicles you could just jump into and use as weapons against your enemy.

What made it different from games today was that it was a great Single Player experience. I don’t have to go online to play a game like that, be killed instantly by veteran Multiplayer players of the game, who proceed to insult me.

No, Battlefront 2 was a reasonably story-driven massive battle in large, detailed (for the time) locations with the AI. Outside of the Campaign, you had a Single Player mode where you had to fight on various different planets to take over the system, whilst the AI tried to stop you and take over the system themselves. Admittedly, it was a little tedious when you had to fight the same systems repeatedly to defend them from the AI, but that was something that could have been improved on.

Sadly, I think if Star Wars: Battlefront 3 ever shows its face, it may not be the successor I would have liked. I have a feeling it’ll be heavily about the Multiplayer Veterans kicking your ass as soon as you spawn, that EA will include an Online Pass so you’re chained to the game for life, and that Single Player will be bolted on to the Multiplayer side of the game, like so many other games these days……….and based on Need For Speed: The Run, it may have a Single Player duration of two hours too………that was harsh for people that spent, as much as makes no different, £40.

Funnily enough, I never think that Destroy All Humans and Star Wars: Battlefront are probably the reason I enjoy Third-Person games.

With the PS3, I’ve been drawn to play all the Uncharted games and three out of four of the Assassin’s Creed games. I prefer the Third-Person view as opposed to the First-Person view, which is popular across the genre spectrum with today’s gamers, and I think that’s probably because of Destroy All Humans and Star Wars: Battlefront.

There are some amazing developers out there today, some amazing games, but sometimes I wish Pandemic Studios were still going, I would be interested to see what they would have come up with in the PS3/X360 era.

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