Geonosis: Jedi Battle

This map, by bobfinkl, appears to be an attempt at recreating the Geonosis Arena battle from Episode II.

Now, while this isn't a bad map, it does have a couple things going against it from the start - first, there's already a released version of a Geonosis Arena map that's much better than this one, and secondly, there's another work-in-progress of a Geonosis Arena map that's very similar to the first.

That being said, there is of course nothing wrong with taking a stab at a popular battle from the movies.

For what the map is trying to do, I think it succeeds. However, I've never been a fan of any attempts at recreating this battle, simply because the gameplay is really pretty one-sided (I'm sure the Jedi in Episode II would probably agree). Once you force a team into the uncaptureable command posts in the center of the map, the battle's pretty much over. The same thing is a problem here.

Likewise, the balance of Jedi vs. droids is pretty off. Given any decent player (or even just letting the AI do its thing), the Jedi will win every time. If you want to balance a bunch of strong melee units like that against weak blaster units, you have to either reduce the health or number (or attiributes like blaster deflection or blade strength) of the melee units. The gameplay was even relatively better (although no less monotonous, once one team was forced to the center) in GCW (which the author says not to play), simply because the sides balance wasn't as off as Jedi vs. droids was.

I'd like to say that I think the author did a good job, however, of using stock models to attempt to recreate the arena. It's not perfect, especially given the fact that the community has use of an actual set of true Arena models, but for the tools he used it wasn't bad. Also worth noting is the fact that while the stock Yavin sky was used (and although it would still be better to change to a Geonosis sky), it does work here, because you don't see the horizon. Take note, because that doesn't happen often.

Also, make sure in any future versions to fix localizations. Team and AI names for the Jedi team were nonexistant/unlocalized.

-Mav