Music is not included in this map. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Star Wars: Battlefront II is a first and third-person shooter video game developed by Pandemic Studios, and published by LucasArts. The game is the sequel to the successful Star Wars: Battlefront and features new vehicles, characters, game mechanics, maps, and missions. The game was released in PAL regions on October 31, 2005 on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox platforms, and in North America on November 1 of the same year. It was later updated to be backwards compatible for the Xbox 360. It was also released on the PlayStation Store on October 20, 2009 for download on the PSP. |--| Unlike its predecessor, Battlefront II features a more narrative-based campaign, retelling portions of the Star Wars story from the point of view of a veteran Imperial stormtrooper, reminiscing about his tour of duty in service of both the Galactic Republic and as part of the Galactic Empire. Gameplay additions over Battlefront include the use of Jedi, additional game modes, and objective-based space battles. |--| Battlefront II was fairly well received, with the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions scoring in the mid 80s at aggregators GameRankings and Metacritic. The PC version scored slightly lower at both sites, scoring a 76.60% at GameRankings and 78 at Metacritic. The PSP version was the worst received, scoring 70.93% at GameRankings and 69 at Metacritic. Reviewers generally praised the narrative-based story; however, some felt that the upgrades from the original were not enough to merit the price. |--| GameSpy Technology scheduled a shut down across all titles using the service for May 31, 2014, which included Star Wars: Battlefront II for PC, PS2, and Xbox. However, Electronic Arts had prevented this from happening, as they've announced that for a few titles, GameSpy functionality would remain active until June 30, 2014. The extended support offered by EA had ended on July 25, 2014, taking all GameSpy online video games across all platforms, offline. Battlefront II is fundamentally similar to its predecessor, albeit with the addition of new gameplay mechanics. The general objective in most missions is to eliminate the enemy faction. Like Star Wars Battlefront, the game is split into two eras, the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War. Players have the ability to choose between six classes during gameplay. Four class types are common to all factions; infantry, heavy weapon, sniper and engineer. In addition to the four standard classes, each faction has two unique classes which unlock by scoring a predetermined number of points. For the Rebellion faction, the Bothan Spy and the Wookie; for the Empire, The Officer and The Dark Trooper; for the Republic, the Commander and the Jet Trooper; and for the CIS, the Magnaguard and the Droideka. Battlefront II also features heroes - a special class that allows the player to control iconic characters from the Star Wars universe. Heroes serve as a bonus to players, and are unlocked by meeting certain criteria, such as earning a certain number of points. Differences between Battlefront II and its predecessor include the ability to sprint and the ability to roll forwards. |--| Campaign. Whereas Star Wars: Battlefront '​s campaign featured missions dependent on the chosen faction, Battlefront II contains only one campaign, called Rise of the Empire, which is found in every version of the game except the PSP. This set of missions is presented as the narration of a veteran of the 501st Legion, known as Vader's Fist, beginning with an attack on the planet Mygeeto during the Clone Wars and ending with the assault on Hoth as depicted in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. There are a total of 18 missions, four of which are optional space missions..