Hello, cadet. Welcome to the first day with the Galactic Empire Training Squadron. I'm your captain, Admiral Ackbar, and you'll have to mind my speech impediment. Depending on what Star Wars experiences you've had in the past, I either pack a garbled fish-like voice or a Brooklyn accent. Anyway, I thought I'd welcome you, you made it. This is your first day with the Dark Side of the Force. I see you got your glowing green diploma and your honorary Stormtrooper uniform, and if it's a little snug, well, sorry, that's just part of getting your agitation on the rise. It's not so bad once you get into it.

Anyway, a few things.

1. The Galactic Empire Health Benefits Plan is temporarily on hold for the time being. They said something about Medicare getting in the way, but, to be honest with you, it's all about the Rebel Scum. Their containment of the Endor facility has put a real crippling on us, no pun intended.

2. Despite what they tell you, the laser blaster is NOT to be used to light cigarettes. Poor Joe learned that lesson the hard way and now he's working as a no-lip bouncer at the cantina down on Tattoine. That should also bring into play the No Smoking policy on the Death Star. We don't need it blowing up again.

3. The perfect way to complete your training is with the battle simulation I've set up with Star Wars: Battlefront II. Now you're just a rookie, but you may be familiar with last year's release of the original Battlefront, which introduced the concept of team-based combat play into the Star Wars universe. The first game was fine for training purposes, but we've made a few key additions that will certainly enhance your play purposes.

Like the first game, you can set yourself up for a number of given scenarios from the Star Wars universe, either from the old archives or from the current ones that we've been seeing over the past few years. This means you can go literally anywhere, from the Wookie-laden planet of Kashyyyk to Yoda's home planet of Degobah to a Rebel hall that's just ripe with soldiers waiting to get picked off. From there, you could either pick the side of good (in this case, our glorious Empire) or evil (those damned Rebel scum) and then have at it in combat. Each team has specific soldiers that do different things and have unique firepower, such as one soldier that packs limited shots from a bazooka or another that just has a blaster and a few thermal detonators.

The Single Player Campaigns run the gamut for the most part, allowing you to go through small Story scenarios that will probably get skipped over for the option of Instant Action instead. However, single and multiplayers alike will want to check out Conquer the Galaxy, a terrific mode that spans across a map of planets and has the Empire and the Rebel scum chasing each other around and fighting for planet after planet. It's a heavy mode that gives you a chance to rule it all, like our beloved Darth Vader. He was so nice when we gave him those golf clubs for "Be Nice To Your Boss" day. He didn't even Force choke us.

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