Star Wars Battlefront: fighting the Empire from Hoth to Tatooine

The E3 demo of EA Dice's forthcoming Star Wars shooter allayed a lot of fears about the game, bringing the movies to visceral, interactive life

All around there is chaos. Through the trenches dug into Hoth's icy surface, rebel soldiers sprint toward uplink computers, as imperial snow troopers swarm around them. Blaster fire echoes across the desolate landscape, and the unmistakable swell of John Williams's score builds to its familiar crescendo. You look up and there are two snow speeders zooming overhead tailing a TIE-fighter, their engines screaming. Your eyes follow the flightpath of these battling craft towards two hulking canine shapes in the distance.

These are the AT-ATs, their hangdog heads scoping left and right looking for targets. The only way to stop them is to get the uplink stations working, temporarily shutting down the shields protecting these monstrous armoured transports. Then the rebels can call in a Y-Wing bomb attack to fell them, or order a lone pilot to shoot cables around their legs. But the snow troopers keep coming and no one can hold onto anything for very long.