Jabba's Palace & More

The latest downloadable content for Star Wars Battlefront™ features the palace of everyone's favorite alien crime lord, Jedi nemesis, and giant slug.

Known simply as "Jabba," this download features the famous Hutt's Palace on Tattoine, complete with throne room, Rancor pit, and a certain carbonite-encased smuggler. Jabba also enhances several matchmaking functions to make the online experience even smoother.

Best of all … Jabba is free to Xbox Live™ subscribers! Just pop in a copy of the game, sign on, download, and you're in business.

Happy to see you. For lunch.

The new map is entirely indoors, with multiple levels and multiple ways to access them. Stairs, ramps, and tunnels abound, creating numerous choke points and crossroads that breed some pretty hairy close-quarters situations once the shooting starts.

There are also larger rooms that open up and let the battle spread out, but even these are lined with cubby holes and other places for a sly soldier to lie in ambush. You'll also have to worry about the Gamorrean guards, who are tough as nails and will attack either side in the conflict with their brutal axes.

Each area of the map is distinctive, with both tactical elements for the battle and story elements for the fans. The Droid Repair Bay features a central control point, flanked by entrances, with ammo and health repair droids nearby. It also features a hapless (and mostly limbless) droid who's being mangled in the robot equivalent of a torture rack.

The biggest and best treats for fans, though, are found in the Throne Room, where Jabba himself oversees the action. (And, no, you can't kill him, no matter how hard you try.) Step lively around his actual throne because there's a trap door that leads right to the Rancor pit below. Fall in, and your life expectancy will drop like a stone. And, if you explore the area to Jabba's right, you'll find the Hutt's favorite wall decoration …

The nutritionally challenged palace namesake.

There are five checkpoints scattered across different levels of the map, and there are always several ways to access each. For example, you can get to the Keeper's Chamber at the bottom of the map by taking one of the two staircases that lead to it. Or, if you're feeling bold, you can drop into the Rancor pit on purpose and try to outrun the monster. If you make it to the only exit in one piece, you'll find yourself right on top of the checkpoint outside.

Along with the new map, Jabba also addresses a handful of issues that will make the Xbox Live experience better than ever. The game will now identify which player is talking and display the server name during the game, as well as name of the host planet during the load screen. The voting interface has been refined, and the host can now boot a player without a vote.

Also, players can now change teams in mid-match, the Droideka headshot collision issue has been fixed, and when you turn Auto Aim off, it's all the way off. Best of all, the server now supports 32 players at once! (Provided you meet the 1.5Mbit upload and 1.5Mbit download technical requirements.)

Blasting near the carbonite.

The Jabba download is available now, and it costs nothing, zilch, zero, nada. If you own a copy of Star Wars: Battlefront and are ready for a challenging new map—or if you just want to see how long you can outrun the Rancor—then you owe it to yourself to check it out.