I am a massive Star Wars fan. So when Disney bought Lucasarts and announced they were making more movies, I was HYPED. Sure I was a little nervous of how those movies would actually turn out, but what really mattered to me is that I was getting more Star Wars in my lifetime.
However, this deal saw the slashing of a couple of projects I was looking forward to, most notably Star Wars 1313, which was set to feature a young Boba Fett in the underworld of Coruscant.
BUT. That paved the way for other Star Wars games, merchandise, TV shows, and spinoffs to come out. So I was still hyped.
And then the announcement that a new Battlefront game was in the pipeline came out.
I may have shed a tear.
To this day, Star Wars Battlefront II remains one of my favorite games of all time. I would have been fine with the developers giving that game a graphics refresh and calling it a day.
So I was excited when I heard that Battlefront was getting a segment at E3. I, like many others, was expecting a gameplay trailer. We didn't get that. We got a video explaining the behind the scenes of how the developers were trying to capture the nature of the movies, explaining how they really wanted to get the setting right.
I was let down, but optimistic that they were doing so much good groundwork.
Then the gameplay trailer came out. I literally dropped everything to watch it.
And it was amazing. #Nerdgasm
Then gameplay footage after gameplay footage leaked, and the hype was only growing.
So when my copy arrived, and I tore open the box to install the game onto my PS4, I could literally feel the force flowing through me.
While the game was installing it allowed me to play as Darth Vader, ruthlessly cutting down rebel soldiers on Hoth. I did that for about 20 minutes. And then began how much longer it would take to get to the main attraction.
I was severely let down.
Battlefront, in the loosest term, is a video game. Upon initial release, I could count the number of playable planets on one hand, and there are a total of six heroes in the game. There are a dozen or so guns you can choose from, and a handful of secondary/grenade/upgrade options that you can equip through a horrible Card/Hand system.
I “finished the game” in less than a day.
The six heroes you can play as are Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Luke Skywalker on the rebel’s side, and Boba Fett, Emperor Palpatine, and Darth Vader for the empire. Vader and Skywalker are the only lightsaber wielding characters, with Palpatine using the force for all of his attacks. In my experience, I’ve found that Han and Leia are probably the best heroes, as they can pack a punch at a long distance, and since the other heroes tend to need to be close to do damage, it works in favor of these heroes. The two lightsaber wielding characters are not fun to play as, because you feel like the lightsaber is more like a bat than an elegant weapon, and one which the characters do not use with any grace. When you are met with the unfortunate but unavoidable Luke vs. Darth Vader saber duel, you'll find it very anti-climactic. There is no elaborate and skilled fight, just wild slashing, wondering if you hit your opponent or not, as well as stunning your opponent every time you land a saber hit. This ultimately means that whoever lands the first hit will be the victor as the other player is incapacitated for the rest of the duel. And since escape isn't an option because of the lack of force dash or even just running at an average human pace, you're going to find yourself dying a lot.
One of the most noticeable things you see in Battlefront is that not only are the force sensitive heroes not able force dash, but everyone else just seems to be running at the slowest pace imaginable. In other AAA first person or third person shooters, you can actually see a noticeable difference from when your character is moving before you add the extra boost of a sprint. In Battlefront, you need to be holding down to sprint button in order to feel like you are moving at all, which adds to the list of reasons why once you've spawned you are so easily defeated. Once you are engaged in a firefight, you have to stick with it, because there is literally nowhere else to go. You won’t be able to flee and survive for the most part because you're too slow, and it makes you an easy target for others to pick you off. You have to hope you have a superior weapon, and land more shots than your opponent. Or have really good cover.
Star Wars Battlefront lacks everything that a Battlefront game is. There was no campaign whatsoever, and there are really only two things you can do. Play survival mode, or play online in repetitive, non engaging slightly differing game modes.
The online mode is perfectly fun if you are just logging on to play a quick match or two, but the way the game is set up encourages lots of grinding to unlock gear that would be given to you right off the bat in any other shooter. You have to grind to unlock the ability to use grenades. Really?
Another sore point for me was the lack of space battles. Sure in Battlefront II space battles were tedious and a bit difficult to pull off, but they were present, and with some practice you could get the hang of it. You would learn to maneuver your ship, and if space dogfights weren't your thing, you could fly to the enemy’s command ship and board them, and then wreak havoc from the inside. Battlefront completely lacks this. In Battlefront II any vehicle was accessible if you got to it first to enter it, and in the bigger vehicles you could have a partner who could play gunner. The aerial vehicles in Battlefront are so difficult to handle that people have begun to blatantly disregard the various pickups that are spread across the map. The vehicles are so hard to handle that you are almost guaranteed to kamikaze, and in my experience that is what they have been used for. The imperial ground vehicles, which include the ATAT and the ATST, are good vehicles, and you can easily rack up big kills before you are destroyed. The speeders on Endor are difficult to handle, and very prone to getting stuck throughout the map.
After an entire long weekend of playing, I had not even hit rank 10 yet, with the max rank being rank 50. The amount of time you would have to put into this game to reach that level and have everything unlocked is too much, especially since you are cycling through such limited content.
This game feels like the developers took only the multiplayer from Battlefield 4 and put a really good Star Wars skin on it.
This game began to draw similarities to one of my favorite games of 2015, Destiny, for all the wrong reasons. In the gaming community, Destiny had been the butt of many “better story than Destiny” jokes, as the story was sorely lacking to say the least. The addition of DLC’s helped the issue a little, but it was still evident the story wasn't really there. And then to be compared to Battlefront with literally no campaign whatsoever, not a good comparison. The grind was so real in Destiny, but after giving countless hours of my life away to the game, I was slowly rewarded with legendary and exotic loot. One of the main selling points that the developers of Battlefront tried to feed us was the ability to customize your character. This is something you could ACTUALLY do on the PSP versions of the game which game out years ago. The customization that was touted really wasn't there, especially since you had to grind so hard to achieve basic controls.
Steam is currently selling Star Wars Battlefront II for 2.99. Not only is this a better overall game, but with that price it is an absolute no brainer. You get so much more from a game that came out over 10 years ago.
All in all, Battlefront is not a very good game. Like the second Death Star, it seems unfinished, but unlike the second Death Star, it is not fully operational. For an incomplete game, I think that this is not worth $59.99 that you're paying. I don’t think even the DLC that has been planned for this game can save it from what it is: Poodoo.
The first free DLC, The Battle of Jakku, will be available tomorrow for people who preordered Battlefront, and made available on December 8 for everyone else who owns the game.
