Now Playing: Battlefront

I played Star Wars: Battlefront in beta prior to release. I enjoyed it a lot, but not enough to pick it up. You can read my impressions of the beta here. And honestly, my criticisms of the beta still apply. Because though Battlefront is undoubtedly fun, it’s also a very shallow, repetitive and content sparse experience.

Visually, Battlefront is excellent. It’s easily one of the best looking shooters you’ll play. And despite its impressive graphics, the performance is remarkably solid. If there’s one thing that Battlefront truly excels at, it’s capturing the magnificent spectacle of Star Wars combat.

A big part of this is not only visual, but audio. As I said in my beta impressions, Battlefront wouldn’t be half as good without the use of the Star Wars licence, particularly when it comes to audio and music. This is a game that is significantly elevated beyond its rather shallow gameplay and weak content thanks to the strength of its source material.

But damn, am I glad I didn’t get this game at release. Even with all additional post-release content, Battlefront feels thin on the ground. Yes, there are a lot of modes, but outside of the three 40 player modes – Walker Assault, Supremacy and Turning Point – everything else is essentially dead. And I can’t imagine they were very active to begin with.

Why? Because people enjoy the (somewhat) large scale that Battlefront has to offer. It’s in those 40 player modes that the game really comes to life and immerses you in the middle of a spectacular and authentic Star Wars experience.

Unfortunately, there’s not exactly an extensive selection of maps, which wouldn’t be such an issue if map quality was high. But instead, we’ve got a handful of excellent maps, with a handful of not so excellent ones. Thankfully, the few excellent maps do have a lot of replay value. Hell, I sunk nearly 20 hours into the Hoth Assault map alone during the beta.

There’s no class system, and character customisation is extremely weak. There’s an extensive selection of weapons but very little variation, and some weapons are so clearly and objectively more effective than others that it’s a little silly. The fact they’re introducing classes and more unique and distinct weapon types in Battlefront 2 is a welcome change. I also hope they do far more with class and character customisation.

There’s no single player campaign – once again, a welcome addition to Battlefront 2 – but there is a Skirmish mode that lets you fight bots alone (offline) or with a friend (online) on the original Walker Assault maps. It’s a nice addition because it means that you can still enjoy the game years down the line when the online is entirely dead – but I’m going to bitch about it anyway.

Why didn’t they update Skirmish to include the DLC content? And why didn’t they expand it to include the other modes? It feels a little half assed and honestly, the bots aren’t particularly great to fight with or against. Sometimes they just stand around and do nothing.

The core gameplay, though a very basic and shallow shooter, is still fun. The ships still handle like ass though. The online is still fairly active (at least for the 40 player modes) so you can currently find games fairly easily, although this may change come the release of Battlefront 2.

It almost feels like a waste of time reviewing Battlefront at this point, especially when Battlefront 2 is coming and looks to have addressed many of my criticisms of the original. I’ll be sure to give any beta a try and I’d seriously consider picking it up on release. The lack of any season pass is a good sign, but this is EA we’re talking about. They’re sure to f**k it up somehow.

Overall, it’s hard to recommend Battlefront with Battlefront 2 just around the corner. But for 8 quid, I’ve already put in over 30 hours and had a lot of fun both in skirmish and online, so I can’t say I haven’t gotten my money’s worth. People hacking online is a problem, but not too prevalent. But it’s clear at this point that the online aspect of Battlefront has largely been abandoned so it’ll probably only get worse.

Battlefront still feels, in many ways, like a beta. Hopefully Battlefront 2 can deliver not only the high visual and audio quality we expect, but also improved and more in depth gameplay, in addition to far more content. But until then, Battlefront 1 isn’t a bad way to waste some time.

6/10