Star Wars Battlefront Beta: Is The Force Strong With This One?

SWBF_Beta
I played a lot of Star Wars: Battlefront back in the day. It’s back, but does it still contain the magic of that galaxy far, far away?
As we wind up to the release of the fourth Star Wars movie — rumours persist about something called a “prequel trilogy”, but I’m not here to trade in idle banter or speculation — the hype is building around a vast array of products designed to separate the humble Star Wars fan from his or her hard earned cash. Sphero’s BB-8 is a good example of a physical product that’s garnered a lot of hype, but equally there’s EA/DICE’s upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront.
Now, for a lot of people, the key game on the original Xbox was Bungie’s Halo.
I wasn’t one of those people, spending considerably more time with Pandemic’s Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: Battlefront II. Hundreds of hours if I’m honest, and it’s still a game that I’ll return to from time to time. Sure, it has its rough edges, especially by 2015 standards, but when EA announced that Battlefront was making a comeback via Battlefield producer DICE, my interest… and worry.. was piqued. After all, the history of Star Wars games is littered with the corpses of so many games that did woeful things with George Lucas’ Disney’s Sci-Fi epic.

EA’s just opened the game up in Beta form prior to its November release. I’ve spent a little time with that code, as well as at last week’s EB Expo in a forty-player local online match against other games journos. Nearly all of whom were better first person shooter players than I am, but that’s not really the point. At this point, it’s unlikely that massive changes beyond egregious bug fixes are likely to emerge from Star Wars: Battlefront. Equally, though, a beta that’s limited to a single five-wave singleplayer survival mode and just two online multiplayer maps isn’t entirely indicative of the complete experience. So here’s my early impressions:

Use The Force, Luke: The positives

  • Holy God, this game looks good. If you’re a Star Wars nut, you could simply spend time just revolving the camera around to capture all the little details gloriously rendered in HD. Sure, you’d get shot while doing so, but you’re going to want to at least once anyway. The sound is equally impressive and immersive, capturing the whole Star Wars experience very well indeed.
    Of course there's a battle on Hoth. It's a law, or an old charter or something that there will always be a Hoth battle in Star Wars video games.  Picture: EA
    Of course there’s a battle on Hoth. It’s a law, or an old charter or something that there will always be a Hoth battle in Star Wars video games.
    Picture: EA

  • It’s fast paced, which harks back nicely to the original titles. This does mean that you’ll die quickly, especially at first and in online modes, but it’s not entirely consequential, at least in the beta’s game modes.
  • The weapons make sense. The original titles, as much as I do love them, do show their age, so having a variety of weapon and upgrade choices, accessible via unlockable Star Cards does bring the entire idea more into line with modern shooters… sort of.

It’s a trap: The negatives

  • Predictable upgrade paths. This is very much a Battlefield game, and that means that you level up, and get perks with it. Even early in the Beta, I found myself getting killed by folks who had access to the better weapons, and as such, much more flexibility in their implementation. I’m not terribly fussed at being average to below average at online shooters, but it’s somewhat disheartening to be simply sniped away with no recourse time after time. Hopefully the full game will balance players a little better than the Beta does.
  • Lag is killer. There’s a weird stuttering effect that comes into play when the game hits any kind of lag, that makes it seem as though the world has suddenly gone into slow motion. Nearly every time I fell out of lag — and to give this context, I’m sitting on an Optus HFC Cable connection — I’d find myself dead. I’m pretty sure to my opponents, I was just standing still waiting to get killed, and they took advantage of that.
    Some kind of ongoing narrative -- even if it's just "Crush the Rebel Scum" would be nice. Picture: EA
    Some kind of ongoing narrative — even if it’s just “Crush the Rebel Scum” would be nice.
    Picture: EA

  • Singleplayer seems arbitrary. Look, I get that online gameplay is where it’s at for a lot of folks, but the lack of an actual campaign — there are apparently crafted “missions” but no storyline — hurts. It doesn’t need to be much — the old galactic conquest mode in Star Wars Battlefront II kept me happy for many months — but there are times when you just want to blast AI Wookies, not take on foul mouthed fourteen year olds with more gaming time in a day than I have in a month. Equally, with the market being so particularly fierce for online shooters, the only ones that “succeed” are those that maintain a strong player base. Having decent single player content — and there’s always the possibility that the single player missions will keep me happy, but I’m worried — would do a lot to give Star Wars Battlefront ongoing value if the player base opts for a different pew pew shooter.

Star Wars Battlefront is due out in Australia for PS4, Xbox One and PC for around $99.95 on November 19th.

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