As someone who spent my childhood watching and re-watching the first trilogy of Star Wars movies I, for one, was very excited when I heard about the upcoming release of Star Wars Battlefront.
In some respects my excitement was justified by Star Wars Battlefront, but in others I was left sorely disappointed.
Incredible Atmosphere
In this respect DICE have delivered beyond my wildest expectations. The Star Wars universe has been captured in a way never seen before in a video game. This was achieved using some powerful new technology such as Photogrametry that was able to capture directly from the original movie series.
The atmosphere is compelling, and utterly convincing
I really mean it, you literally feel like you’re standing in a rebel base or a death star.
And the audio is no less magnificent than the graphics – perhaps more so in fact. Saying that though, it would be difficult to mess this up since the sounds from the original movies were a stroke of pure genius. Take the buzzing sound of a lightsabre for example. Pretty hard to screw up. Anyway, this makes the atmosphere of the game utterly captivating.
Overpowered Hero Classes
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be an imperial stormtrooper fighting in an epic battle for the empire! What I have not wondered though was what it would be like to be cut in half by Luke Skywalker’s lightsabre without even being able to defend myself.
This is one of the greatest problems of this game. Everyone wants to experience being a hero, but at the same time no-one likes an imbalanced game. Being a hero is exciting, but also very unfair to those around you.
And don’t even get me started on hero versus hero combat. With such diverse combat styles it’s a bit like playing rock-paper-scissors-stone.
Terrible Vehicles
There are terrible flying controls that make flying combat feel very awkward and frankly taxing. This makes it very difficult to enjoy the experience. The controls for ground vehicles are better but acquiring any vehicles means chasing after power-ups all over the map and is therefore equally frustrating.
There Are Only 11 Weapons
You read that correctly. This title has very few weapons and they all play very similarly. The accuracy of these laser weapons are extremely high, and therefore they all feel the same. This makes the process of unlocking these weapons utterly laborious.
Even worse the final weapon you unlock is an overpowered pistol that was sold for $10 from the outset. So you either suffer at the hands of overpowered opponents or pay extra for a pistol. Charming.
No Jar-Jar
One of the massive positives of this game is it does not, thankfully, feature any of the prequel trilogy content. The purity of the original trilogy is preserved.
Saying that though, perhaps it would be satisfying to choke Jar-Jar to death using the Darth Vader hero class….
Conclusion
I loved the atmosphere of this game. I will hapilly walk around empty maps and soak in the Star Wars nostalgia. But don’t ask me to actually play this game, because I won’t be doing that.
Playstation NewsWire 