Star Wars: Battlefront
Music is a powerful thing. It stirs up the emotions. It can get adrenaline surging through your body in anticipation. Music has got me all excited in two games recently. The first was Fallout 4, where I just sat and listened to the Fallout theme which played at the main menu. The second is with Star Wars: Battlefront. When the Star Wars logo appears and the familiar music starts to play, I was overcome with giddy excitement.
Music however can only go so far. And it feels like EA have dropped the ball on this one. Though whether it’s development time (with the new film coming out soon) or just not having the rights, we’ll never know, but despite not saying ONLINE ONLY on the packaging but still commanding the full game price, Star Wars: Battlefront is only half a game.
My main excitement with Star Wars: Battlefront was the anticipation of the single player story campaign. Be it re living some of the iconic missions from the original trilogy, or playing through a campaign that connected the films to the upcoming Star Wars film, it was going to be the most exciting first person shooter of the year. And a solid single player campaign would get me amped up for some serious online shooting fun.
But there is no single player campaign. If you’re not looking for another online shooter, keep moving along. This is not the game you are looking for.
So why doesn’t the packaging say ONLINE ONLY? Because it does have single player training, and lame single player or co-op first person shooter battles in a team death match skin, along with a horde mode. But to be honest, these will bore you after about 5 minutes. The only place you’ll find any enduring action is online multiplayer.
Star Wars: Battlefront is incredible in it’s presentation, the battlefields all look stunning, and they do a good job and bringing back memories from the original films. But as a first person shooter the game feels dumbed down, possibly to make it accessible to as many people as possible. Flying any of the ships is easy to pick up, but they also feel incredible unresponsive and it doesn’t feel like there is any depth to the experience.
There’s also a weird progression system where new guns and gear are unlocked at different levels, but the game still uses currency for you to purchase them, along with a card based system that restricts your load out options.
Sure the game mixes things up by allowing each team to bring on their hero during the battle, but with no real single player action and a rather lackluster multiplayer experience there’s nothing but nostalgic feelings that will make me want to pick up and play the game again. It’s even managed to damped my enthusiasm for the Force Awakens.
Reviewed on: XBox One
Rating: M Suitable for mature audiences 16 years and over.
Reviewed by: Jonathan
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