Star Wars Battlefront Reviews
Beautiful but lacking in content, Star Wars: Battlefront has the potential to please Star Wars fans, it's just a matter of for how long.
Accessible, well made and full of really, really cool moments, it's hard not to love it. Add in a perfectly crafted Star Wars dressing and an impressive amount of cinematography and you have my favourite multiplayer shooter in years.
Thrills initially, but soon reveals itself to be rather limited.
Star Wars: Battlefront is fun. It's a great Star Wars game. What I can't tell you right now, however, is if it has any longevity. Right now, the lack of map variety could mean that you get sick of the game faster than you would otherwise, and EA dividing the community in the future with paid DLC planets may not help the problem. Still, no other game has made me feel more like an actual participant in a legitimate Star Wars battle. I don't know if I'll ever get sick of that feeling I get when I take down a TIE Fighter, and I doubt that chill I get when I hear the main theme play as I run across a crowded battlefield will ever go away.
DICE's reboot looks and sounds exactly as Star Wars should, but the game ends up a tired, shallow, and sometimes sloppy retread of well-covered ground
While the destructive potential of weapons and cards alike in some cases increases as you level up, it's much more about finding the ones you like best rather than having a de facto edge. Sadly, this in turn means that unlocks can be quite underwhelming, especially as weapons are all bound to obey the movies' pew-pew and dead behaviour. A new pistol or rifle might look different, but bar a few explicitly short-range/higher damage variants, it feels broadly the same as anything else. You don't feel empowered by your new toy, but instead have to get on back out there and keep doing the same thing.
The best way to describe Star Wars Battlefront, I feel, is to call it what it is – a good game that was deliberately designed to not be a great one. I wanted to rate it higher than this. Way higher. At least the online connection is mostly stable, though. As far as EA launches go, that's pretty amazing.
The ambitious scope of Star Wars: Battlefront creates both its most fun and most frustrating moments.
In good moments, it feels like you're heading somewhere promising, halfway to getting a gun you really want. In bad moments, getting what you want is a pleasureless anti-climax, that leaves you even further away from the next upgrade milestone.
If you ever dreamed of recreating some classic battles or sequences from the Star Wars movies, and are okay with the lack of any sort of campaign, then there is a fair amount of content to keep you occupied. Especially if you are a completionist, expect to sink at least 100 hours to unlock everything in that diorama. You can tell DICE has a bunch of Star Wars fans on staff, and Star Wars Battlefront feels like a loving "welcome back" from a developer who has missed the franchise as much as us gamers have.
Star Wars Battlefront nails bringing home the original trilogy in a new and interesting way, but fails to substantiate the splendor in a meaningful way. A fun nostalgia trip that might barely tide you over until the new film, but not much longer.
Get a bunch of equally enthusiastic friends together and you'll have many hours of nostalgic revery, with that Williams score nudging you through match after match. But then you'll reach the outer edge of this game's progression system, or you'll get a little too familiar with the four landscapes on offer, and the magic will wane. And then, of course, there will be downloadable content, massing in a distant corner of the galaxy, waiting to invade.
Is this good or bad? As a value proposition it's debatable. This seems unlikely to be a game that can be played hard for 12 months. But it's also a far more polished and properly executed tie-in than films are typically given.
The force is strong-ish with this one.
Is Star Wars Battlefront the galactic fantasy for which we've been waiting? Well, yes and no. The multiplayer can be fantastic at times and battles play out beautifully and smoothly in all modes. The game looks sleek and listening to those iconic blasters adds to the thrill of play. However, with lackluster battle and survival missions replacing a proper campaign, it stops the title from being as amazing as it could have been. Multiplayer is extremely enjoyable, there is no doubt about it, and it's accessible for everyone who jumps in, but you will quickly see everything that the game currently has to offer and the wide variety of online modes won't stop that. If you absolutely love the battles of Star Wars and shooters in general, you will have a blast with this, but if you want to immerse yourself in the richness of the characters and story, you will be pining for just a bit more. If you take the game at face value, it is still an enjoyable ride to a galaxy far, far away.
Star Wars Battlefront is beautiful and true to its namesake. It's fun, but it's shallow, and we're not sure it warrants a $60 price tag.
Battlefront can be a lot of fun within a few specific modes. Unfortunately, those moments are only a small portion of the overall experience. While I have no doubt that the game will improve with updates and DLC, what is here in the base game leaves a lot to be desired.
Sure, it could do with a campaign and sometimes it's a bit too shallow for its own good, but Battlefront is also one of the most authentic Star Wars experiences you can have outside of kissing your sister - "for luck" - and scrapping with your dad.