Star Wars: Battlefront

PROS * The game's photorealism is among the best I have seen by 2015's standards. / Although SWBF now offers the liberty to customize characters, select pistols, rifles, and secondary items (rocket launchers, jump packs, grenades, bacta bombs), there are principally no classes, and positions in gameplay are limited to staying in gunfight with primaries and often no strategy (since health regenerates and ammunition is infinite), with secondaries only occasionally accessible throughout.

CONS SWBF is perhaps the most poorly implemented game of 2015. Faithless and with no Galactic Conquest, prequel content, or campaign (which they were developing) and only 4 worlds and minimal communication among players and AI bots, it tends to 10 uncustomizable game modes (14 with expansions) which ultimately could have been merged into 4 (or 6). Of the 27 maps, 20 are multiplayer underutilized for numerous game modes, and only 7 of them (excluding 1 from expansions) are also available in single-player.

CONCLUSION: For casuals, EA SWBF is a visually awesome but overall mediocre FPS indistinct from other more original competitors; for veterans, with the developer's ungenerosity and lazy care, it is a callous experience that exposes Electronic Arts as having joined the Dark Side. For a game with a high budget, high expectations, aggressive advertising, and the enthusiastically hyped-up media, EA SWBF is the apex of the 2015 games that are critically disappointing. I never bought anything from EA since. (Actually I did purchase a large expansion pack, but that turned out to be ungenerous and equally callous, which made for an even worse experience. Fortunately, I fully refunded for that, and that is--and will be--the only exception to my refusing EA's services.)

This rework of the original Battlefront series is pertty fun and great looking. But there where many mechanics and aspects missing that could have made this game a masterpiece. With it only being multiplayer its pretty good and entertaining for a while.

Is this the game that can beat Star Wars: Battlefront I and II? In short no it isn't. This game had so much potential to provide hours of fun game-play that you can experience while being part of the Star Wars universe but unfortunately it falls flat in a mere 2 hours. First things first, the game looks gorgeous. It could arguably beat most games that have been realised on the this generation. One of the main competitors for the title is Ryse: Son of Rome and we know the shortcomings of that game as well. Right of the bat you'll realise that the game has been created near perfectly for example Endor looks stunning from the massive trees populating the map to the riverbed following along the ground. The Walkers look amazing and so do the explosions, pretty much everything about this game looks stunning. Moving onto the sound which is again like the graphics amazing and fans should be pleased. The lasers shooting out the barrel of the guns sound great. The soundtrack is fantastic but the voice overs aren't that great. I'm pretty sure only Anthony Daniels (C3PO) was the only actor from the films to come and do a voice over for the game. Another notable inclusion is Sam Witwer who played Star Killer in The Force Unleased. I'm not saying the voice overs aren't good. They are but they're not perfect. Now onto the bad points of the game the map design is lacklustre, they just seem generic and like no effort has been put into them. They aren't too memorable either. The guns have very little recoil so there isn't much skill involved with kills. The customisation is very limited, you can only choose from a list of preset faces and if you want a scout trooper you'll have wait till over rank 30. In a Star Wars you would expect at least one mission/mode to take place in space but nope the closet thing you have is hoping in a X-Wing or Tie Fighter etc and having dog fights in the sky but for some reason space wasn't included. The only worth while mode is Walker Assualt but even that can get boring. We all know this game will sell and EA knows this so they have already started working on the sequel. Star Wars Battlefront isn't worth the money you pay at the moment. My recommendation is wait for a massive sale.

The hopes were high when a reboot of Batlefront was announced at 2013 E3, even more knowing that the game would be in charge of no other than DICE, the developers of the acclaimed Battlefield series, which inspired the original Star Wars Battlefront games. Sadly, DICE it's under EA's wing, which from a extremely objective point of view, could be seen easily as a non too consumer-friendly company. As the months and then years passed, the speculation and excitement was bigger and bigger from the fans, especially after the gameplay trailer shown at Star Wars Celebration earlier this year. Finally, the game came out; after having played over 20 hours, I can't deny that I've had an awesome time playing it, but the feeling about what could've been generates on me a sensation between rage and disappointment. On the graphics and sound department, the game is absolutely flawless (excepting the awful voice acting in most heroes and villains), the game looks and sounds like Star Wars and because of that, it's one of the most immersive game to date. Then, the gameplay; it's pretty "arcade" or casual, really easy to get into, something that could bother some "hardcore gamers", to me it's fine because keeps the accessibility that the original games had and almost every other Star Wars game have had. The main problem of the game comes when we dive into the content of the main game, a game that costs full retail price. The developers said some months before release that the game would be multiplayer focused, without a conventional campaign, the first bad sign. With that said, it can be expected that the game would have a really complete multiplayer experience (like every other modern multilayer based game), but what we get in Battlefront it's an extremely limited experience; the main game only come with four planets (Hoth, Endor, Tatooine and Sullust), with a new one being added later this month (Jakku), the number of planets was alarming and worried a lot of fans when it was announced, but then they (Dice) said that every planet would have different maps. Yes, in fact, every planet have different maps (something like 4 or 5 each), so, the main problem lies into the game modes. There are something like 10 game modes, which sounds like a decent number, the problem is that only two of those apply all the features that the games disposes (Heroes/Villains, vehicles, massive ground battles; basically what the original games were all about), but almost every other game mode (excepting Fighter Squadron and Heroes vs Villains) feels like just a fill in (like Blast, a painfully generic team deathmatch), modes that that end up as bland and too different from what people used to love about the older games, massive Star Wars battles (like the ones on the two "big" modes, Walker Assault and Supremacy). Summaryzing, we end up having: two "real" modes, whit four maps each (which are all pretty similar), 6 heroes and villains to pick (3 each), 4 ships in total, two ground vehicles (both from the empire side), 11 blasters, 25 "star cards" (perks and various equipment), an almost empty and lazy character customization and a laughable single player "experience"; plus, when you first boot up the game, you already have a text box on the main screen offering you the fifty dollar season pass (almost the same price of the main game), almost saying that you can't have the full experience without it. I could dive more into the game aspects, but you get my point. This game could've been one of the best game in history, but the developers messed up, the game had a rushed release, which causes an almost sickening dependence on future DLC. If you don't like Star Wars nor arcade/casual shooters, I wouldn't recommend this game to you, lacks on content and, consequently, replay-ability.

Star Wars: Battlefront isn't the deepest game and the leveling mechanics are thus a bit pointless but high level players won't be able to overrun new players with better gear thanks to that. I thus managed to become a MVP within the first hour of play and i don't mind the lack of a campaign due to Dice's mostly bad track record.The new novel "Battlefront: Twilight Company" fulfills that role just fine and there is nothing wrong with having a focus either. The whole experience itself is more importantly the most force accurate in the history of Star Wars games and my biggest gripes are fixable balancing issues and a few glitched achievements (The horror!). The graphics and sound are further some of the best on the market and the sense of scale is awe-inspiring. The amount of modes/maps is fine enough and the sequel is destined to make this game absolute but EA started on the right note with the license.