Star Wars Battlefront: A game we wanted, but not 'the' game we wanted
- Nov 28, 2015
- 3 min read
The Recent release of Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) been met with mixed reception, newer fans and journalists seem to praise it as the most addicting Star Wars game, yet many game enthusiasts and fans are expressing extreme dislike for it. One predominant PC gamer reviewer that goes by the Youtube channel TotalBiscuit even went so far as to say that he hates the game.
All of these mixed reviews might seem confusing for those who are trying to decide if they should buy the game or not, there are many people talking about it, so for clarity I will condense the main problems I personally have with the game with what I have seen in various videos and discussions.
To understand why some people are reacting so harshly to the game one must first understand the expectations people had for it. Even though the game is called Battlefront it is really Battlefront 3 to many people, as it is the third Battlefront game to be made. The game we got could have been different though, it was being made and got scrapped during production, it was only after that when game company EA picked up the license and had studio DICE make the game we ended up with.
On November 1, 2005 the sequel to the popular Star Wars: Battlefront game came out, Star Wars: Battlefront II, and it was great. With a narrative driven campaign, conquest mode and a mixture of space and planetary based missions it was everything anyone could want from a Star Wars game. For the next ten years fans of the series had asked, begged even, for a third installment to be made and eventually it was in the works. A video of very early development below shows the progress that was being made, with large scale battles taking place and smooth transitions from ground to aerial combat.
When that version of Battlefront was scrapped fans lost hope until it was announced that DICE, the developer who made Battlefield 4, was going to make it. Some people worried that it was just going to be a Battlefield game with Star Wars skins, in retrospect that would have been preferable. The game’s main problems include a small selection of game modes, a ranking system which works against new players and forces them to grind away to get better items, a low skill ceiling and a limited number of maps unless you plan on buying the $50 DLC add on.
Taking into consideration that there is no single player option, space battles are blantely an afterthought and after 4 hours of playing the game you feel as though you have seen everything there is to see, due to the scripted nature of the game modes, the new Star Wars Battlefront does not have staying power. It is unfortunate that after 10 years of waiting for a sequel the best that Battlefront fans can get is a cash grab at the Star Wars market, by making a game under the same franchise title that it very obviously put no effort into recreating.
With the large amount of missing features from the game and a shallow leveling system I feel that the draw of the Star Wars universe will only keep people playing Battlefront for so long until they move onto the next game or continue waiting for the Battlefront game they actually wanted.
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