Star Wars: Battlefront – Standard Edition – PC

At first you begin playing this game and you don’t understand all the negativity from players in the Beta. It looks amazing, sounds amazing and it’s everything you wanted as a star wars fan. It feels like you are really in the Star Wars universe and offers many things I dreamed about getting to play as a little kid 30 years ago and I can’t be alone in that feeling.

But the more you play the more you realize after seeing everything again and again – not matter how beautiful, you get a average shooter that gets old in under 10 hours. Limited guns, limited game modes that are interesting and there is a true lack of incentive to continue progressing. The hero system is interesting and it is fun to kill enemies so easily. But I don’t like how the system itself works- as in how it is delivered to players.

Battlefront in like being trapped in a car while looking at the window at a tropical paradise and get excited wanting to experience it. You try to open the doors but they won’t open. You try to roll down the windows but they fail to work too. So you try to do your best and break the windows out with your elbows only to find they are made of bullet proof glass. So while the view is beautiful you will never be able to get your hands dirty or interact with it.

That is Battlefront in a nutshell. A sight for the eyes but not for the brain. After you see everything enough, there is a good chance you get burn out more quickly than other shooters. My final opinion is there are too many shooters on the Market that just came out that offer far more.

I had speculation during the beta and I am about 8 hours in after launch and already bored. Terrible spawn points, for a "Battle Front" there is no "Front" when you play the "Blast" mode (Team Deathmatch) there are people running around everywhere. Grenades going off everywhere. Its extremely chaotic. The infamous "Walker Assault?" I have yet to see a Rebel side win once. It is heavily stacked in the Empire’s favor. Dogfights are lame, controls terrible. Also the shooting, for having no recoil I find it really hard to sometimes hit anybody. Multiple times I turn a corner and run right into someone, we both shoot at each other at the same time. Sometimes I die in a single shot. Sometimes they die in 1 second. Somtimes we both run around missing until our weapons over heat, and sometimes I win by a sliver of health. I have no idea whats going to happen each time I engage a person. I mean my crosshairs on him, im strafing, im shooting. Nothing is happening. I am by no means a FPS noob. This style of game is just like what I play in COD. Run around the map with a SMG and shoot from the hip. Thats been a very successful play style for me that I prestiged multiple times in. But I have yet to figure out if you need to stagger or just hold down the fire button. I know a lot of guys say shoot from the hip in 3rd person on Youtube but I do a lot zooming in, I cant see anything unless I zoom. Some maps (like the jungle one in particular) you cannot see ANYTHING. That mixed with the random spawn on player respawns makes its total chaos. As I write this review only 8 minutes ago I was in a game. I spawned on top of a guy, he ran forward got shot from a stormtrooper from behind, I killed that stormtrooper, and another one shot me in the back. And this confusion happens all the time.

I could have overlooked all this terrible gameplay. Just to be in the Star Wars universe. But this game has nothing that makes me want to hit level 50. Shadow troopers dont interest me. The customization is so weak. I mean if you could spend credits for different color armors and insignia’s. Maybe have a bunch of helmets and pauldrons to choose from, that would keep me going. You could easily still stay true to the SW Universe

So short summary:

CONS: Weak FPS/3rd person shooting mechanics. Lame customization. = No replay value.
PROS: Even with my old rig from 2012 I can run this game at about 45-50 FPS on ULTRA. Game really does look great. But after you seen it for a few hours the reality sets in, as a game its not very fun. Graphics and sounds are awesome though. Maybe they should have made this into a scripted single player 3rd person shooter instead. Like Halo Reach or COD. Because they sure do have a lot of "Wow" moments.

UPDATE: About a week into the game. Jakku came out. I play every once in a while. They nerfed some things. Naids, my beloved homing missile. But now whats broken is the Bowcaster/Bountyhunter exploit. Bowcasters kill in one shot, bounty hunter trait lets you pretty much refresh that cool down every bowcaster kill. See the problem here? Add that with a jumpack and you are damn near indescructable. Especially on Jakku where its a big flat map with nowhere to hide. Jetpack into the air, charge up a bowcaster bolt, pew pew. Rinse repeat. No counter for it. Bounty hunter trait needs to be nerfed. Instead of instant cool downs, maybe reduce the cooldown timer. This game is such fail. I will wait for the day its more like Team Fortress. You can pick and customize a class to suit your play style.

I went back into the game last night, cause I was bored and really wanted to see if I really hated it as much as I did. Well I do. Worse actually. I took a week off of work to do nothing but play Battlefront. Wife even bought a Black Christmas Tree and put Star Wars ornaments all over it, with white lights and stars. I’m not a Star Wars Superfan, but I was fourteen when Star Wars (original) came out. – So I REALLY was looking forward to this, and had played the beta.

Within the first 30 min after clicking the Launch Button at midnight, I thought I was going to be ill. The game-play is SERIOUSLY flawed and feels like it was created by two totally different teams. It’s like they spent a year recreating the Star Wars universe, and then paid some low rent intern to code the actual gameplay over a weekend. By far the absolute worse combat experience you could have imagined. There’s no logic to anything. Zero – It’s just random chaotic deathmatch with objectives that have no value. It’s much more important to pick up the random "perks" that spawn on the map than to play any objectives. Actually you can get a great score by just holding back and picking up the vehicle spawns only.

To say the GamePlay is written for children would be considered borderline "Child Abuse". How could it be possible to have such a beautiful looking and sounding game, (and it does look fantastic) with authentic Star Wars atmosphere, have game mechanics, balance, hit detection, and such skill-less gameplay, be so poorly implemented? The game play equates to being blindfolded, tossed into a small pit with thirty-nine other blindfolded people, and everyone given a chainsaw. The whole time you’re playing you keep thinking to yourself "Surely this just cannot be this bad." But it is. Then reality sets in…. " I spent how much on this? "

I literally, (I’m not kidding)….. I literally walked up behind a guy, shoved my blaster rifle into his back, opened up and completely overheated my rifle, only to have him turn, and one shot me. – I’ve been killed by a shotgun style gun, from a guy nearly on the other side of the map. – Any other game, they would be considered to be a possible hacker. But not in this. THIS IS THE "GAME". Random, death, from any and all directions with no meaning, or purpose.

No matter what play style you prefer; camping, attacking, ninja captures, etc… is meaningless. Shoot one time and fifteen other people will just open up on you from all directions.

I don’t write many reviews at all, but this is disgusting and an insult to the Star Wars franchise. Now I have to look at this Star Wars themed Christmas tree for the next month that my wonderful wife made for me…… to remind me just how crappy this game is.

As an EA Stockholder, I bought mine from EA directly and considering writing a letter to the board of directors, that I’m disgusted and livid. Selling all my stock first thing Monday. (which isn’t much, but I don’t want to profit from this garbage.)

-= I"m not even going to start to talk about the lack of content, but the content that it does have, although GORGEOUS, it so repetitive, and meaningless, that after an hour, you have seen the whole game. Trust me you won’t want to play much longer than that anyway. You’ve been warned.