Reflecting on the Star Wars Battlefront Beta

It looks and sounds great, but is that enough?

The only thing Star Wars Battlefront gets right is that it manages to perfectly replicate the Star Wars universe. The problem is that, similarly to the terrible prequel trilogy, is that it associates that universe with something frustrating and shallow. Star Wars Battlefront is not a good game, and that is the heart of the problem. During any hectic, multiplayer based game, the atmosphere and graphical beauty of a title tend to become irrelevant as the player becomes totally focused on their goal.

Clearing waves on the Survival mission is fun, but multiplayer shooters such as this live and die by their online multiplayer, and the maps they offer; the two on offer in Star Wars Battlefront are a mess. What initially starts as chaotic fun, soon becomes irritating and unbalanced on Walker Assault. Drop Zone, again, starts off as a fun twist on the control the zones, but quickly descends into disarray with awful spawn points. Both game modes on offer show a worrying lean towards chaos and asymmetry, which when executed properly can be extremely fun to play (Timesplitters 2 for example). The problem with Star Wars Battlefront is that it's not executed properly.

The best of the beta.

Star Wars Battlefront unfortunately falls between two camps. It tries to cater to newer, casual players who are fans of the Star Wars franchise hoping to interact with it; which they will with the Survival mode. They, however, will quickly become frustrated with the multiplayer modes as the more experienced players will repeatedly kill them. On the other hand, there isn't enough depth in Star Wars Battlefront's game modes or systems to hold the attention of those experienced players. Once the novelty of playing a new Star Wars game wears off, the game hasn't got much to offer.

With all things considered, and at £49.99, there are very few people I could recommend Star Wars Battlefront to.