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Star Wars Battlefront Released (giantbomb.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday marked the release of Star Wars Battlefront, EA DICE's attempt to resurrect a Star Wars video game series that had great success a decade ago, but gradually petered out over the course of several years. Early reviews for the game are mixed. Games Radar's video review gives it a lot of credit for being incredibly faithful to the feeling of Star Wars. Polygon's review praises the game's accessibility and its broad variety of PvP options, but acknowledges that it had to trade complexity to get there. Giant Bomb's review is much more blunt: "Slick production values, solid controls, and tons of fan service can't make up for mediocre progression and a lack of content." Many reviews rate the graphics highly, and performance is solid even on consoles. It's worth noting that user ratings on Metacritic come in significantly lower than critics' ratings, with the most common complaint being about the dearth of content.
Lacking robust content doesn't make it a turd; it just falls shy of my expectations of a $60 game. I purchased it despite knowing it had limited content because it serves as a nice change of pace from the other game I'm playing right now. Plus, the lack of gore makes it a nice shooter that I can play with my 12 and 8 year old niece and nephew.
Without some nice, free content, I doubt I'll still be playing it in three months. But I can say that about a lot of games I own.
Leave it to Disney to take a franchise and license it for everything from toothpaste to cell phone ads. They really know how to whore out a movie. Long gone are the days when the worst you would see was a Happy Meal and some action figures. At least the Lego sets are still awesome.
Every EA game is Origin now- it's fair to hate Origin, but it means you hate EA. Which is also fair.