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.

Comments

The movie's not out yet and I'm already tired

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> user ratings on Metacritic come in significantly lower than critics' ratings...lack of content

And yet, someone will still buy this shiny plastic turd of a game.

The movie's not out yet and I'm already tired of Star Wars. I'm half hoping JJ will "Star Trek" the franchise, deep-sixing it in a way not even Jar-Jar or the racist "trade federation Asians" could do, and clear off some shelf space and mindshare for something new and creative.

Re:The movie's not out yet and I'm already tired

[cfalcon]

No you won't.

First- this is EA, and they will keep pushing Origin. If you play this on PC, you need to have Origin installed. If you play it on consoles, you need to have an Origin account (the game walks you through this, of course). This means they won't launch it on Steam unless their whole model falls apart.

Second- this game has almost no solo pve content- that is, the entire game is player versus player, with the exceptions of a few training missions. The training missions are actually pretty rad, but there's only a few of them. This means that if you try to play it in three years, your opponents will be both RARE and SUPER GOOD at the game- you'll be playing with and against the people who have, for whatever reason, decided that THIS game is the one that will stand the test of time for them, despite a bunch of new and shiny options, so they will love the mechanics, the guns, the powerups, the maps- and you'll be a babe amongst wolves.

For what it does, it's an excellent game- a pvp fps with extra options and strong Star Wars theme. If that doesn't motivate you to buy it within the first year of launch, you'll likely be much better served by other entertainment options for your dollar- and your time.

Re:The movie's not out yet and I'm already tired

[gstoddart]

If you play this on PC, you need to have Origin installed. If you play it on consoles, you need to have an Origin account

And this is why I will stick with my old XBox 360 with no network connection.

I have no interest in having to be online, or have a bloody account to play a video game.

I miss old school gaming without the network. And when my 360 dies, then I guess I'm done with gaming for good.

I don't want to play against some kid who has put 10000 hours into a game. I don't want ads in my games. I don't want to have to sign up for a damned account, and fork over my credit card or any other personal information.

For some of us, video games are intermittent undertakings, and don't involve networking or people who aren't in the same room.

Have we completely lost the old school concept of console gaming as a standalone thing? Because that's all I really want.

Re:The movie's not out yet and I'm already tired

[gstoddart]

You're not nostalgic for the bygone days of gaming -- you're nostalgic for life before 1993.

In some ways, yes ... the longer the internet is around and becomes attached to everything, the less I want it to be attached to everything.

Because the internet is largely now taken over by marketing assholes and analytics.

I want a fucking video game, not yet another vector to have these clowns track everything I do.

For the same reasons I don't want my TV or my toilet connected to the internet -- because it's pointless and doesn't offer me any added value.

Not touching this one

[RogueyWon]

It's a multiplayer only game (ok, ok, you can play against bots, but that doesn't count), selling for a price that is, if anything, slightly higher than the average, where the developers have been quite open to quickly divide the community between those who are willing to pay an extra large sum on top of that for the DLC/season pass, and those peasants who just want to pay for the basic game.

In a game with a proper single-player campaign and a season pass for multiplayer content (eg. Tomb Raider, Call of Duty), I can happily ignore the season pass. In a game with a proper single-player campaign and a season pass for single-player content (eg. Fallout 4, The Witcher 3), I can make a situational call on whether to pay extra for the additional content, knowing that the original game isn't diluted if I don't want to splash out. But in a multiplayer-only game, I know that if I don't spend extra for the season pass (or buy each piece of DLC piecemeal), I'm going to get rapidly shunted into an online ghetto.

Battlefront's season pass is a particularly expensive one.

The game is pretty but looks like a rip-off. The better reviews have all highlighted that while fun for a short period of time, there is little depth to the gameplay and it gets old very fast. There have been a huge number of quality releases in the last few weeks that I have barely scratched the surface of (StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Disgaea 5, the expansions for Witcher 3 and Bloodborne and, flawed though it is, Fallout 4). On that basis, I am happy to pass up this particular rip-off.