This is going to be a very short review of the new game Star Wars: Battlefront. I will basically show screenshots of two levels. Nothing like my review of Alien: Isolation, see my review of Alien Isolation.
If you are like me and you can barely wait for the new Star Wars Episode VII to hit the theater, you can always play the old games. There are tons of them. The newest one is Star Wars: Battlefront, developed by Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and I played the beta version. Ok, so let the truth be told, I’m not special in any way, I just downloaded it from my Origin account, it’s an open beta. But I felt special, because I sucked at the game.
The gameplay
I have actually never played Battlefield. It’s a sin I’m sure. I’m more of a Jedi Outcast/Academy guy. I could play for hours, whirling the lightsaber like a moron. But, I thought that I should give this a try.
In the single player mode you play against the computer in a rocky place. It was nice, I met a All Terrain Scout Transport (AT-ST), defended some pods and moved on. Besides, it was only to prepare for the real battle. I then tried a planet called Sollust. This planet was mentioned in Return of the Jedi, but the audience has never before seen it. See comicbook.com for more information.
The level had me kill a bunch of stormtroopers. I also tried the jetpack, giving you the turbo boost of a jedi, which was very nice. It was as though the game force choke my graphics card, everything was lagging like crazy. Needless to say, I got killed instantly.
Well, hello there Mister stormtrooper. (Click on image to see a large version).
It turned out that I simply had to reboot my computer and the lag problems were history.
Awesome. Now, let me try to shoot it down from here…
After I got sick of the high resolution rocks, I felt it was time to immerse myself in the battle on the planet Hoth. For Star Wars nerds this is simply the town of Finse, Norway, where they filmed the battle. We have this in Sweden too, but it was a while ago I had the “pleasure” to experience the cold and the snow. The Sollust level was single player but the Hoth level is multiplayer. That means I play against other people, online. That is pressure.
Hoth has the perfect setting: AT-ATs, AT-STs, lasers shooting around my head and bombs exploding in the far distance. It’s war, and I feel the pressure. Not only is Empire Strikes Back the best movie of the Star Wars saga (yet), Hoth is actually snowblinding.
Snowblind
When playing the online version of the game, I found myself confused as to who I am playing, or rather, what the opposite players look like. For comfort I would like to choose only one side and stick to them. In that way I will be more familiar with the colors and silhouette of the enemy. This is probably just me. It is actually my first attempt to play something online. Another sin? It was fun, but I sucked, so it was not fun for anyone else but the enemy.
Well, it’s nuts. What did you expect?!
Okey, suddenly my chances of survival quickly diminished when I realized that Luke Skywalker was not on my team.
Ahhh look at that snow shader, it’s glimmering. Ah! look at the footprint!
Nerd warning: This is obviously not canon as Luke is wielding a green lightsaber and his hand is robotic. This is Luke from Star Wars VI in a Star Wars V scenario, aaargh!
Another one bites the dust.
Conclusions
Several video game media outlets have reported that the Hoth battle is terribly unbalanced between the players. I have not played it enough to say either way. I just suck at the game. Give me the ability to play a jedi with the Jedi Academy mechanics, then I will surely kick ass. It was fun though. Given enough time I will most probably become a master.
I will end this review with an old clip I found on my harddrive of me playing against the computer in Jedi Outcast II: Jedi Academy (link to Steam). I recorded it using my digital camera and had to add the sound effects afterwards. The music is from “Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie” track 11 of the OST, the track is called “Russia gets the bomb”. The music was composed by William Stromberg. Some of the music from the Original Soundtrack reminds me of Star Wars and I managed to edit the music to fit the clip. I made this clip back in 2009 as a test of editing and adding audio tracks in Sony Vegas.
Movies I mentioned in this post:
Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie link to IMDB
Star Wars Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back link to IMDB
