Beta Impressions: Star Wars Battlefront Is a Watered Down Sci-Fi Battlefield | GameRevolution

GR:
The Star Wars: Battlefront beta is here and it's quickly taken the gaming world by storm. Expected to be one of the three best-selling games of the year, there are a ton of eyes on the game right now. The consensus is that it's a genuine Star Wars game, although its execution has produced mixed reception.

DICE has clearly identified a target demographic with Star Wars: Battlefront, and it isn't one that it typically builds games for. Instead of making a game like Battlefield for shooter enthusiasts and teamwork fiends, it's designed to be a simple, easy to digest shooter.

[venom06]

Now this has to be the STUPIDEST Battlefront article written so far and put on N4G... "watered Battlefield" is absolutely NOT how Battlefront can be described. This feels nothing of Battlefield and some have argued it's probably the most realistic STAR WARS we've ever played. It's a beta and as with betas, thing are found to tweak and change to make it an overall better experience. Battlefield took a long to run this well and play this smoothly. It's a ton of fun to play.. The full game, with many more maps, modes and weapons will be awesome and much more in depth with tweaks and changes. Thank God for betas. They usually make good games great...

[OhMyGandhi]

you do realize that the game comes out next month, right?
as far as I'm concerned, this is a demo, not a beta.

[WilliamUsher]

You couldn't be more wrong.

Objectively speaking this Battlefront is worse than the one on the PS2. Fewer weapons, fewer maps, no roll, smaller maps (I'm not even sure how they managed to make the maps smaller in 2015), and no class dynamics.

You don't get to repair vehicles anymore since there's no longer an engineering class.

There's no vehicle hijacking like in the older games.

You can't tie up the AT-ATs like in the old games.

There are fewer vehicles on the map than in Battlefront 2 on the PS2 (again, baffling for a game made in 2015).

You can no longer go prone like in the older Battlefronts, which means you can't hide in a place and snipe.

There's also no actual sniping weapons, it's a set of card skills, which makes it really unappealing.

Teamwork is also no longer required since there's no support class to heal. Players automatically heal like Call of Duty.

The thing is, if you enjoy Call of Duty and you want a good looking game then DICE's Star Wars: Battlefront is fine.

If you're a fan of the old games you will be sorely disappointed with how much content and gameplay features they removed.

If possible, try to go back and play the old Star Wars: Battlefront 1 demo on the PS2 or OG Xbox and compare it to this beta, it's astounding how much is actually missing by comparison.

[SolidDuck]

Everything u just said is exactly how I felt playing this game. I was so excited for it. The amount of features missing is unbelievable. So disappointing. Yes I know its a beta. The core gameplay is the problem. More maps and modes wont fix that.

[tigertron]

Spot on, the only thing this Battlefront has over the last one is the graphics and audio. Otherwise the last Battlefront had way more features and was more fun.

I'm glad I cancelled my pre-order. I'll be focusing on Halo 5 instead.

[OhMyGandhi]

I am so weirdly split about this game. The game is absolutely gorgeous. The sound design, the explosions, the surround sound effect, is something DiCE knows so well, and excel at.

I've played primarily the one with the pods that drop (Let's just call it CTF) and found it to be mildly amusing. I like Star Wars enough to be interested in the game's development, and obviously, see the movie in december. That being said, I didn't really get the feeling like I was being swept away to another land. It just looked like another warzone. Scorched earth, downed ships, and craggy rocks and valleys.

The beta itself, (yet again, this game is a month away from release, it's not a beta...It's a demo) was stupidly limiting. The two maps, while visually striking, weren't that interesting to traverse. Spawn points were always at the edge of the map, and your normal moving speed was as if you were trudging through maple syrup, which forced you to hold shift the entire time for even a moderate amount of speed.

Even on this small map, with 8 players on each side, there were lulls in combat, enough so where I would simply space out, and start thinking about other things. These maps had little to no chokepoints, there wasn't an identifiable rhythm to the chaos.
The actual act of shooting one another wasn't that fun, either. And that is a BIG problem.

I've complained about this aspect before, and people tell me that "it's a beta, and there is only one map for this mode" and so on...I completely disagree. I can tell you right now that when I load up a game like Halo ( I don't own an xbox one, but I've had previous consoles) and play some slayer, on a map like Ascension, Midship, Coagulation, Lockout and others, it sucks you away like nothing I've experienced since then. It's an arena shooter, first and foremost. Hell, even the beta for halo 3 had "Snowbound" as one of the maps included.

Battlefront decided to just give players "a slice of the movies" without adding any meaningful level design decisions behind it.
I'll never forget when Bungie would unveil a new map, and go over exactly what would make it so interesting. Level designers would circle the choke points, and areas of conflict between weapons, vehicles, and objectives. They designed these maps in such a way that even hearing how they would be laid out made me excited.

Back to Battlefront, Weapons felt just as satisfying to shoot as those toy blasters you'd find in Toys'R'Us that'd flash a red light and make a tinny "pew" noise from a single speaker on the side. There was no weight to them. I didn't feel like I was hitting someone. There was a strange disconnect between hitting an enemy with a single laser, and then seeing the insane ragdoll effect afterwords. I didn't see cause-and-effect like I would expect.

Shooting from the sights is a joke, and threw me off. The laser that'd come out would seem to lag slightly behind the barrel of the gun, reminiscent of the intentionally cartoony and exaggerated gunfire from the turret sections of a Sly Cooper game.

I do not like the card system, and how you are limited to one grenade at a time for whatever reason. I hate that the jetpack can only be used for exactly two seconds before you have to wait an additional 15 seconds for it to "cool down".

I could probably write a whole essay at just how middling the experience was for me. It wasn't bad, wasn't great. Just perfectly average.

This is star wars...And DiCE know a thing or two about making competent shooters, what the hell happened?

[mopground]

you can tie up at ats

[3-4-5]

Possibly the most boring FPS shooter in existence right now.

It feels empty and just kind of there without doing much.

[ZaWarudo]

It's a watered down Battlefront.

[JoakimMogren]

pretty much, everyone is defending it saying "omg the graphics and sound make it feel like star wars" bitch its not like they build the sounds from the ground up they used the music from the original battlefront games, and of course the graphics look good because the maps are small as fuck so the game gets to render way less

[mopground]

i thought the beta was simply fun and i really enjoy dogfighting. I actually like how they handled sniping. The spawning is a big problem though. Theres a message saying that more weapons cards and unlocks will be in the full game, i hope its a lot more.