Star Wars Battlefront EA (Beta) Review

I had been worrying about this game for a while until the cinematic game trailer was shown off by EA and DICE and then all my worrying went away. Simply because I was then fuelled by rage. This is Rendor from Raging Rendor's Reviews and this is my review on Star Wars Battlefront.

To start this review lets look at the history of the star wars battlefront IP it started with Star Wars battlefront 1 made in 2004 by pandemic studios and focused on the galactic civil war between the rebellion and the empire. This game was a success and was so well taken by fans and gamers that in 2005 pandemic studios created a sequel simply named star wars battlefront 2. This game was an even larger success by improving on every detail of the previous game by adding features like a conquest mode which aloud players to move around the galaxy creating fleets to command and creating their own battles with unique bonus' being selected before each battle. Other things like a campaign were also added but the main feature was the addition of the prequels as playable factions. So now you could play as empire rebels clones or droids. Each had their own unique looks and had different military weapons from a range of tanks to different styles of space fighters. That's the other main addition, pandemic took an extra step and decided to make space battles a feature which was one of the highlights of the game in the eyes of a lot of the games players. The only problem with the space battles was that they did get a bit too repetitive with ships spawning in the same layout quite often and the way to win always being go inside the other ship blow them up on the insides and then destroy what you cant destroy on the inside outside by getting in a bomber and shooting the shit out of them. But nothing a few extra game modes wouldn't fix other than capture the flag because i was just not a fan of that mode especially since i rarely played on multiplayer. With all these new features everyone was excited about the release of number three when it was leaked, but after EA shut down pandemic studios (who were already making number three to around beta level) it seemed like all hope was lost until we received a new hope with EA announcing that they would be remaking battlefront and who else wound be better than letting DICE the creators of battlefield take over. All the hype was on i was apart of that it all seemed so promising until the cinematic trailer along with some information about the game was released. With a few exceptions of inaccuracy this is largely what is going on. Weather you are a fan of this new game or not nobody can say that EA have cut down on the amount of content by tonnes most likely going to be giving us it through DLC and micro transactions.

The number of planets has decreased from 16 to 5 (for now we dont know if any will be added in DLC later on) Number of players had decreased from 32vs32 to 20vs20 There are no space battles yet (but we might get some in DLC) There is no single player campaign There is no galactic conquest There is no instant action The amount of vehicles has decreased from ,37 controllable vehicles plus 15 turrets , to we dont really know but its a lot less Playable eras has been reduced to just classic

Right so that is the brief history about battlefront as an ip up until the release of the cinematic gameplay trailer. But now players have been able to play battlefront other than behind closed doors in an open BETA. This was the first time we have been able to grab hold of a controller and play it our selves. The beta consists of the walker assault mode which is the largest in the game on the planet Hoth which also in the largest, map, in the game, it also features a single player 6 waved survival mode on Tatooine as well as a game mode called drop zone which was set on Sullust (the new planet that EA are creating for this game).

So question one is 'Does the BETA work as a BETA?' and the answer is no. This so called BETA was simply to allow players to play the game early and for promotional reasons which i will be dragged into annoyingly but hey it shows their tactic works. What a BETA is, is when a developer decides they need to run some tests of their servers so when the game launches the multiplayer will be a more stable one with many less crashes and server disconnections and issues, its also a chance to see what the players think of their game they can do this by asking them how to improve yeah ? Simple ? EA didn't do that at the start of the BETA because they had no intention of changing anything from the BETA to the main game this means the whole point of the BETA has failed. Now after the internet seeing this lack of actually wanting to improve their game. EA decided to add this little questionnaire that players could fill out asking how likely was it that they would recommended this game to a friend, once you selected a number out of ten (i was always picking 0) it would ask you why you picked that number then a selection of options would appear of which you could only pick three which annoyed me because i would have selected 9 of them not ten because the tenth one said none of the above. This was a half assed effort to try and pretend that they were actually planning to change anything major. If you disagree with me fine but i find it too suspicious that they added this questionnaire after everyone got annoyed with them for not adding it , it seemed like they felt that they had to. Also this questionnaire felt even more manufactured since it popped up after you played the game for a set amount of time which says to me that they didn't even pretend to do the questionnaire properly since i think during my time playing the BETA i received it about at least 10 times unless EA think i deserve ten opinions in the large pole that seems very much like they aren't going to count them otherwise it would only be one vote per person but maybe they will and maybe im a horrible person for thinking that but anyway that's up to you to decide.

So that's enough talking about the game without talking about the game. 'How does the game play ?' the game uses a very basic movement systems in my opinion when you're just running around that obviously doesn't take into account when you use the jetpack. For me i felt the same thing in the Black opps 3 beta , i feel like you run pathetically slow considering the relative scale of the game for black opps 3 this was more understandable because that game has a lot less area to cover when you're running around in comparison to other games like battlefield, but like battle field battle front should make you run fats as there is a lot of ground to cover but i seem to be the only person complaining about this so i shall not dwell n it but let it be said because that does add to my distaste over this game.

1.The gunplay- Is spot on I have to say. It feels like you are actually holding a blaster rifle and are shooting it as if it was one with lasers traveling slow but not slow enough to evade them entirely. The gunplay is one of the best parts about the game and is addictive after you get one kill you get two and three and when you are on a kill streak it feels amazing but of course this is for any game if you excel in it but unlike other franchises like call of duty battlefront doesn't reward you with anything significant like an added ability that you can call in like an orbital strike of a smart launcher instead .you as a player have to run around the map to finds these perks. Now this is good because in my opinion this game needed to have some difference to call of duty where the good players get better and the shit players well they stay shit. But as much as it doesn't do the wrong thing by giving the better player more stuff it is saddening that there isn't much reward for doing well in this game. If fact there's almost nothing, all that happens if you do well is you get some more experience points and you complete challenges quicker which oh yeah earns you more XP. So there's not a lot to gain by being good at this game but dont get me wrong there is still the satisfaction of doing well but COD fans i think will dislike this but then again this game isn't just designed for Cod gamers but it has to be taken into account because that will be a lot of this games fan base people that are looking for an alternative to COD and clearly battlefield too but in my opinion this game plays more like a COD.

2.The upgrades system- We saw little of because its the BETA but it focusses on using XP from the multiplayer games and divides the score you got by 10 and that's how much currency you have to upgrade your avatar each new star card gun and i assume piece of gear has a certain cost and if you dont have enough to buy that new thing you want then you have to play more of the game to get the money. Does this sound familiar ? To unlock the next item that you need that will very slightly improve your strength you need to play the game a lot until.... Ok so a lot of games do this but this scarily reminds me of destiny with its grindyness. This is not a thing anybody wanted battlefront to adopt i cannot stand grinding but in battlefronts defence the entire game gives you XP from the survival missions to the multiplayer this means that it doesn't fell like grinding if you play all of the game which is good.

3.The Graphics- Ok now lets say the bad about the graphics now, why is it only running in 900p on the ps4 and 720p !! On the Xbox one ? I dont see why on paper but then i looked at the screen for the first time and oh my god this game looks incredible in everyway from the skybox to the vehicles the soldiers to the very ground you walk on it looks AMAZING i am amazed with the frostbite 3 engine. it does wonders for the fps genre and that is shown off in this game beautifully. I found myself almost spending more time looking into the detail in the games looks as i did actually playing it. There was one point in the BETA where i stood at the spawn point and saw that when i moved my gun around the reflection in my guns sight changed and i was amazed that t was so well done. The attention to detail is everything that EA and DICE said it would be and it works, you really do feel like you're in the battle BUUUUUT, there is one massive glaring horrible unfixable issue that stops this game looking its best and that is .... The simple fact that in the movies how did the battles take place? Well i can defiantly say that they didn't take place like this with no lines being formed and people flying around everywhere no sense of order this takes away from the fact you're in the movies and makes you feel as if you're just in a game its such a emersion breaker that cant be fixed which is a damn shame.

4.Multiplayer- Is the main and almost only feature in the game. So how does it hold up? Well at least in the beta for me... It doesn't work at all well. The main reason for this is that the spawns are broken and give a huge advantage to whoever spawns behind the enemy lines or to the people who see random players spawn 10 metres in front of them for an easy kill this is a very annoying thing to happen because you can get killed in seconds of spawning and i at least feel bad for the people im about to inevitably slaughter by being behind them it just makes me feel bad because its not a fair fight but that may just be me. Although on the other side i have to commemorate DICE for holding up their servers compared to other IPs such as battlefield where they seem to have gained a bad track record. This beta was the largest EA has ever hosted with over 9 million downloads and people playing.

5.Single player- Since this game is one of those terribly and growing in size only multiplayers games there isn't much single player to speak of. Its disguised inside of a survival mode and some training tutorials. The training option was blacked out during the BETA but we can assume what is going to be in it. The survival mode was shown off during the BETA though and to my surprise held up quite well gameplay wise it felt good but since we were only allowed on easy mode there were a couple of problems with it the main one being it was two easy 'But that's to be expected in easy mode ?' yes but having storm troopers die in one hit is a bit far to go. But the thing that worries me most is the AI now this might just be me panicking a bit too much but I wouldn't put it past EA to make the only difference between the different difficulties the number of enemies and the amount of hits they take. I'm saying that EA will make the higher difficulties hard by making the enemies bullet sponges or laser sponges in this case. For people who dont understand what this means, it means that Dice wont have to improve the AI on hard difficulty only give them more health or spawn more of them, this is a lazy effort and just makes the experience more grindy it works just like Destiny's strikes, when you first ever do them the boss dies fairly quickly and you get a set amount of points but then to improve the score you got or to get a higher chance of receiving a better armour you have to redo the strike on a higher difficulty where the AIs attack in the exact same patterns and ways but they become stronger by getting power ups and by giving you less ammo and by becoming sponges no new tactics used. This is what i feel will happen to battlefront and im not looking forward to me being right but hopefully i can be proved wrong. Other than the AI which is just plain dumb, the survival mode lacks the proper feeling of one, there should be a way to sort of set up base a way to camp out and hold off countless hordes of enemies whilst in-between waves going out to replenish items and other things, although i can see the problem with doing this, and that is the fact the player has unlimited shots so you could camp forever with out leaving which defeats the purpose agreed but im sure there is a way to prevent this, one way to show the survival mode needs a bit more tactical thinking is by maybe giving us more than 3 seconds to prepare for the next wave and by copying what dungeon defenders 2 has done by showing us where the enemies are going to be attacking from this would allow tactical positioning by the player and if you change where the enemies spawn every couple of waves then that will discourage camping for too long thus hopefully stopping exploiting. Because a player that has set up camp to block all the enemies other than one line of them spawning right behind the defences that should encourage movement enough but you still get to camp it out for a while. There were areas in the beta that encouraged camping but with no real telling of what kind of damage the turrets were doing and no other way to set up camp it seemed like a pointless area other than being a choke point against you. Anyway another problem in the survival mode might not be a problem in the full game but when you completed the mode you were shown a bunch of text and in that text it reads in the full game you will go up against the whole 15 waves or something like that it'll be on the screen. 15 waves?! In a fully fledged survival mode? That pathetic now before i go into a rant about it, it can be fixed by a very simple button that we didn't receive in the beta which says unlimited mode this would be fine but if they don't ... Oh dear.

6.DLC- So there is so much bullshit here it is beyond me. Since i am new to learning about the games industry battlefront is the first game that I've followed from when it was first announced till its release and fucked up. The amount of crap EA have poured out about it is insane so insane i dont know what to say or where i would start so i wont ill save that for another video all you need to know is that its all bullshit. Anyway next topic

7.Random Problems- I find that the games menus are ugly impractical and just bad no specific reason for this i just do that's why its in the random section also when you're randomly running around killing people or being killed the game just shoves the theme tune on you which has left me at least in some awkward situations where its started playing and I've been killed or it just doesn't feel right now again i have no idea of how to fix this other than just putting the main theme into the multiplayer games a lot less than what it is now since it'll make the main theme repetitive and average which we dont want in this game . Another thing is that they almost script the game modes for instance in walker assault on Hoth the first half of the game the imperials have a clear advantage many people claim they have an advantage across the entirety of the game but during the second half the rebels have a better chance than during the first half. So during the second half of the map where it becomes more open apart from the timer of the AT ATs ticking down its a stale mate between the rebels and the imperials this would be fine and add something by making it feel like the match is really close but i cant help but feel like its crafted to be like this giving a placebo effect to everyone in the game. Look again im the only one that suspects anything so i wont go on. I've touched on it before but the fact its so grindy needs to be taken into consideration and changed so we aren't presented with a grind fest that's all i think with little problems with the game.

8.The maps- Are they designed well do they encourage the need of team tactics or are there several paths to follow that lead you to a similar place like what call of duty does. Well unfortunately its the second one which i dont understand because DICE in battlefield make such good maps on the whole open , not linear but still gets you to the point, but in battlefront they follow almost straight lines with no scope the only time when the big map of Hoth gets wider from being three feet is in the second half when it becomes a larger battle field but up until then very narrow and linear, and the fact that you cant choose where to spawn doesn't help this at all this is yet another good feature that could have been used from battlefield that has been stripped away. Without knowing where you're spawning other than the almost certainty of being spawned miles away from the action unless you're spawned in the middle of the action where you die instantly, you have no clue about how to use tactics and strategy especially as the rebels this was how they won all their fights against the empire but without seeing where other members of your team are not even your partner who you can spawn on and pray that he's not about to die which will do you no good cause you can bet he is, means that there is no co operation but that doesn't bother mainstream players so that argument will be instantly ruled out. The smaller maps like Sullust which on a side note had no lava which i find really disappointing but there probably will be in the full game , anyway the smaller maps are shaped to cause a cluster fuck where nobody has any clue who's coming from where and for how long just nothing at least in call of duty there are more thought out spawn points. In my opinion the maps are terrible again compared to number 2's.

Final verdict- Here we are at the final verdict... So... i could go on and on about what has gone wrong in this game compared to the 2 things it got right. So with no beating around the bush i Raging Rendor give star wars battlefront EA and DICE edition before the game has even come out a totally deserved 2/10 the only reason it didn't get lower is because the two things it got right ,Sound and visuals it got really right so that's the score. If you disagree with me then so be it but just know that i wanted this game to be good i wanted to support it but when something happens to a game i'm fully behind to turn me completely against it then something went wrong. Anyway I've got to go get hyped for my next favourite sci fi game no mans sky or what about titanfall 2 i still have time to decide but anyway thanks for going through this review and peace.

Submitted by TheRendor Xbox 720 Release Date 2015