Star Wars Battlefront (Xbox One)
Star Wars has been a part of the video game industry since almost games started to be made and as such has had many titles and subseries of note, but the Star Wars: Battlefront games stood out from the man Jedi adventures by putting you in the boots of soldiers fighting in the front lines of major galactic wars. The shake up of the Star Wars brand caused by Disney’s acquisition of it in 2012 lead to a business deal where Electronic Arts would have the sole rights to producing game titles set in that universe, and seeing an opportunity to utilize the talent of their Battlefield developers DICE, they moved them away from military shooters to work on a sci-fi shooter that would continue the Battlefront franchise. Many changes to the formula would come with meshing the old concepts with the new development team, but even as they ditched the colon from the name, Star Wars Battlefront would still let players participate in large troop battles in a galaxy far far away.
One of the biggest benefits of having an enormous game publisher like EA backing the project becomes immediately apparent the first time you put boots down planet-side. The locations featured in Star Wars Battlefront are positively stunning, the level of detail making these locations feel surprisingly realistic even when you’re firing laser guns and avoiding incoming fire from spaceships above. While many locations require separate purchases to access like the Cloud City of Bespin or fighting aboard the Death Star space station, the base game still has many of the key locations from the original trilogy of Star Wars films with a few different maps per planet. Since battles of varying player count can occur, a place like the desert planet of Tatooine not only has one map taking up a small chunk of land inside a canyon’s walls but also a sprawling stretch of desert with various rocky outcroppings and hills players can scale or hide behind. The ice planet Hoth, the forest moon of Endor, the volcanic world Sullust, and some more desert representation with two free downloadable maps from Jakku lead to a good base set of maps that provide visual variety realized through high fidelity environments. The use of the destroyed husks of vehicles to add unique cover to the environment also makes these areas truly capture the idea of entering a war zone that you’ve just arrived at to do your part as well. Many interior areas make up different map concepts as well so you can find yourself fighting in close quarters, packed hangars, or multi-layered buildings in addition to the larger battlefields, the different opportunities the layouts afford different player counts allowing some battles to feel more intimate while others are spread out and have that feel of being just one soldier in a huge offensive.
The weapons you bring to the battle are mostly variations on laser rifles and pistols that you can fire in both first-person or third-person, the different models having different perks like faster firing rate, better accuracy at range, and more firepower. Slotting them into typical real world assignments like a sniper rifle or machine gun is possible but not wholly accurate as a lot of the weapons are statistical variants of each other so a pistol might have a better firing rate than something that looks like it should be an automatic. Unfortunately all of the weapons use a letter and number system for their names like EE-3 or A280C so picking a gun requires looking at the stats and trying to remember how it functioned last time you used it, but with each death you’re allowed to change your loadout for the next life and the large battles almost guarantee someone will eventually put you down and allow for a weapon change.
Players are also able to keep a set of Star Cards on hand that are just a strange name for their extra tools they bring to the battle. These can include grenade analogues like a thermal detonator, a single use sniper shot Pulse Cannon, and various ion weapons that can disable enemy technology or vehicles briefly. Special Charged Star Cards are consumables you need to grab pick-ups to keep using rather than waiting for a cooldown timer after use, these including things like a Scan Pulse that can help identify enemies in the area or an Explosive Shot that can deal huge damage with its blast. However, the Star Card system is actually where the game’s progression system becomes a bit of a problem. Starting off you’re not given much to pick from when it comes to weapons or Star Cards, and while the blasters can work better for different players or for different purposes, you don’t really feel outgunned in a soldier vs. soldier firefight. However, you can feel outmaneuvered when that player has unlocked the Jump Pack at rank 13 which gives them a huge maneuverability advantage and in some maps like the Jawa Refuge they can easily get to high ground and shoot down at you as you’re forced to either be out in the open or funnel yourself through tight canyons where your movement options are heavily limited.
Personal Shields can let a player become practically invincible for a small period if you don’t have some counter in your pack like an ion weapon and Bacta Bombs give players quick healing options they can whip out to extend a fight or top off a group of allies. You’ll need to play a bit before you can have access to these tools that are strictly better than just having a grenade with limited explosive range, some of them have extra requirements like performing a certain amount of actions in a set time period to complete tasks for Jabba the Hutt, and many of them require spending some of that in-game currency you earn wisely so you get the better unlocks. The good news is that rank 13 isn’t too hard to achieve in a few days of mild play time and you can even afford new weapons and other Star Cards in that span of time to remain somewhat competitive, but once the rough start has been tolerated you can start to better enjoy the battles and actually have counters to players who have been playing longer than you.
When things are on a more even keel and you’ve gotten through the growing pains, battles come in many varieties so the overall game feel can vary. No matter the mode, the basic troop on either the Galactic Empire’s side or the Rebellion’s is able to take a few shots from most blasters but can still go down quickly. Headshots do deal more damage but aren’t too easy to land, but good aim, situational awareness, and quick reactions will let more skilled players survive. In larger conflicts with many players running around firing all at once you can sometimes be blindsided and some weapons are a good fit for a quick kill despite other downsides, but there seems to be a good amount of chaos so that strong players can be taken down with group efforts and weak players can still achieve some kills or make important plays since they’re one of many working towards a goal. Sometimes all the detail can make spotting players hard if the player health mark for identifying them hasn’t appeared yet, but when you’re involved in a gunfight or making a push you can find many exciting exchanges to balance out when you’re quickly dispensed with. Quick respawns and the ability to sometimes respawn at a designated partner’s location also help keep the game’s energy high even if you keep throwing yourself into deadly situations for a bit with little progress.
While the on-foot skirmishes will make up the bulk of the action and can carry things fairly well thanks to shifting contexts, group sizes, and map structures, there is another layer to the Star Wars Battlefront experience on top of these. During a round of play, tokens will appear around the map, some granting extra options for your soldier like a proximity explosive, a forcefield dome, or support droids, but others will let you control special vehicles and characters to approach the conflict from very different ways. Aerial spacefighters can lend support from the air, but to balance out their incredible firepower and the difficulty ground troops would have in shooting them down, the spacecraft have little help in identifying players from above and can’t slow down too much so they have to do quick attack runs. Battles with other flying craft aren’t too exciting unfortunately even in their dedicated mode, but as a brief way to clear out the battlefield or attack other enemy vehicles they’re a quick burst of a different style of play. The AT-ST walkers can get into the action a bit more easily, being durable and strong and on the same level as the opposing army. They’re rare enough and reserved for the modes where they help even the balance between offense and defense some, but the powerful AT-AT four-legged walkers that tower over everything are both hard to actually get the opportunity to command, rather slow fighters, and the main objective for the other team to take down in modes like Walker Assault.
Heroes are probably the best thing to get from a token though, these featuring powerful versions of recognizable characters from the Star Wars franchise. Having much larger health bars than regular troops and powerful abilities, the likes of Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Boba Fett, Leia Organa, and Emperor Palpatine all can help influence the tide of battle when they join the fray. If the team rallies behind them it’s possible to start making pushes that were held back by entrenched foes, and since the heroes are more durable and often have great movement options like high jumps or increased speed, they can make an impact before being the character at the head of the action leads to their death. Playing sloppily can lead to these heroes dying quickly so they’re not invincible, but lightsabers can instantly carve apart a troop, force lighting can arc from soldier to soldier, and blaster users like Leia and Han have special firing modes to make them more accurate and more deadly as a result.
However, that token system does mean, in the large modes like Walker Assault and the control point focused Skirmish, you’ll rarely get the chance to be these heavy hitters and they are doled out to ensure neither team is given too huge an advantage because of a hero’s presence. However, Star Wars Battlefront does have a broad selection of multiplayer modes, and Heroes vs. Villains and Hero Hunt make it more like you’ll get your chance to be the major characters. Heroes vs. Villains has both sides bring three heroes to the fight with other players serving as soldiers to assist them, but between rounds the people who play the roles are shifted around so no one waits for playing as the flashy characters for too long. Having extra soldiers around means the heroes still feel powerful as they can mow down regular fighters but the hero vs. hero fights require better ability use and better approaches to combat than the heroes might otherwise demand. Hero Hunt makes it less likely you’ll be a hero quickly, but in that mode every player is working to take down one player who plays as the hero, the one who kills them getting to swap in and start earning kills in a competition to get the most while playing as that character.
While the two hero modes do a good job of getting you your fix as playing as the powerful recognizable characters, there really isn’t much here for doing the same with vehicles. Fighter Squadron mode takes you into the air with fighter craft only but the battles feel shallow, and besides Droid Run’s weak attempt to make moving control points work it probably stands out as one of the worse modes to play. Walker Assault and Supremacy scratch the itch for huge wars of a massive scale, but the 12 player matches of Drop Zone and Cargo often had the best moments of my time with Star Wars Battlefront. Drop Zone focuses the action around drop pods that land from the sky and need to be captured and held by your team, meaning the action will always gravitate towards one area that keeps shifting as new drop pods come in. Some large scale modes or even capture point objectives just lead to players not caring about the goal and angling for kills, but the low team size and method of drawing everyone in close allows kill-focused players to help the team while being naturally herded towards the objectives if they want to find anyone to fight. Cargo has two stationary objectives where you need to cart the enemy cargo to your cargo spot for points, and since they stay in place some players do just run off to earn kills wherever they can be found, but better teams can manage defense and offensive pushes to make for quick and exciting conflicts. With Blast mode to provide an option for players who really do just care about tallying up points in a race to get 100 total kills for a team, Star Wars Battlefront helps overcome some of the issues with other modes by letting you hop off into more focused experiences that can cater to your current whim.
The last part of note would be the single-player content featured. Known as missions, these can vary wildly in quality, especially depending on which difficulty you pick for them and whether or not you choose to play the eligible ones cooperatively with more players. Training, despite its name, has some well constructed scenarios that let you hop into an AT-ST, ride hoverbikes, and otherwise utilize the vehicles that don’t have a good dedicated mode in conflicts designed to both teach you how to use them and let you enjoy them working at their best. All of these missions have extra objectives to complete as well to add a bit more depth to them, but the other two subsets are definitely meant to line up closer to regular play than these specially tailored training missions. Survival is the weaker mode as you hold out in an area against incoming troops with various weapons and skills to up their variety, but this mode progresses at a snail’s pace and taking down AT-STs even with the specially provided tools can be a drag. The Battle modes come in both regular versions and Hero Battles, the goal here being to fight against the enemy forces in a small area but confirm each kill by grabbing the tokens they drop on death to earn points. Higher difficulties can make this pretty rough and challenging for even the Heroes. Overall though, despite this solo content being there to help you experience certain parts of the game or train up, Star Wars Battlefront is definitely a game that depends more on its multiplayer component to entertain.
THE VERDICT: The battles across the gorgeously rendered world of the Star Wars universe come in many stripes in Star Wars Battlefront. Some modes like Droid Run are write offs, the single player options can be decent but not game sellers, and the unlock system means your early time with the game might be unfairly skewed towards the opposition, but once you’ve found your footing, there are many different styles of battle you can enjoy. Huge fights of enormous scale with vehicles in the mix, intimate skirmishes between small teams fighting over drop pods or cargo, and of course the battles where everyone can likely get a turn as the Hero so you can indulge in a brief power fantasy provide different experiences that all have their moments. While the weapon and Star Card offerings do hamper things at first, soon they continue to pour more variables in the mix, the player able to experiment and find which way to play best suits what they want out of this sci-fi shooter.
And so, I give Star Wars Battlefront for Xbox One…
A GOOD rating. It seems around launch Star Wars Battlefront was a bit bare compared to the final form I’ve played it in, and this review didn’t factor in the purchasable downloadable content that sprinkles on more maps, Heroes, vehicles, and modes that further increase its offerings. Still, in what seems to be the game’s final state, Star Wars Battlefront isn’t a perfectly rounded experience and one that definitely takes a bit to get into, but it is one that eventually provides a good array of options to determine which mode is the best fit for what you want out of it. Some people will want to dive into the huge battles, and that comes with all the chaos, big showdowns, and game changers like the vehicles you’d hope to see in something that emulates a big skirmish between two armies. Pulling things back to smaller modes like Cargo and Drop Zone lets your impact as an individual be more meaningful and teams can better coordinate even inadvertently, and then the two Hero modes allow people to indulge in deliberately skewed affairs where the powerful characters are allowed to run rampant to feed that desire to be capable in a game where you can otherwise be eliminated rather easily. The aerial combat is definitely weak, single-player modes probably should have more bespoke content like Training mode rather than stretching it out in the basic concepts of Battles and Survival, and it definitely sucks to be among the group of new players who get harassed by Jump Pack using veterans with their Bacta Bomb recoveries, but once you’ve played a bit and found your niche in Star Wars Battlefront it can provide plenty of thrilling battles as well as some other decent options to experiment with when you want a different flavor of sci-fi action.
Star Wars Battlefront is a departure from the series it shares a name with, it took a while for EA to polish it up, and the game might be a little rough as a new player at first, but eventually it did achieve a form that makes it an entertaining shooter set in the Star Wars universe. The incredible environments and sounds are definitely where it stands out most still, but as you’re running around these lovingly realized worlds you can still find many ways to play that cater to many different tastes. You can be part of a large war involving forty players or scale things down to a skirmish between 12 players you’ll come to know over the course of the round, and while it definitely needs to improve certain modes, many of the main ones on offer still manage to realize their intended feeling well so that you can play Star Wars Battlefront the way you like.