‘Star Wars Battlefront’ doesn’t disappoint

by Zach Suckerman

suckermaza@mnstate.edu

It has been nearly six years and two generations of consoles since we last had a “Star Wars: Battlefront” series release. For years, there have been rumors of the development of “Battlefront 3” by LucasArts. Unfortunately for many, the downturn of the company destroyed it and many other games. With the acquisition of LucasArts by Disney a few years ago a new hope sparked over a potential revitalization of the sequel.

Many gamers’ prayers were answered at E3 2014 when Electronic Arts announced its development studio DICE was heading up the project that was confirmed to be a reboot of the “Battlefront” series.

This was initially worrisome and the fear lingered that a series this reviewer had grown up playing was going to become just another generic, first-person shooter and wouldn’t capture the wonder the original series had created. Thankfully, after playing the beta in early October it became clear that all worries were for naught and “Star Wars Battlefront” was something to be excited for.

The beta, as a whole, was fairly well done for still being in development. Usually, beta versions of games are expected to have a lot of issues — mainly server issues along with tons of glitches within the design. These issues weren’t present in the beta for “Battlefront.”

The game looked and ran beautifully. In the 48 hours this reviewer was able to access the beta, there was no obvious lag. The game looked unbelievable. DICE had clearly done their homework on the source material, because the beta looked fantastic with nothing out of place. While it was later revealed the Hoth map in the game was glitched by allowing the Empire to win a good 90% of the time, this reviewer didn’t mind playing a losing fight, because the map truly felt like the Battle of Hoth. Everything about this game looked great — from the sparkling snow of Hoth and the molten magma of Sullest to the rocky formations of Tatooine. Overall, the three maps players had access to in the beta were wonderful, but there was still some skepticism as players waited for the full release. 

Upon release, the full game still looked gorgeous. Any moment from any map or battle looked like it was taken straight out of the original trilogy. The full game offers more game modes than the beta. For this reviewer, the best modes are Walker Assault, Fighter Squadron and Hero Hunt. The rest, unfortunately, seem like cookie cutter, first-person shooter modes, like “Capture the Flag” or “Team Deathmatch” variants, but that is to be expected.

“Star Wars Battlefront” is a great reboot of the franchise with excellent graphics and some fun modes. In this reviewers opinion it’s probably not worth the $60 price tag. In the future, DICE intends to release downloadable content. I would wait to purchase the game until the game has had time to grow and more game modes and downloadable content have been added.