Player Preview - Star Wars Battlefront

Title: Star Wars Battlefront
Developer: Dice
Status: Open Beta
Release Date: 17/November/2015

Official Site: http://bit.ly/1K7UGxU
Origin Page: http://bit.ly/1Pfhnbn

 Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the multiplayer first person shooter, Battlefront, developed by Dice, the same guys behind Battlefield 3 and Mirrors Edge. Battlefront continues the Rebel and Empire war with infantry, vehicles and ships battling it out for domination.

From outside looking in Battlefront has been labelled as a Star Wars re skin for Battlefield however the game plays more like Planetside 2 more than anything else at least for the assault walker game mode. It’s more about overwhelming the objective with man power and continually zerging until successful or until a new objective pops up. Due to there not being any transport vehicles in the game the player spawns are extremely close to the objective and with no real punishment for dying except about a 5 second respawn timer it leads to brute force pushing rather than any real high level strategies or plays. Unfortunately you can’t select were you spawn out of 2 possible spawn locations so you can end up on the other side of the map from where you want to be. You can however spawn on your partner which is either someone you partied up with beforehand or someone you are randomly matched with in the game.

Being a futuristic shooter, Battlefront does a couple of things differently in terms of its shooting mechanics. Projectile weaponry has been traded in for laser weaponry the biggest difference being the overheating mechanic as compared to ammunition. After a long sustained burst with your gun it will eventually overheat and require a short amount of time to cool off. There is a fast cool down mechanic where if you hit “R” at the right time your gun will instantly cool off. The mechanic is pretty easy to hit the first couple of times but if you keep doing it the space that you’re able to hit will get smaller and smaller. The types of guns are still the common Assault Rifle, Sub machine Gun, Light machine Gun and pistol variants however the sights and scopes for these guns have been removed with all of the guns during the beta having the same sights and zoom except for the light machine gun. So there isn’t any real gun customization in the game. Battlefront also allows you to play in either first person or third person, able to change on the fly and for me at least feels better to play in third person. You can also change your camera position while in an aircraft with the first person having really cool cockpits, fully immersing you into the Star Wars dog fighting experience.

 Your characters loadout consists of a primary gun, 3 pieces of equipment and a trait. The equipment is the cards you see at the bottom left hand side of the screen and is only interchangeable outside of a game. There are obviously going to be more options one released but during the beta you could choose between an Explosive Grenade best used against infantry especially those camping the objective, an Ion Grenade that is super effective against vehicles and turrets, a jetpack that will get you around the map a lot faster and easier as well as getting you places that players without the jetpacks can’t and a sniper rifle that deals a ton of damage if not one shotting them with a headshot. Those pieces of equipment are what’s available to equip on the hand slots but there is also an activatable slot that items like a personal shield that soaks up a lot of damage but makes you incapable of shooting and an ion power up to your primary weapon which makes it effective against vehicles and turrets. These items work a little differently in the fact they build up and use charges which can be found around the map but can also be purchased with in-game credits. You also have to use the in-game credits to unlock additional guns, equipment, traits and activatables. Only one trait was available during the beta being the sharpshooter trait that when you headshot kill someone your equipment cool downs are reduced by a certain percentage. Basically these will be passive bonuses that will benefit certain playstyles.

The vehicles available are somewhat limited at least for ground vehicles. The only truly pilotable ground vehicle is the AT-ST Walker which is extremely powerful at pushing up and clearing objectives but can be focused down relatively quickly. It has 3 different armaments with default laser rifles, an artillery strike for enemies behind cover and a lock on missile that can easily take out turrets and provide some anti-air. This walker is only available for the Empire and honestly more could have been done with the mechanics surrounding them for example weak points, something that isn’t available on the bigger AT-ATs either and could easily be added to the back panelling of each of them for a little bit of strategic play. Something else that I think would be great is being able to steal AT-ST’s by jet packing onto the roof and throwing the pilot out. This would help greatly with the balance problem currently plaguing the game mode while also just being a really cool thing to be able to do. As for the AT-AT’s you basically just take control of the head and weapons and while it might have been cool to control the movement too I see why they opted not too due to the way the game mode is set-up to be a linear movement rather than an open battlefield. The weapons available on the AT-AT include the default laser rifles that are slightly explosive one shotting any enemies nearby, explosive rounds that are best used for taking out turrets on the ground rather than infantry and finally an orbital strike that will lay down devastating fire power in a large area.

Aircraft on the other hand are extremely varied with 5 pilotable variants including X-Wings, A-Wings and Snow Speeders for the Rebels and Tie Fighters and Tie Interceptors for the Empire. Each ship handles differently most noticeably the Snow Speeder were its main purpose is to trip the AT-AT’s, not really dog fighting so it handles like a flying brick. There is some weird auto-piloting going on that pulls up automatically while flying towards the ground in all of the aircraft that make it hard to perform ground assault runs but while you’re not heading straight towards the ground they handle very similar to the Jets in Battlefield with a couple of extra manoeuvres you can perform to either escape a missile lock or to just turn around really fast. They also have abilities on cool downs including missiles, extreme boost and a radar jammer.

All these vehicles are obtainable via power-ups found around the map and will always spawn in the same location. The Empire have it a bit easier than the rebels as all their vehicle power-ups are found at their spawn, rebels however will have to push up to the objectives to be able to get their vehicles which doesn’t make much sense other than to reinforce the fact that the Rebels are in a desperate position and have to fight for every little advantage they can. Vehicles aren’t the only power-ups you can obtain, special equipment can also be found including things like Smart Rockets, Orbital Strikes and various automatic and manually operated turrets. These aren’t terribly important for the Empire to obtain but for the rebels a well-placed orbital strike can deal 1/4 of an AT-AT’s health.

Finally heroes can also be obtained through power-ups, allowing you to take to the battlefield as famous characters from the movies, the beta allowing you to try out Luke Skywalker for the Rebels and Darth Vader for the Empire. They each have their own slight ability variations for example Luke has a force push that will 1 shot a player while Vader instead ops for a force choke. Wielding just a lightsaber you might think they are at a disadvantage from ranged attacks but by simply holding right mouse button you can deflect incoming fire and aim it back at the player. Each time someone activates a hero you will hear their theme music play server wide along with different theme music for when they die. You can’t regen health as these heroes instead you actually slowly lose health so as not to become a nearly unstoppable force. The heroes that are currently expected to be part of the game include Boba Fett, Han Solo, Princess Leia and the Emporer. I really hope they add Yoda to that list as it would be amazing to see him kicking ass out on the battlefield flying all over the place.

The different game modes in the beta included the main Assault Walker were the objective as the rebels is to capture and hold comm links that overtime will generate Y-wings. At certain points in the map the Y-wings will attack 2 AT-AT’s, dropping their shields and making them vulnerable. The rebels have to take them both down before the end to win. The Empire side simply have to defend these Comm-links and the AT-AT’s. Unfortunately playing as the Empire in this mode can get a little boring due to them not really having anything to work towards. They don’t have massive AT-AT’s to destroy, no real overarching goal that they can really impact. There isn’t that same adrenaline pumping moment of trying to take down the last AT-AT at the end of the game. For a pure infantry experience there is Drop Zone which is basically capture the point on a small map were each team is battling for control over escape pods, nothing too out there with this mode having no vehicles and no heroes to obtain. There is also Co-Op missions in what is basically a wave based game mode were you and a friend can fight for survival as Imperial units are sent your way. Other game modes listed include Supremacy which will basically be conquest mode from Battlefield, Fighter Squadron which will be purely aircraft dog fighting and Blast which is a Team Deathmatch mode. There are a couple of unknown game modes in terms of their actual gameplay but they are called Cargo and Droid Run. Finally in the missions category you can do battles vs AI or a friend in what looks to be a sort of hero versus hero game mode.

I have to give huge props to the team over at Dice for creating some really cool effects and sounds in the game for example the Thermal Imploder and the amazingly satisfying sound when it explodes, the squad shield and the sounds that come from laser fire bouncing off of it and the aircraft cockpits and sounds are fantastic and really immerse you into the Star Wars experience as opposed to just another shooter.

Other features of the game include character customization as to what extent you can customize is currently unknown as the feature was locked for the beta. You can also collect dioramas or figurines again exactly what this feature is, is still unknown due to it being locked for the beta. Finally there will be a stats page for the people that like to keep track of their kill death ratio. The game also runs extremely well even on older tech, even though my graphics card was listed as a minimum requirement I was still able to get 60+ frames per second with all the important stuff on high and the rest on medium.

Altogether Star Wars Battlefront is a really fun game for what it is, that being a somewhat on rails shooter rather than a massive open map with various vehicles like Battlefield. Even with the game type they went with there still could have been better mechanics to create a truly epic experience like being able to steal AT-ST’s. The games progression system is a little lack lustre especially for those that like to upgrade and customize their weapons and vehicles. If you’re really into the Star Wars universe then Battlefront is definitely worth a look, if you are a battlefield player then I suggest maybe waiting to see how the Supremacy mode plays before making your final decision on whether or not to purchase the game at release.

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Star Wars Battlefront. The game will be officially releasing on the 17th of November on Origin for $60 or your regional equivalent. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links at the top. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you guys next time.