Yeah I know, it’s a review that’s taken a long time coming, but there’s good reason. Like Driveclub a few years back, Battlefront 2 was crippled on release by a swarm of negative press about loot boxes, slow progression and paywalls. So I left the review and got a decent feel for the game instead of jumping on the bandwagon. You couldn’t move on Reddit for people taking cheap swipes at EA for their progression model, and I was bored of reading about it. I thought “this is stupid, I’m not going to drop my opinions into this, it’s be like swimming with sharks”. But the sharks have calmed down a bit now, so I’ll publish my review.
Short version: I really quite like it.
Long version? Sure. Here it comes. Star Wars Battlefront 2 is way better than most people seem to give it credit for. There are Star Wars fans who are actively avoiding the game just because of what they’re hearing. And yes, there are some choices that might upset people who like to have everything served up to them, the kind of people who unlock something every 3 minutes on games like Call of Duty and like to feel permanently congratulated about how great they are. EA have been mocked for saying the loot crate system allows gamers to feel a sense of accomplishment, the need to play for longer before grabbing that elusive cool weapon from a high end crate. Since when did having to work a bit harder for something become a bad thing? Why are so many people getting so upset just because they won’t be able to access the top end characters like Vader and Luke Skywalker from day 1? Yes, they’re expensive in terms of game credits to buy, and yes, you probably won’t get the battle points during a match to get to use them, but that’s the point of a high end resource in a game. If everyone could just use the top 3 or 4 characters all the time then there wouldn’t be a game, it’d just be 20 Vaders running around, and that’d be shit. So in terms of the progression system, I don’t care.
So what do we have? Well, there’s a single player campaign. That’s right, a proper, theatrical campaign that makes it feel like you’re in a Star Wars movie. It’s not massively long, but it’s incredibly fun and lets you try out a huge range of weapons and gadgets while blasting your way through the various levels and locations. After the original Battlefront being multiplayer only (apart from a few training missions) it’s great to see this being implemented and giving you something really meaty to sink your teeth in away from the online action. There’s a bit of a weak ending, so prepare for that, and I could’ve done without the cameo missions where your relatively unknown character is replaced by the likes of Luke Skywalker for some slightly half arsed missions, but there’s so much cool stuff that you can (and probably will) forget about these as soon as you’ve finished them.
But as for that online action, there’s a fair bit of it. Maps are beautifully varied and look fantastic, and the space dog-fights nearly had me wetting myself with excitement. If you’ve ever wanted to be part of those huge space fights with X-Wings and the like, with those incredible sound effects, now’s your chance. There’s a lot of decent pilots out there, but even getting shot down is enjoyable. Back on land, there’s the usual range of machinery to hop into and cause chaos in, and between the music, sound effects, insane numbers of people and other characters running around the levels it’s a fantastic game to look at. Upgrades, characters and machines are unlocked during the fight by earning battle points, and there’s the usual decision to make between buying something early on for a quick advantage or holding out in the hope of being able to use more battle points on something a bit beefier. As such you’ll have loads of things going on in a game, and the teams who somehow manage to coordinate with each other and work as a team will always have the upper hand. There’s a good selection of game modes, and with a bigger roster of weapons to unlock this time round you’ll have lots of chance to find your ideal loadout.
So there’s a lot of positives withing Battlefront 2. It’s still giving you the chance to immerse yourself in Star Wars (bit of a tip though, get your headphones on for this, you won’t regret it) and there range of maps and settings will give you plenty to think about as you run round firing your weapons off at nobody just to hear that awesome “pew pew” sound that every Star Wars fan loves. So forget the loot crate obsession; if you haven’t got this already solely because of that you’re doing yourself out of a really good game. Go and get it, you won’t regret it.
Reviewed on PS4
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