Star Wars Battlefront 2's release was mired in controversy, outrage and fumbling rectification. It's aggressive pay-to-win loot crate system struck the wrong cord with the entire gaming community and publications. It's a sad start to such a huge gaming IP, I can only imagine the weight on the shoulders of the developers and the publisher in creating a game like Battlefront 2 for such a monumental franchise like Star Wars.
Regardless, this review isn't concerned with the past but rather the state of the game as it is today. It's had a huge update and a complete revamp of the player progression system which does take things in the right way.
I'm going to segment this review between campaign, multiplayer and versus. Each piece, although linked feels vastly different from each other. How much value you get out of Battlefront 2 will depend entirely on what element or elements you most enjoy. Without further ado, let's begin.
CAMPAIGN
Battlefront 2's story mode is an enjoyable distraction, but with an average playtime of six hours it surprisingly outstays it's welcome. Iden Versio is a competent protagonist but her story is far from fleshed out and the relationship with her father isn't believable.
For a story component that was deserved of the coveted "canon" title, it's given players no memorable characters, sent the empire out with a whimper and had no real sense of drama. By the books, villain to hero story, spiced up with cameo appearances of much more iconic faces.
The Rebellion's penultimate victory of the Empire is shown in such small snippets and they place so much of their success on Iden's shoulders you forget that Luke, Leia and Han had any contribution at all. What doesn't help is such preposterous plot points such as "operation Cinder" which makes no sense at all and seems to only be there to reiterate the point 'the Empire is evil!' It's a shame, they almost dip their toes into an argument of those allied to the Empire seeing the rebels as violent extremists, but within moments Iden her cue to flip on a dime and change sides.
"A strong start and what could have been a memorable experience"
Gameplay and pacing is similar to a Call of Duty game, each level whisks you off to new locations and you swiftly progress from objective to objective. It starts with earnest, introducing new locales, weapons, skills, enemies and situations at a decent pace, but then just after Iden switches sides it's slows right down. The game stops introduces additional enemies, the storm troopers operate like reskins of the rebels. The missions begin to feel flat, they constantly interject minor stealth sections that play poorly and the complexity of situations doesn't really ramp up. The last dynamic mission on Solust was sullied by a bug that prevented the game from registering shots with a specific iconic character. (It's yet to been patched and even affects the character in multiplayer!) It's a shame because the game does start with such vibrant and willful energy.
A strong start and what could have been a memorable experience, ultimately ends in a pretty but stale gaming experience that doesn't evolve past the first few levels. Uninspired level design leads to shootouts that begin to feel all too similar to previous excursions. This is the campaigns biggest issue, struggling to maintain a sense of interaction and pushing the moment to moment gameplay. Getting to pilot an AT-AT at one point is nice, but it lacked a certain amount of "wow" and bombastic flair, especially when compared to contemparies like Halo and Call of Duty.
MULTIPLAYER
This mode has received some big changes from it's predecessor. For the better? I'm not entirely in agreement that they are. The biggest change is soldiers come in classes, you don't pick your weapon on the fly like before, you must select a class and use the weapon category for that class. You no longer get a sidearm either, just the one weapon but blaster cooldown is more effective and you can perform a quick reload by completing a mini-game.
All standard classes other than the Heavy has 150 HP, but the minor boost doesn't break the game as time to kill is reasonably short. Each class can equip star cards, some are class sensitive and grant additional or boost class abilities. The others grant passive buffs to the player, like decreased health regen delay. These cards, up until the recent update, were only obtainable via the inbuilt loot box system, which meant it was completely pot luck what abilities you unlocked and at what level. You did also gather parts to "upgrade" star cards, however upgrading star cards had some prerequisites, such as required level for instance, but wasn't that helpful in the end."There is so much going on in the multiplayer but the balancing just isn't there."
You can now unlock and upgrade star cards using points accrued through leveling up, which adds structure to what was a very messy system, yet it still maintains a degree of imbalance. Unlike say, Call of Duty, where unlocking weapons and perks expands the ways you can play the game. Battlefront 2 feels like a genuine progression system, where the weapons and star cards you unlock or improve are actually far superior to what you had before.
I feel the progression system directly benefits long term players and leaves new players at a distinct disadvantage, which in my book is a big no, no for any competitive multiplayer.
The maps, whilst gorgeous and detailed lack a sense of design from a gameplay aspect. I do feel that the aesthetics were priotised over functionality. I was also disappointed to see a few maps were pulled straight out of the campaign levels. This is an alarm bell for me as no singleplayer map is ever designed competently enough to handle multiplayer and that shows here.
The spawn logic, the objective locations, the choke points (or lack off) and defensible positions are just all over the place and each match lacks a sense of team work or common goal and is just a chaotic mess of players aiming to rack up the highest amounts of Battle Points to spend on special units. (more or them later)
I'm just talking about Galactic Conquest at the moment, but surprisingly the smaller objective modes also suffer from poor map design and the team deathmatch mode maps are bland and uninteresting.
Going back to Galactic Conquest (it's where most players seem to congregate), I dislike how they changed the Walker Assault scenario (it's no longer it's own play list). In the previous game, rebels had to reach communication stations that called in Bombers that disabled AT-AT shields and allowed the rebels to attack with impunity.
Now, rebels must locate Ion Launchers and fire those at proximity to disable shields and then attack. It might sound similar, but once you've obtained the launcher you have to push in to enemies defensive line to get a lock on. It's an extra step that puts the defending team at an even greater disadvantage and also requires more teamwork, which as mentioned is now difficult to coordinate.
It also means that groups of players do not converge on the launchers, as soon as one player picks it up there is no need for anyone else to remain. With the comms towers from Battlefront 1, it was a hardpoint to defend. It gave the team a unified objective, it encourage team effort and converged most players to one particular point, increasing player interactions.
Furthering the reduction in team effort is the reinforcement mechanic; the enemy team has a pool of lives. Once they expire, the attacking team automatically loses. So now you don't even have to play the objective, just play it like a large scale team death match. Normally, when this occurs the game always ends up with the Walkers reaching their target and the defending team locking down some defensible choke point.
It's such a shame this mode has been watered down, that the team effort is no longer king. It's all about the most kills, the most BP and who got to run around as Yoda for the longest.
And whilst we're talking about Yoda, and therefore the special units. There's a huge selection this time which is great and I do like that earning battle points means everyone has a chance to try out special units. Where it loses itself is that again, it benefits high tier players. The better, more equipped players will rack up huge sums of BP very quickly and will hog the hero characters for pretty much the entirety of the match (unless they go silly and think they can take everyone on). Why you can play as Vader indefinetly for the entire match and yet controlling a small gunship or AT AT is time limited, I don't know.
I also feel having more than one Hero unit on the field at any one time makes the game even less fun. Hero's can dominate a match, especially if your fellow team mates think the best way to fight Palpatine is to run right at him all gung ho.
Most average players will get to pilot an AT ST (far too flimsy) or a special trooper, like the rocket trooper (jet pack is not that helpful anymore), but they only have maginally greater HP than standard units, but cost a lot of BP for their marginally better life and damage output.
Starfighter mode is still a fun diversion, I couldn't spend hours with it, but it is fun. I like the incorporation of objectives, it gives direction to the previously unguided and perhaps disorienting death matches of Battlefront 2. Like in the campaign, I'd love flying more if the speed of the ships was increased and I'm not happy with the excessive amount of HUD details in this mode. It's far too easy to pick out enemy units, as soon as you spawn enemies are painted with red diamonds. I think you should have to get a lot closer before the game identifies units. I also find evasive maneuvers are virtually impossible as a large icon on the chasing craft's HUD guides them to where you are, off camera.
All this tends to culminate in the defending team racking up huge kills whilst the attacking team get shred to bits targeting the objective. But at least you get a genuine team effort going on in this mode and watching an objective go down is a satisfying experience.
There is so much going on in the multiplayer but the balancing just isn't there. Mechanics are abused left right and centre, playing the objective is less rewarding and more difficult to accomplish than out right kill counting. The maps are huge and expansive and lack definition and function. I'm really disappointed by Battlefront 2's multiplayer. I really enjoyed Battlefront 1, I played Walker Assault for hours and hours, it wasn't perfect, but it was fun. You felt like part of an army fighting against the empire. The maps were open and gorgeous but there was form. Well plotted pathways that encouraged player engagement into specific areas. Overall, the map design for all the modes was much more interesting and engaging in Battlefront 1 compared to 2.
Overall, the multiplayer is a let down. The horrendous and time consuming grind to unlocking weapons, the imbalance of star cards and special units and the uninspired map design all conspire to produce a less than appealing multiplayer, that only hooks you because it is, a Star Wars game.
ARCADE
"I doubt anyone will spend much time in the arcade mode"
Battlefront 1 was criticised for a lack of content, at launch it's only singleplayer like mode was one map. (unless you wanted to play offline multiplayer with bots). It was interesting however, with a large variety of trooper types and even enemy vehicles joining in the fray.
Battlefront 2's arcade comprises of all the standard multiplayer maps and simply bombards you with a random variety of troopers from the multiplayer's four classes.
I found the Arcade mode quite boring. There aren't enough gameplay modifiers to keep things interesting and the lack of enemy variety is infuriating. You don't even get to fight off against Hero units or otherwise. The modifiers are as basic as how many units, how much health they have, how they track you and how many appear at any one time.
For something called an Arcade mode it lacks the speed, energy and heart pumping bombastic flair that such a title embodies. Putting in a timer and scoreboard is the most heartless way you could inject an arcade mode into your game.
They cheekily show an option for "battle scenarios", which is a complete lie, they're not scenarios. Just the same arcade mode but you use a specific Hero character to complete it.
I doubt anyone will spend much time in the arcade mode for anything other than achievement hunting. A totally tagged on mode, the production time spent incorporating it would have been better spent somewhere else.
OVERALL
What can I say, I'm disappointed. I wouldn't be as crass or ignorant as to say Battlefront 2 is a rubbish game and the developers don't know what they're doing. That's completely wrong, this is a competent developer, I've seen their work before. This game seems to suffer from some sort of identity crisis and really mismanagement, not understanding what it's existing player base liked from the previous title and wanted from it's sequel.
It's ultimately a fairly average but impressive looking game. Style over substance has won here.
Really disappointed, I hope the next game we receive learns from this game's mistakes and gives us that truly difinitive Star Wars gaming experience.
Well thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed this review and enjoy the blog.
Have a great Easter everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment