Star Wars: Battlefront Beta

[DaHeckIzDat]

Is anyone playing the free beta for the new Star Wars: Battlefront game? If so, what do you think? I don't own a next gen console, or I'd definitely be checking it out. I'm not very good at FPS, though. How is the third person view?

[BlasteroidAli]

It is first person and the game absolutely rocks. It is gorgeous to look at and reminds me a bit of Republic commando ... which is no bad thing as it was my fave star wars game.

[ESauce]

I've played it a pretty good amount. It has two multiplayer levels, each with its own game mode. In one it's pretty much standard firefight as you and your team try to activate pods before the other team. The team which activates more pods wins. You will either be on a team of Rebels or the Empire team but you don't get to choose which; it rotates after each round if you stay in the same group. Each team plays the same.

The other mode is what everybody came for; battling on hoth. In this mode when you play as the rebels, where you have to activate consoles which call in a y-wing strike on AT-ATs. You can't damage the AT-ATs normally, but after the Y-Wing strikes you can. To win you have to destroy the AT-ATs before they reach the other base. When you play as the Empire you try to stop the Rebels from calling in the Y-wing strikes and protect the AT-ATs; you win if the AT-ATs reach the base.

You can find ship powerups scattered across the level which will let you pilot a ship. The graphic are gorgeous in Hoth. The first time I played I was blown away by the scripted action going on above me; X-Wings and Tie-Fighters were duking it out in the air and a shot down tie-fighter exploded in a fireball on a mountain. Then I found an X-Wing powerup and joined the fight in the air, and realized to my shock and pleasure that all of that scene was actual gameplay. As a rebel you can pilot X-Wings, A-Wings and speeders. The speeders can even take down AT-ATs when the shields are down. As the Empire you can pilot Tie-Fighters, Tie-Interceptors and even AT-STs. It is taking me a bit to get used to the flight controls, as I'm used to Rebel Assault, but they seem to work well enough after some practice. Make sure to use the d-pad to execute dodge flips and use up and down on the left stick to control your speed. A tutorial would have helped but it's unavailable in the beta.

Hoth is chaotic, with 40 players firing bright lasers across a huge map fighting on the ground and in the air. Adding even more to the chaos is a powerup that will turn you into Luke or Vader. I have never gotten this powerup after ten or so matches, but I have seen it in each round. The jedis are much faster than your standard soldier and can close in on you in an instant and hack you with their lightsabers; the best advice is to stay out of their way. Adding to the chaos in a bad way is what seems to be some spawning issues. Sometimes you will spawn surrounded by enemies and instantly be killed, or alternately be shooting someone and three of his teammates will spawn next to him and overpower you; beta problems only I hope.

Overall, I'm not sure on the Hoth battle. On the one hand, it is incredibly satisfying to get to pilot X-Wings, Tie-Fighters and all the famous vehicles. But that fun is sometimes short lived, and often outweighed by the frustration of dying constantly in the chaos (and I'm pretty good at games in general). Some more time with it and I'll die less I'm sure, but 40 players might just be too many for me. The biggest issue with Hoth, and it is a huge one, is that it is severely weighted towards the Empire. In the ten rounds I have played I have not once seen the Rebels win. Only one round was it ever close; the last AT-AT was shot down at the last second, and I thought finally we had done it, but the screen flashed defeat and then showed the AT-AT firing on the base as it was blowing up! Clearly they need to work on balancing it so it's closer to 50-50, and maybe count it as a victory for the rebels if an AT-AT reaches the base while blowing up

As far as the overall gameplay goes: The shooting is pretty good so even the more standard map is pretty fun, but I wish there was a little more weapon variety; you'll pretty much rely on an automatic weapon of some sort through every match. Some variety is added by powerups that you can find randomly on the map; for example one powerup deploy turrets and another will create a bubble shield. The powerups can be a great way to sway a shootout in your favor. You also, like in every shooter these days, can level up and earn different equipment to put in your loadout; this includes your standard grenade as well as a sniper rifle and even a rocket pack that will launch you across the stage (you don't fly it's just a big jump). In order to unlock equipment you have level up enough to earn the ability to buy it, then you buy it with currency you gain from playing. Most of your equipment you use, wait for it to recharge and then can use it again ad infinitum, but one slot is used for equipment that has a limited number of uses. To gain power for this equipment you can either find lightning bolts on the map, each bolt gives you one use, or use the currency that you gain by playing matches .

I hate how the equipment works. It's obvious that the system of having to buy your equipment and buying charges for certain equipment is either a remnant of scrapped microtransactions or it's where microtransactions will be added to the final product. "Want more charges for your shield move? Either earn in-game currency by playing or spend $1 for 5 charges!" To be clear, there is currently no way of using real money, nor is there any announcement to my knowledge; this is purely speculative. But whether or not microtransactions are added, the equipment system is needlessly convoluted. If you reach level 5 you should just unlock the stupid jump pack; I don't want to reach level 5 for the ability to buy the jump pack. It makes the levels nearly pointless. And the equipment that has charges is incredibly confusing. On numerous occasion I have thought that I have charges on the equipment, and have been unable to use it for some reason. It seems like a coin toss as to whether the game decides to let you use the charged equipment. Plus, I don't feel like wasting time in a match searching for lightning bolts so I can use my abilities. They need to scrap the in-game currency and the limited use equipment entirely. The equipment should unlock by reaching certain levels, and all equipment needs to be charge and use, with no confusing ammo requirements.

So, at this point I am on the fence about buying this game. It might be something I wait until it is $30 then go for it. I can imagine it would be fun to jump into a crazy Star Wars battle every once in a while, but it is not quite at the point where I can imagine myself playing it if it didn't have the Star Wars brand.

[ActRaiser]

It's fun. One point to make is that the 3rd person perspective works really well. Hold down the bottom directional button and it pops to 3rd person. The only negative I found was it toggles out when you die and respawn.

I tried on both ps4 and Xbox one. Each had wonky network connection issues at different times. I'll give that to the beta more than anything else. I might wait a bit until it drops in price as well or ask for it for Christmas.