When Pandemic Studios introduced the world to the original Star Wars Battlefront in the mid 2000’s, gamers rejoiced. They had never seen anything like it before. When they released Battlefront 2 a couple years later, it was even better. They had taken a solid idea and improved upon it exponentially. Sadly, Pandemic has been out of business for some time now, and everyone thought that the Battlefront series was dead. Then in 2015, along comes EA DICE to announce a new entry in the Battlefront series. This was such exciting news! Until of course, the game was released, and it was revealed that this new Battlefront was nothing more than an unfinished, boring, by the numbers online shooter that had virtually nothing to do with the original series… Taking that universal feedback, you’d think EA DICE would have learned their lessons. Sadly, they did not. When the first Battlefront released there was rejoicing. When the new Star Wars Battlefront 2 (BF2) released (and even before its release), gamers revolted. There is much controversy surrounding this new game, but I won’t touch on that a ton. Enough has been said about it elsewhere online. But I will dissect the game itself, because even when you get past the “controversy” there is plenty to say about this incredibly mediocre, borderline bad game.
I’ll start off by tackling the campaign mode. When the 2015 Battlefront game was released, gamers were extremely upset that there was no single player story mode. EA DICE vowed to rectify this with BF2. After playing through it, I can safely say, that if this is their best effort at story, then I would rather have none at all.
When I had heard who EA DICE had gotten to write the story for BF2, my expectations were immediately dashed. Even then, when expecting nothing, I was still unprepared for the contrived, poorly written, absolute garbage narrative that I was given. The story (supposedly) focuses on a special forces Imperial soldier named Iden Versio. Immediately, I knew I would never care for this character. She was presented as an Imperial loyalist, through and through. And she was absolutely heartbroken after seeing the second Death Star blow up in the sky above (the first mission takes place at the tail end of Return of the Jedi). So she vows to take vengeance on the Rebels and show them that the Empire will still win, yadda yadda yadda. Well, about two missions in, her opinion suddenly changes, when she finds out that the Empire’s next task is to wreak havoc on her home planet (by order of the dead Emperor, by way of the stupidest looking droid I’ve ever seen, seen through by her father, Admiral Versio). Apparently, that’s when it goes too far. This is a woman who knows exactly what the Empire is capable of and what they’ve done. A woman who almost shed tears at seeing the second Death Star blow up. But attacking her home planet by creating storms with satellite dishes? That’s clearly crossing the line. So, Versio, and her fellow agent Del Meeko, go rogue. But they don’t want to join the Rebellion. But they join anyway. When they join (and even before) they’re just assigned random missions that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. There’s no sense that what they’re doing matters. It’s just clearly an excuse to go to different iconic areas in Star Wars lore. What’s more confusing, is that probably half of the 13 missions in story mode, don’t even focus on Iden. The cover character. The one that this game has hyped up so much. More often than not, and for no reason whatsoever, you play as one of the game’s heroes (Luke, Leia, Han, etc. [most of whom look and sound nothing like they should]). There’s no character development whatsoever. There’s no motivation. There’s no reason to care. And when Iden and Del suddenly make out near the end of the game, it’s pretty much laughable, because there was no chemistry between the two at all. And nothing leading up to that point would even remotely suggest such a thing would even be believable. Just another forced romance, because that’s clearly what happens when you have a male character and a female character in the same story, right? Hilariously enough, and I’ll say this once, and I’ll say it loud:
ACTUAL STAR WARS MOVIE SPOILERS WILL BE DISCUSSED IN THE NEXT FEW SENTENCES! IF YOU WANT TO AVOID IT, SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH AFTER THE PICTURE! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
At the end of the game’s campaign, it cuts to decades later, and you play as Kylo Ren, who attacks Del Meeko’s mind to find the old man (who was in the beginning of The Force Awakens). During this mind invasion, it is heavily implied that Iden Versio and Del Meeko are the parents of Rey. Mystery solved folks.
So, the narrative is lazy, contrived, and just plain awful. But the actual gameplay of campaign mode must be better, right? Well, my answer would be a little bit of yes, and a whole lot of no.
From the very beginning of the game, I was weary, due to the way it presented itself. My first chance of gameplay in BF2’s campaign (BF2 being a shooter) was me taking control of a small probe droid (affectionately called by everyone in game, as “droid”). Yes, a small, floating probe droid, locked in a small room. Just floating about. Listening to Iden ordering me to do something. But I had no idea how I was supposed to do it. As the droid, I couldn’t really do anything, except interact with certain points, but I had no idea where those points even were. It seems that BF2 has mission objective markers, useful little icons that tell you where to go or what to do. But they are extremely fickle in when they decide to show up. I was in that room a good five minutes, floating around, trying to interact with anything I could (I couldn’t interact with anything), before an objective marker finally appeared, letting me know just what the heck I was supposed to do.
So, I continue on, playing until I get to Iden. Finally, I can actually play the game as intended, let’s shoot stuff! Nope. Most of the first mission requires you to stealth around the place because you don’t have a gun… What? When did I buy Metal Gear? I thought I was playing Star Wars Battlefront 2… Even in later missions, you almost always start out by stealthing. As if that’s a good mechanic in a game like this. It isn’t. And it doesn’t work well at all. This game is clearly suffering from a severe identity crisis. And it’s a crisis that is never resolved. Case in point, when you take on other roles.
When I was suddenly cast into the role of Han Solo, in Maz Kanata’s Cantina, I wasn’t put into a combat situation. I had to wander around the castle, interrogating people, so I could find someone. Again… What? Now I’m questioning people? This is Battlefront, right? I didn’t accidentally pick up L.A. Noire? This has nothing to do with the game’s actual gameplay, and it certainly didn’t serve any meaningful narrative purpose.
Even when I played as Luke Skywalker (for no real reason), they couldn’t get it right. Finally, I was Luke, I had a lightsaber, I was actually fighting stormtroopers. Good job EA DICE! Wait, what? Why? Why am I suddenly fighting tiny flying bugs…? Yes, for most of Luke’s mission, you’re using the lightsaber as little more than a flyswatter. Sigh…
But enough about BF2 not actually being BF2. Let’s talk actual gameplay. If it feels like I’m being overly harsh, it’s because I expected so much more. The Battlefront name carries with it an incredible pedigree, and EA DICE has done little to live up to it. But when you forget all that, and focus on the actual gameplay itself, it’s… not terrible, I guess? When I was in missions, where it was actually treated as a shooter, they mostly felt fine. Just fine. There was nothing really amazing about them, but they weren’t overly terrible. Shooting felt good. Aiming worked well. Reloading (or cooling down, I guess, since there is no actual ammo in the game) had an interesting twist in which if you timed it right, you’d get a small window of time where you could shoot infinitely with no heat generation. You know, things you’d expect on the most basic level, functioned as they should, most of the time. But if that’s all I’d wanted, I could’ve gone out and gotten whatever Call of Duty is out this year. BF2 needed more than “just fine.”
While there were plenty of problems with the gameplay that I could talk on, they are all fairly minor. There were a few issues, though, that I do want to address. For one, especially in the beginning, any time the game wanted to teach me something new, gameplay would freeze as a giant tutorial box would pop up. This killed the momentum, and is probably the worst possible way to teach a player anything.
Most of the level design ranged from mediocre to bad. There were many times where I had no idea where I was expected to go. And there were other times where I was warned that I was “leaving the map” even though it seemed like a perfectly safe area to be in, and looked like just part of the level to me. That said, even though they were poorly laid out, the maps themselves were very pretty. Environmentally, the game looks amazing. Too bad that’s not all it takes to make a great game.
Also, there were plenty of cheap deaths in the campaign. I’d be playing along, doing just fine, then bam! Dead. Usually without an explanation as to why. Some rogue blaster bolt or grenade that I didn’t see? Who knows. Mind you, this was on the easiest difficulty setting. And in space. Oh man was there a lot of undeserved dying going on. The slightest bump in space, will cause you to die instantly. This was especially problematic in one mission, where it started me out, basically on a crash course with an enemy cruiser just a few feet away.
Speaking of space. This is an area where the game mostly works quite well. It took me a bit to get a handle on the controls (my first space mission had me spinning out like Darth Vader in Robot Chicken…), but once I understood how it was supposed to work, it felt really good. Appreciatively, many of the mission had ground and space portions, mixing up the action. It was, at times, legitimately fun.
And I will say, that the game did indeed have moments where I thought to myself, “this is cool!” Unfortunately, those moments were so incredibly few and far between. And considering that the story mode lasts, at best 6 hours, that is very few indeed.
Moving away from the campaign, I’m going to touch on the other aspects of the game, now.
Naturally, in this day and age, all shooters revolve around online multiplayer. This is never something I’ve been terribly interested in. Perhaps shooters just aren’t for me. But save for the very rare instance, I don’t like competition. And I especially don’t like competition against online strangers who I don’t know, nor care about. But the act of just playing the game, can sometimes be fun. In my short time so far spent with BF2’s multiplayer modes, I can say that there is little fun to be had here.
2015’s Battlefront was accused of having too few modes to play online. You’d think BF2 would have remedied this. Nope, there’s even fewer now. There’s basic team death match (self explanatory). There’s starfighter assault, which is the game’s space combat. This works well, but I didn’t exactly find it revolutionary in any way. The original Battlefront 2’s space combat was way more fun, and I wish EA DICE would pay the slightest attention to those old games when designing these new ones. They might have learned something. Then there’s the new Heroes vs Villains, a 5 on 5 match up of players playing as just the heroes (and villains) of the game. Lightsabers everywhere, special moves being used left and right. Unbalanced garbage. It is truly not even worth trying to play. It is not fun at all. And finally, EA DICE’s new flagship multiplayer mode, Galactic Assault. In the numerous GA’s I played, they all seemed to be the same thing. One team tries to protect objectives (turrets, computers, camps, whatever), and the other team tries to blow them up. I didn’t find this one bit entertaining. It was just long, dull, and repetitive. What’s worse is, none of this stuff is the least bit innovative or revolutionary, it’s all been done before, and done better.
In playing these multiplayer modes, though, there is one thing that EA DICE seemed to try to replicate from the old Battlefront games: classes. In 2015’s Battlefront, everyone played the same, with the exception of weapons and skins. In BF2, there are four distinct classes. The basic soldier, an all around fighter with average weapons and abilities. The heavy, a slow moving, but powerful soldier. The officer, a support class of sorts. And the specialist, a sniper. There are also special classes and heroes that can be unlocked through doing well during gameplay. On a side note, I will say, that on those rare occasions when I could play as a hero, it was a lot of fun. I applaud EA DICE for trying to switch things up, and give different builds different feels. This was a good attempt. But, of course, they had to go and ruin this too.
All classes, heroes, ships, etc., have abilities that can be upgraded. Unfortunately, those upgrades are not acquired through such logical means as playing the game, and improving. No, those upgrades are acquired through loot crates… I’ll just let that sit there, uncomfortably for a bit. Loot crates… Yes, loot crates, the curse of modern gaming. I’ve always been strongly against the idea of loot crates, I find them pointless and ridiculous. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter how well I play a game, my progression all boils down to sheer dumb luck. Of course, in order to get more loot crates, you need the game’s in game currency. What’s most annoying about this though, is that EA DICE has done the unthinkable, and decided to treat BF2, a full-on paid game, like a free-to-play mobile game, and has timegated credit earnings. You can only earn a certain amount of credits, before the game says, “That’s it. You’re done. Come back in 12 hours.” This, to me, was absolutely unacceptable. That is nothing to say of the controversy behind spending real money to get more loot crates. Like I said before, I’m not going to really touch that subject. If you’re unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, just google it. I’ll say only this: this is deplorable design.
Most of the world right now is focused only on that one issue. And I find it ironic. They’re getting so hot and bothered over spending more real money on a game that is, in all reality, not even that good in the first place. I had such incredibly high hopes for BF2. Sadly, not even one of those hopes were met. The Battlefront series deserves better.
