Star Wars Battlefront 2

[Sambob]

Booo Hissss, threadlock.

 

Will just post about the impressions of playing the game because the insidious nature in which it was microtransaction buggered just goes without saying (although ive said it now).

 

I played through the campaign on normal difficulty and enjoyed it apart from basically the very last level, or a bit on the very last level, where I knew I was nearly done and it was getting late and I wanted to see the end that night so kind of rushed it a little bit. Story wise I really like it, whatever they did with the motion capture or voice acting magic was great because its really well acted/animated and aside from the uncanny valley likenesses in one or two cases (and a dodgy beard in another) its really nice. The starfighter stuff is very pleasing and the way they mix it into the story was good, seeing some of the locations from the film was ace, their ability to capture Star Wars is second to none in my opinion, only Rogue Squadron comes close from back in the day. The stealth is...decent I guess although I dont think you buy this game for the stealth, the gunplay once you get used to it is good, I still dont know if I like 1st or 3rd person better, being able to switch (unless you are playing as a hero, thats fixed in 3rd) is a good option.

 

Multiplayer has been largely great with a sprinkling of frustration just here and there. Whats great is being in the Star Wars universe, playing as droids or rebels or imperials, its all good. My first game was as a droid on Naboo protecting this big droid controller vehicle that was making its way through the streets, and then you storm the palace room and its a good mix of different battlefield gameplay moments. At the moment I feel like a total scrub because ive got all the starter weapons, and ive hardly played well enough to start as any of the big main characters, but I think playing as a stormtrooper or battledroid should feel like a scrub - when you are firing your blaster at a very distant target and getting a few hits and all of a sudden Yoda pops round the corner and fucks your entire squad up then you take that, likewise when you co-ordinate well through the panic and manage to burst fire down a slightly overambitious Darth Maul just before he sabers your face off then that feels like you deserved it too.

 

Whats a bit frustrating is that old battlefield thing where you are trying to capture a point or feature thats bogged down in a tight space and its just explosion after explosion and you are respawning and then getting into the thick of it only to be exploded again, and it can feel a bit annoying. There is always opportunity to adapt to it though and if you can pull off a nice play then you can earn yourself the ability to spawn as a slightly stronger enemy or even one of the heroes you spent a bit of time upgrading.

 

Regarding the heroes system, you basically get points mid game (these points only have a lifespan for the duration of the game you are playing) from killing and doing objective based things and then when you get a certain amount of points you can do things upon spawning from sitting in the cockpit of the AT-AT walkers for a bit and fire the big lasers(400 points), or pilot an x-wing for a bit (600 points) all the way up to playing as one of your modified heroes which are between 6k and 8k points. So far in my best game I managed to earn 400 points from a nice little triple kill and assist and then get into one of the AT-AT walkers early on, and then that gave me a little boost from the kills I got from the enemy just being poorly positioned, and after that I got in a Tie Fighter and got a fair few kills with that and eventually at the end of the game I was able to spawn as Boba Fett but literally had just enough time to kill Chewbacca and then the game ended. So really the only thing I think I can massively complain about with the heroes system is that the really good players are going to get heroes sooner in the game and then they will get even more kills from doing that and it effectively makes the strongest stronger, which I didnt like when COD games did it. Apart from that, having better upgrades will perhaps give you a slight edge in the one on ones but just avoid one on ones in a battlefront/battlefield game because the net code is a bit screwy and always has been.

 

Regarding the upgrade and loot system, at the moment its kind of baffling and does feel like a very engineered mix of Destiny loot grind along with Fifa-style constant card nonsense. I have never really got into this card system and its something I hated about Fifa ultimate team, and the main reason I dont play Fifa anymore because there was a constant struggle that had nothing to do with football and it was for me a bit toxic. Here its all quite confusing and not fully explained and thats how you would maybe expect it to be with such an obvious scam going on. I can see it being quite grindy as all 'gatcha' style games tend to be whereby you can make certain cards from having scrapped other cards and using the leftover parts and blah blah bollocks, I can see how this system warped into being so scammy because its just such a shit base system that is so repetitive it opens itself up to needing shortcuts being built into it. I think that if you trace the popularity of this sort of mechanic back to where it became mainstream then you have a good point to send your time machine back to and sort the problem out.

 

Heres my hope for how this area of the game works, I can just play the game, as im enjoying doing at the moment and then in the background all this nonsense carries on and eventually I will just use my credits ive earned to do something with and then get back to playing the game because so far I seem to be building credits up nicely without making it a focus of mine, and I dont personally feel like I have to pay too much attention to the loot crate nonsense - im weak because ive just started and because im a bit shit but im fine with that. Im not one of these gamers that is going to build my life around this game, theres loads of other things I play. I think I put about 5 hours into the main campaign and then maybe 1 and a half into multiplayer and ive got 17k credits, Luke and Vader unlock at 15K and I think thats the most expensive part of the game. The things that are kind of broken, as I understand it, are the purple powerups that you can randomly get from a crate or make from just opening basic crates, scrapping the parts and then doing something, and as they become more commonly circulated then at that point the game would probably be hard to start fresh into but at the moment its fine.

 

This is an enormous post and probably not that accessible so I will add a TLDR: Its a good game, its going to be one of my favourite of the year because its very good Star Wars and ive enjoyed that a lot so far, if you hit me with a bat that had Star Wars on it then that would be one of my favourite things too right now. I dont think its too broken at the minute at all but im not going to get too heavily invested in being uber leet, if thats your thing then maybe avoid this like you probably already are.

[DisturbedSwan]

Started off the campaign earlier today, put in 4 hours so far.

 

I have to say, I'm rather impressed with it. It's just nice to see a fresh, new Star Wars story with whole new characters. Makes me feel even more gutted we're not getting Amy Hennig's SW game now too

 

Iden is a fantastic character and as Sambob says the MoCap/Voice Acting is all top notch, Janina Gavankar is fantastic as Iden and I think the guy that plays the Police Detective in Arrow is one of the squad members of Inferno Squad, there's also another posh English-accented chap who reminded me of the Butler in Agent Carter. The dynamic between them works so well and you feel like you're attached to them, despite them being evil dudes.

 

All the new planets you get to discover too like Phippo, Vardos - which is one of the Empire's home worlds - and many others that you've never seen/heard of before along with others you've seen/heard before like Takodana, Naboo and Bespin. 

 

The later half drops the Inferno Squad stuff in favour of fan service diversions where you play as some fan favourite characters. Luke, Leia and Han all make an appearance, you play as them in a level before control reverts back to Iden. Whilst all of these are fun and it is still a joy to play as these legendary characters, it does feel like it detracts from Iden's story, I wanted to stick with her and find out her story, and whilst the 'hero' characters are woven into the story relatively well, it still would've been nice to continue the story thread all the way through with Iden.

 

The gameplay itself switches from relatively small sandboxes where you're free to stealth/rain fire upon a load of enemy troops to get to some objective in the distance or protect/destroy some objective in the air with your ship. The objectives do get a little repetitive but the quality and satisfying oomph you get from the gunplay keep you gunning down the enemy hordes time after time.

 

So yeah, can't imagine I've got much left now, thought I would've finished it today. Way better than I ever expected it to be, and if you're an SW fan I think you'll definitely get a kick out of it.

[Sambob]

Done my back in again because I'm a fucking idiot and was rushing in the gym. The upside of this is that I played a fair bit of this yesterday and I had a great time with it. Finally starting to find my way in the meta, and after feeling for a long time like canon fodder I've sort of developed a play style. Whilst I'm not quite reaching the levels of those players that get 40 or 50 eliminations I'm regularly just behind them with 25 or so. 

 

There is definitely a bit of a formula to it, the longer you survive, the bigger your point multiplier gets and if you can be cautious from the start and then get into a situation where you chain a few kills together at the right moment then as the phase shifts you can be really well set up to get into one of the vehicles and take advantage of the headless chickens trying to scramble to the next objective, which in turn will net you a ton more points to get a hero character and shred through the masses that have dug in again. 

 

By the way, if you do purchase crates when you've built up a few credits, just buy the cheapest crates, which are the hero crates, you can buy twice as many but you also get trooper cards in them so you will still get useful stuff but more importantly you will get crafting parts so you can just make the cards you want rather than rely on RNG, and secondly you will get duplicates which return some credits to you, making the overall price lower again. 

 

Going to save up for one of the locked characters now that I'm more regularly earning them. 

[Sambob]

Unlocked Luke today, had some great games and some terrible games. Sometimes im super amazing and then the next game im just so so shit its weird. In one game I played as a hero character three times and had an enormous score and then a few of the vehicles too it was great. I think it basically depends on the map im playing, im devastating on kashyyk and kamino but levels like death star or tattooine I'm shit. 

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[Rikzilla]

I really need to get back into this. Anyone else here play/have it?

[DisturbedSwan]

10 hours ago, RikSP said:

I really need to get back into this. Anyone else here play/have it?

 

I’ve been playing it a bit on Origin Access Premier every now and then. 

 

Been having a blast with it and enjoying the MP way more now than I did when it came out. Have only played Galactic Assault and have mainly been playing as an Officer (or Chewy on occasions) but yeah, it’s just a ton of fun.