Star Wars Battlefront III

[Tamas]

I admit my laptop is scraping the bare minimum of getting this run (but manages) and I was SERIOUSLY out of practice in frenctic FPS shooting and jumping games, so I sucked incredibly, but still I must agree with this "user review" snipped from RPS:

Darth Vader sprinting. Luke Skywalker sprinting. The voice-acting of both, and Ackbar. The laggy flailing leaps. The four broadly identical and very boring weapons. The 'playing cards' you have instead of weapons. The way all vehicles are 'loot pickups' in the form of huge blue holograms that appear floating all over the map, incentivising either camping at the back and all sprinting at them at the same time or charging stupidly into enemy fire to reach the bright blue glowing holographic loot sitting in the middle of a ravine.

The lag, the horrendously broken flight controls, the twitching camera, the arbitrary rising and falling sensitivity that doesn't appear to correspond to any known form of mouseaccel and does not relate to refresh rate.

The health that recharges faster than Call of Duty ever dared, barely needing to duck before your health zips from 1hp-100hp in but a moment.

The 'sniper rifle' playing card that hits for exactly 90hp, precisely so that it isn't a 1hk unless you prep the target first.

The infinite grenades on a rapid cooldown.

The jetpacks. The Halo-ripoff energy shields.

The completely arbitrary level-objectives. The MOBA-style grinding down of AT-AT healthbars.

The spawning-right-in-front-of-10-enemies in plain sight, worse than the worst of the Battlefield games. The spawning-right-behind-three-enemies-and-hating-yourself-as-you-kill-them-all-unfairly, same as above.

I can't help but mention how awfully animated the 'hero' characters are, again... Darth Vader is comical, while Luke Skywalker simply oozes 'restraining order' from the pelvic region and 'valium prescription' from the shoulders up.

And there's the way AT-ATs feet convulse spastically as they try to retroactively conform to terrain they've already stepped on. And step right inside and through other meshes if they're inconveniently placed by lazy mapping and pathing for their predefined routes.

Or the way they didn't bother with any real physics for bodies and debris, so AT-STs can fall over and levitate 20 feet in the air, perfectly flat-out despite being on a sheer slope.

Or blowing up an AT-ST's head by swinging a lightsaber 8 feet from its left foot.

Or crashing your TIE fighter into the ground by flying toward it and pulling out of your dive successfully with excellent clearance, but the game arbitrarily blowing you up one second after the dive due to a disagreement of 40 feet.

Did I mention it's incredible boring, playing a game in which you never reload and have no other guns, and the melee is best compared to Delta Force, with the little 'twitchwiggle' of your gun, and no significant damage done, but still harming the enemy by convulsing your gunstock six inches while standing five feet away.

It would have mildly amused me in 2006, this game. I'd have found other recent releases more interesting and continued to avidly play Planetside.

And I'm not sure why it's being lauded for its visuals... The animations are janky, the maps are detailed but static sculptures with poor texture and model quality up close, the vehicles are sorely under-detailed when compared to the source material, and the weapons/behaviours/physics of the world diverge uncomfortably from the films, as if the designers felt it was their place to tweak every little thing to make it 'JUST LIKE DAT FING FROM HALO OF DUTY'...

This is one of the most 'game' games I've ever played – a first person MOBA relying upon massive hype and a famous license to somehow spellbind hundreds of thousands of people despite very demonstrably being a hacked together pile of other people's ideas, simplified in the Blizzard model and refined into something so minimalistic and meaningless, so unvaried and repetitive, you could still happily and successfully zone out with after downing a pint of Teachers.

SWBF is... Quite transparently designed/derived in order to fit the 'daytime television/latenight rerun' niche of online gaming, for depressed Xbox One and PS4 owners. Switch off brain, sit down, use one gun, a hand of random playing cards and some poorly fabricated nostalgia-porn for trappings.

[Syt]

the maps are detailed but static sculptures with poor texture and model quality up close

The review makes fair points, but on my system (8GB, GTX770) the detail and textures on high looked very good, so I can't quite agree with this.

[Jaron]

I played it for an hour or two last night.

I think the leveling up system and customization/weapon purchases are cool. It gives you an incentive to play more and gives you goals to work towards.

That being all said, I agree with Syt. It didn't feel like I was part of an epic battle. (I did the Hoth battle)

I'm not sure what I was expecting that I found my experience hollow...just that I didn't feel something I was hoping to feel. Some level of engagement in the game. Maybe I'm expecting too much from a FPS. I remember playing some battlefield game that took place with futuristic tech and that felt more of what I was hoping to feel here. The graphics are pretty, the sound effects are good.

Maybe I hate the silly mechanics common in shooters. People jumping up and down while shooting to make themselves harder to hit. At any rate, it was a fun enough diversion for a couple of hours but I don't see it holding my attention for more than that.

[Tamas]

I had another go at the game, this time knowing in advance what to expect, and I admit I had a much better time.

Still not worth 50 pounds for me, though.

[Razgovory]

Don't really care about Star Wars, but I did like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnqtUAg4hkw

[Syt]

3 new heroes revealed. Previously, Luke, Vader and Boba Fett were known.

Now:
Leia.
Han.
Emperor Palpatine. 

[DontSayBanana]

3 new heroes revealed. Previously, Luke, Vader and Boba Fett were known.

Now:
Leia.
Han.
Emperor Palpatine. 

They should have Ackbar randomly appear as an NPC telling you "It's a trap!" right before Vader or Palpatine appear.

[Syt]

I have a confession to make. I bought the game. I'm weak. But it's Star Wars. And I've already put 12 hours into this.

Disclosure: I'm absolute crap at online shooters. The last time I played multiplayer FPS was Jedi Knight 2 in the student dorm and I was absolutely useless to the point nobody wanted to play MP with me.

First things first: the game looks and sounds gorgeous. My GTX770 runs it at "High" default settings.

Game modes:
- Blast: 10v10 death match, first to 100 kills wins
- Drop Zone: 8v8 capturing escape pods
- Droid Run: 6v6 trying to capture and hold three droids that move about the map
- Cargo Run: Capture the flag game mode - steal the enemy's cargo and bring it to your base
- Walker Assault: 20v20 AT-AT attack on a Rebel base; Empire defends the walker, Rebels try to bring it down
- Hero Hunt: 1v7 battle of one hero vs. 7 foot soldiers. The one who gets the killing shot on the hero gets to be hero next. Winner is the one with the most kills as hero.
- Heroes vs. Villains: 6v6 with 3 heroes on each side, plus support. The team that kills all enemy heroes wins the round. Best of 7 or best of 5, can't remember. But you get to play as hero at least twice.
- Supremacy: 20v20 on a large map, trying to capture victory points (tug of war style, you have to capture point 3 before moving to point 4).
- Fighter Squadron: 10v10 (plus AI ships) aerial combat above planet surfaces
Most game modes have a time limit of 10 minutes.

Additionally there's some single player missions. Training gets you accustomed to some gameplay mechanics. How the flying works, how to pilot an AT-ST or Speeder Bike etc. Then there's battles which are basically, "Kill 100 enemies." You can play them as trooper or hero. And then there's survival, which is basically an arena mode where you have to survive ever more difficult waves of enemies.



The game has no classes. Instead you choose a blaster and three "Star Cards." There's also cosmetic items (character heads, mostly) You unlock items through experience and buy them with credits. Credits are earned by completing single player missions, and in multiplayer, you get your score as XP, and 1/10 of the score as credits. There's also a free companion app with a little strategy game that gives you a few extra credits as well.

There's 16 or so blasters; they have the usual trade offs damage vs. rate of fire, range vs. close combat (which affects accuracy). The standard blasters of Rebels and Stormtrooper are pretty good, though, so you're not gimped when you start out; later blasters are mostly about allowing to specialize to your style of play and map (e.g. long range blaster on open maps, pistols in caves). Star cards are special abilities, like thermal detonator, a short time shield, a jet pack burst, or a sniper shot. You can select two such abilities per hand. Additionally there's another card type that requires charges that you collect on map and that don't replenish between matches. That can be ionized shots, a scan for enemies that reveals their location through walls, etc.

Finally, there's on map power ups: blaster tripods, an immediate finish of all cool downs, super grenades, orbital strikes, scanning droids that reveal enemies, mines ... on Supremacy and Walker Assault maps there's also vehicle pick ups (AT-STs, Snowspeeders, A-Wings, X-Wings, TIE-F and TIE-I), and hero tokens that let you play as hero.



If you're looking for a semi-realistic shooter, this is not it.

The shooting is best done in 3rd person view, and the gameplay is very run&gun. Shooting accuracy is always the same, regardless if you shoot from the hip, crouched, or zoom in on the enemy. It's very fast paced, and dying 10+ times in 10 minutes is easily doable. It's somewhat frantic and chaotic, but I find it oddly compelling. I'm mostly playing Blast and Drop Zone for now, because I'm hopeless in the other modes. 3 kills vs. 10 deaths is pretty common for me. Blast and DZ are not quite as busy as Supremacy or Walker Assault, and if I hang around my team mates I occasionally sneak a few kills in.

Again, I'm pretty crap at this - if I run into an enemy at half health, and my weapon would kill him with three hits, and he would need six, then I usually die, because I can't hit for shit, esp. at close to medium range - which will happen often in this game. The maps and game modes are designed to have things in motion at all times, and there's not many hiding places, so opportunities for long range sniping are rare - the supremacy and walker assault maps are your best bet; on other maps it's very situational. Most maps are fairly three-dimensional, though. The Jawa camp has cliffs and trenches and the Sandcrawler. The Ewok village has, well, the Ewok village. The Sullust hangar is several stories tall. Even on the smaller maps, like the Tatooine hangar or the Hoth ice caves you usually have some verticality going on.

Again, if you look for realism, strategy/tactics, and much depth, you won't find it here. It's for Star Wars fans and casual players. Even though I die a lot I'm not frustrated (I tend not to get worked up over multiplayer games anymore). With every death I try to understand what I did wrong, and try to do better (and then I do it wrong again). The game is great when you want some quick Star Wars shooty-bang-boom without getting too competitive or complicated.



On Fighter Squadron: this was a positive surprise. It's basically a very watered down Star Wars version of War Thunder's arcade mode. And unlike in the FPS component of the game I'm not entirely useless, often in the top half of my team. If you did War Thunder's arcade flying with mouse, then you have the same here. Matches are always the same: you choose an X- or A- Wing (or TIE-Fighter or -Interceptor) and set out to score 200 points. AI ships give 1 point, player ships 2 (or 3?), and transports, of which each side launches one per match, 20. A faction's fighters fly pretty much the same. Cockpit view is nice, but a huge disadvantage. You get evasive maneuvers to get out of missile locks. And each faction has a special defense ability: Empire gets a temporary speed boosts, Rebels get a temporary shield. On the ground are health and cooldown finisher tokens, plus hero tokens - they let you play as Slave I or Millennium Falcon ... or "easy mode." These ships are extremely hard to destroy, and pack a serious punch. They also have special abilities. Slave I can spam a jammer that prevents missile locks. I'm having a good time with this mode, even though it's again very arcade with little depth (there's no unlocks for this mode), but I would like to see this mode expanded with other missions, more ships etc.



So yeah. It's not Battlefront 2 in scope or depth by far, but I'm having fun, thanks to the great look of the game, and because it's pretty casual. I'm actually curious to see what the expansions will be (which I didn't expect).


EDIT: I should add that they've changed a few things from the beta. You're much less likely to respawn near enemies. AT-ATs and AT-STs have received weak spot (AT-AT underneath, and back of AT-ST). And the rifle you could unlock as ability in beta has been moved far back in the unlocks.

[Syt]

Oh, pne thing that does annoy me, though: as detailed as the maps are, it's sometimes easy to get snagged behind a little ledge or something, which is quickly lethal if you don't realize it fast enough. Cursed tree roots on Endor!

[lustindarkness]

My son got it for the PS4 this weekend, it looks awesome. I have not played it myself yet as there was Double XP on Black Ops III and played that instead.

[viper37]

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/they-wanted-to-pay-me-to-promote-piece-of-sht-star/1100-6432521/

[Syt]

I think it's a nice break from all the modern military shooters. I'm also following Overwatch which looks quite interesting, especially with its 20 characters that range from high speed run and gun to (almost) stationary tanks, so it should have something for every skill level.

[lustindarkness]

Played it a bit last night,  it's fun with a group of friends talking shit. I'll play it a bit more.

[Syt]

So yeah, I'm already done with the game. To be fair, I spent 15 hours on it, which is more than on some other AAA titles I bought at full price.

But yeah, combat gets dull quickly, especially since some traits/star cards are better than others. It also doesn't help that the objectively best gun in the game (Solo's DL-44 blaster that can easily one shot kill) was a pre-order bonus but the plebs only unlock it at level 25 (I'm at 17), so almost every game you have a few guys bunny hopping racking up silly kill numbers (though by this point there's very probably plenty of players who unlocked it through play).

Also, some star cards are pretty much guaranteed kills unless you're a moron - homing shot if you catch an enemy out of cover, a barrage of explosives, explosive shot ... not to mention that there's some power ups that screw you even if you notice them in time - i.e. the orbital strike or the thermal imploder (a super grenade). There's shields you can deploy, but their activation takes too long. I miss the dodge roll from the previous games.

[lustindarkness]

It entertains me enough to play it a few hours at a time. And when in a party is can be great fun (to compete on who curses at the frustrating game the most).
Beautiful visuals and sound, The Wife has prohibited us from playing it without the headset, the thermal detonator using a Bose system will shake your house and scare small dogs (and small humans I imagine).

Yeah, I'm enjoying it because I am a Star Wars fan, I did not pay for it, and I only play it in small doses.