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A Review of ‘Star Wars: Battlefront’ from Someone Who’s Never Seen ‘Star Wars’

There are better options to scratch your multiplayer shooter itch.

I am a stranger in a strange land.

For the past several nights I've come home from work, walked my dog, cooked and ate dinner, and then immersed myself in Star Wars: Battlefront, the uber-hyped online shooter that publisher Electronic Arts expects will shift 13 million copies through next March.

Unlike seemingly every other adult on the planet, I have never seen the original Star Wars trilogy. I'm sure they're fine films, but my parents tell me that Darth Vader scared me as a youngster, thus putting me off the series for the duration of my formative years. I did see Episode 1 in 1999, but reliable sources tell me that real Star Wars fans would like to "burn it with fire," so I'm not sure that counts for much.

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Which brings me back to Battlefront.

Image: Nicholas Deleon

Image: Nicholas Deleon

The game's whole existence appears to be predicated upon players becoming starry eyed at the sight of events like Emperor Palpatine slinging lightning bolts at his opponents, or kneecapping a—checks WookipediaAT-AT by pulling a cable around and around its legs.

If events like these mean nothing to you—and they mean absolutely nothing to me—then it's hard to see why you'd play Battlefront instead of the likes of Battlefield, Call of Duty, or Halo, none of which require a deep understanding of lore to fully enjoy. (And anyway, the less Halo lore you know, the better.)

This is not to say that Battlefront is a bad game, full stop. It's not! It's just that if you haven't fallen under the spell of George Lucas' universe there's not a lot to keep you playing.

Part of the problem is that there's not a whole lot to do. The game touts several different modes, but most these are typically variants of well-worn multiplayer modes like deathmatch and capture the flag. The most compelling is called Supremacy, in which teams of as many as 20 players take and hold different points on the map before the end of a 10-minute time limit. It's basically a tweak of Conquest, a popular mode from Battlefield. (DICE, a Swedish developer, makes both Battlefront and Battlefield.) I also rather enjoyed a mode called Droid Run, in which players have to track down, capture, and hold onto three robots—excuse me, droids.

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Image: Nicholas Deleon

The game also only ships with four primary environments (Endor, Hoth, Sullust, and Tatooine) that are then split into 12 different maps. That's… not a lot, but as highlighted by a YouTube video, EA is already selling a $50 DLC "season pass" that promises more maps in the coming months.

One thing that I was able to appreciate was how beautiful everything looks. The game is gorgeous. The environments, from the snow swept expanses of Hoth to the windy speeder bike trails on the Forest Moon of Endor, Battlefront screams PS4 in a way that, say, Fallout 4 screams PS3-and-a-half. The frame rate also hums along at a steady 60 frames per second, with the action never bogging down in the heat of combat. And the sense of scale the game conveys when you try to shoot down an AT-AT Walker from the ground is right up there with Shadows of the Colossus.

Image: Nicholas Deleon

Battlefront is a strange one. On one hand, if you're the kind of person who dissects Japanese trailers for scraps of new information about the upcoming movie, Battlefront's mere existence is likely worth celebrating. On the other hand, if you have zero connection to the wider Star Wars universe then the fanservice bursting from the game's seams won't mean much to you, and you're better off scratching that "I need a multiplayer shooter in my life" itch with something else.

Electronic Arts provided Motherboard with a retail PS4 code of the game.