I know this is Battlefront not Battlefield but holy crap this looks like a smoking pile of garbage, I'm kind of staggered by how bafflingly shallow it is. I genuinely think BF1942 might have had more depth to it than this... thing. I won't go into all the morbid detail, the beta is free so people can go and decide for themselves - but man, the torpedos totally missed my ventilation shaft on this one, so to speak.

Dissapointed as heck.

Uh, maybe it being a beta with two maps and modes has something to do with it?

But since you don't really word exactly what you find wrong with it, I can't say either way. "Shallow" is not descriptive in any way, what is shallow?

I said would omit spesifics, since everyone has the oppertunity to play the beta for free, I didn't want to overly taint anyone elses opinion before they tried it. But if you must know: Floaty, clumsy shooting gameplay. No classes, a handful of near identical guns, no ironsights just an identical zoomed in crosshair for every gun (like we're playing Rainbox Six 1 or something). No apparent accuracy degrade depending on stance or movement, cooldown abilities everywhere, no phyiscs on anything, gimicky arcade powerups floating in the air, vehicles are fleeting and super easy to get cheap kills with (they feel like COD killstreaks), are also aquired by floating powerups, and of course no server browser.

To compare the gameplay to something else people might have tried, it feels like playing Planetside 2 on just slightly crappy latency. No weight, impact or feedback to anything.

Nope, nope and nope.

@strathy: That doesnt sound very good. The lack of guns and classes could very well be down to the beta and it would expand on this in the full game. Then again i was thinking exactly like that when playing the Destiny beta and that turned out to be $100 down into the drain. Actually $100 down into the drain would have been a better deal.

Anyways im going to play it and see for myself when i get home tonight.

Shallow based on two maps and two modes? Ok then. No classes but customisable loadout so you can create your own. Not to mention most of the features are missing. I went in not expecting much and got a atmospheric if simpleish shooter that I can hopefully pick up and play and have fun. Feels good to me!

Plus they nailed the sound and looks of star wars which is a major plus for me.

@daveydave: Yeah, they really nailed the right vibe; Hoth feels perfect, from the glittering snow to the sound of shots thumping right next to you, it's bang on. I'm hoping that the most of these issues are just beta related as the actual Star Wars part of it is fantastic.

@mirado: Me too duder. For me it was when I was running through the tunnels in hoth, the explosion making the roof crumble and lazer fire flying past me. I am getting it for that alone. The niggles I hope are fixed, and even if some are present DICE are quite good at fixing things eventually. I realize thats not the point, but I am very excited for this ;D

I've played 3 or so hours of it. It's mindless fun, but if what's on offer is indicative of the final product, it may not hold my attention long. Hoth itself is great fun - if you're Empire. It's so hilariously one sided against the Rebels. I'm not sure if it is because of lack of teamwork or unlocks, but I've yet to see a single Rebellion victory. It's definitely in need of some tweaks (especially controls, the turrets/vehicles handle terribly).

@onced: I must be lucky but the win ration is half and half for me. It doesn't help that the empire objectives seem much more simple. The rebels can get some easy wins if they realize the can bring a walker down with the a wing. But most do not realise and think just gunning down the empire will help win.

Some tuning may help with the at-at though.

this all seems a little harsh, im not exactly sure that blasters have iron sights seeing as everyone always shot from the hip in the movies anyway.

they're obviously gonna hold stuff back, its just the beta.

Its going to be more shallow than a Battlefield game, it is a Battlefront game after all. Its geared to be accessible and easy to get into, especially since its Dice's first take on this.

There is definitely some weirdness in this game, mainly to do with the fact that everyone has a weapon with what seems like infinite (or very long) range, no-drop off, and very minimal recoil/aiming shake or whatever. Makes the game way more focussed on sightlines than anything else, and also makes the maps feel way smaller than they are (at least, that's how I feel). Just to be clear on this, it's only Rebels and the Empire in the final game right? No droid units to control?
They absolutely nailed the presentation though. Just playing this game triggers something deep within that takes me back to my childhood and how I would ask my parents to record a run of one of the original trilogy on a VHS Tape so I could watch it later.

I haven't played yet, only watched the quick look, but just a quick thing about cards that seems to have become more common in shooters. I don't like it.

I think BF3 had the perfect unlock system. Meta level for unlocking weapons and weapon level for unlocking attachments.

I just tried out some single player survival stuff so I can't comment much on the depth but boy is it pretty.

Played about 2 hours of it, more than enough for me to never wanna go back. The spawn system is fuuuucked, especially for the air combat. The big problem is that there's a few set spawnpoints, but there is no defenders advantage (for either side). So you end up with a situation where you're basically constantly spawning into enemy fire if you're on the losing side (and in air there is absolutely nothing to defend you when spawning in). Also sometimes during phase transitions you will have people spawning in "old" spawnpoints, behind enemy lines.

And (as has already been mentioned) anything other than the basic shooting feels terrible. Sure, it's fun riding an X-wing or an AT-ST (not so much for turrets though), but trying to accomplish anything is just an exercise in frustration. Also, the balance between the power of the AT-ATs and turrets is just atrocious, especially considering Imperials gets to jump into the vehicles straight away and just wreck everything before you can even harm them.

The game totally delivers on the Star Wars front though, but as a game I can't imagine it will be any fun once more people figure out some of the fairly obvious things you can do dominate the game. Most of my games were already dominated by 2-3 players who just rushed for the power-ups and used them well (like most power-up games tend to go).

@ares42: I agree about the spawning. You can't choose a location (aside from your partner) and it's almost instant. This beta feels more like a Star Wars take on Call of Duty, rather than a Star Wars take on Battlefield.

I'd rather play BF4

Seems like there is a pretty severe divide between people who love this game and people who hate it. I think they should have had more in the beta. It might have helped us make a more clear decision before the game comes out. I have yet to play the game. But all the reports seem so one way or the other it's incredible. I was really psyched for this game and now I'm not so sure. Especially since this game is coming out at the height of the release season. I think I might just pass and wait for it to get really cheap.

You do realise you're shooting beams of light at other people right?

Exactly.

Also there's nothing wrong with this. I mean, when we say shallow we are saying mechanically with the systems going on. It's not really shallow. It's like saying Unreal Tournament is shallow compared to Battlefield. It's something else. It's a game where people who jump into a match are on a more even playing field. I get that not everyone is into that but it seems all intentional.

Like you say, this game is actually faithful to Battlefront more than I expected. The feel seems to be more towards that game in ways (super quick respawn, power ups, heroes) and I almost forget it has third person because they don't market that, but it is third person still.

I'm not saying it's as technical in its gameplay as UT either. It seems like it's made to be chaotic and crazy but to me that ends up looking great to me. Don't need this to be as technical as Battlefield.

I just spent two hours playing the solo survival mode on Tatooine, totally loved it. I also did a couple of Drop Zone multiplayer matches, and of course I got killed a lot but I thought it was a ton of fun.

All the shit that is not in the beta clearly says it is not in the beta. I wouldn't be surprised if there are genuinely only 4 guns in the finished game and everything else is DLC. they said there aren't any micro transactions, but with EA, it can't just be as simple as that. There will barely be any content in the "finished" game, I believe.

Well the other two were even more shallow and mindless, I don't think that's a bad thing...it's a different kind of game

It's a lame re-skin of the same shit game yet again, but what else would it or could it have been?

I played a few rotations of the single-player survival and a few rounds of the smaller scale multiplayer mode on the PS4. It took very little to get used to it and I really liked what I played.

It was fast and snappy and the sound design was excellent. Then again that's only to be expected, given the pedigree of the parties involved..

Also, man is it satisfying taking out a bunch of people huddled around an objective with the meaty-sounding implosion detonator.

I can't wait 'til I have more free time to take a crack at the 40-player multiplayer. From what I saw of the Vinny quick vid, It looks just my cup of strange blue liquid.

It is pretty fun, I just can't see myself enjoying it for more than a few hours, kinda like Evolve. Though my opinion is biased, 15 years of CS has jaded my view on competitive multiplayer, I need that high skill-ceiling.

I'm sure this will be a great game for a lot of people.

Maybe there's something here for the utterly uninitiated to this style of game. Maybe.

But after a couple hours, I came away feeling the game was significantly worse than BF4, BF3, hell even BF2 (a title released in 2005)

I'll reserve final judgement of the full game, should I ever get a chance to play it (after the beta, this isn't a buy for me). It's just that, while I knew the game was going to be simple, this simple is just too much in 2015

It's fine, although I'm no more interested in it now than I was before.

Make Star Wars Battlefront II this pretty and re-balance it and I will throw my money away. When I say "I want to play on Hoth", I mean that I want to play on that Hoth. Again.

I didn't play much of this, actually, I only played the Drop Zone mode, and it felt pretty unbalanced. One minute I was playing as the Empire and my team was getting its ass kicked, the next I was playing as the Rebels and the same team was winning without much of a struggle. I mean, that was only one match so maybe something changed that I didn't really notice, but it did feel like the Rebel assault rifle was twice as powerful as the Empire's (wait, isn't that kinda backwards?)

How long is the beta open?

Kinda agree with OP here. I liked how the game felt to play and it certainly looks and feels like Star Wars, however it does seem really shallow. The lack of classes is mystifying as that is a trope of both Battlefront and Battlefield. Also dislike the floating power ups for Vehicles. I'd rather they just been in the game ala Battlefield and you have to take off with them. The guns also seem very similar but that I'm hoping is just because its a beta. The card system for other weapons/abilities is hella dumb. Just let me always have grenades and an alternate weapon plus a gadget like Battlefield.

Just hoping there is a lot more in the full game as whats there now is fun to play but I don't see it sustaining me.

That is good to hear I am downloading it now, I am really looking forward to just gawking at high res Star Wars.

Recorded this for a friend with GPU & CPU overlay information in the lower right corner, but here it is for you guys too. This is the PC version on Ultra running on SLI GTX 980s and an i5-4690k with 16 GB of RAM. Of course, YouTube butchered the video quality, but it still looks OK.

Man, this game looks and sounds fantastic. @evilsbane is this high res enough?

I need all of my light gun games to accurately show the effects of gravitational lensing.

Okay this is off topic but for a little while now every time a beta is bad people come and say well its a beta so the full game will be better. Then the game comes out and is the same as the beta(see destiny). I'm just saying in recent times betas have been mostly promotional and pretty indicative of what the full game is going to be like.

Got in played two games and uninstalled it. Game feels and plays like garbage and it only reinforced my opinion that the only people who actually liked Battlefront were children who didn't have access to Battlefield.

And of course you're entitled to your opinion, but you couldn't be more wrong about this.

I've been enjoying the hell out of it.

I'm not sure how much more weapons and gear you get in this game, but I'm guessing that won't be a big focus here compare to the Battlefield games. I think it plays fine, definitely sounds great, but the vehicle part really bothers me. There is a really detach feeling I get with the mechanic of entering vehicles via pick-up powers, and probably the terrible sin here is that you can't bail out of aerial vehicles (hallmark of a good time in BF). I know this beta features one large scale map built around a Star Wars event, but I hope the actual game will contain maps with the same design and vibe of a BF map, with similar vehicles including support ships/tanks. Can't have a BF game without the pilot of a transport copter/ship bailing out and leaving the passengers failing to their deaths.

Played a couple more hours of it, still hate it - I just don't get what they're trying to go for with this game. They could have just made a Starwars mod for BF4 and it would have been so much better (and cheaper to make presumably). The environments look pretty good, and that's something I guess (allthough the models are extremely low poly if you look at them). I actually find a lot of the sound a bit grating though, hearing the pew pew blaster sound non-stop and blaring Starwars theme music cutting in at random intervals.

But man the clunk-ass gameplay is the real kicker, the shooting and collision genuinely feel like something that was made to be I-Pad compatable. If emulating the feel of playing a multiplayer FPS on the PS2 was what they were going for them that box is ticked.

@mike: Yea that looks really slick I am glad those early videos weren't complete BS.

Haven't done more than watch the QL but it looks super boring. Hope it's more fun to play.

@strathy: it's a beta, bro.

Has anyone tried playing with a controller? I did for a single survival match, and holy crap, it was hard to manage. I immediately went back to mouse & keyboard.

Well i like it, but the snow level is unbalanced and i just played my first match as a rebel and had no clue wtf was going on, why they all had powerful vehicles and we had nothing, and wtf we were actually supposed to do? I play with 3rd person view as well as it kinda sucked as an FPS to me, i get a good feel for whats around me and the aiming is the same without the dumb scope.

I think this is going to be my (and most people's) biggest sticking point. I haven't played it yet, as I'm still waiting for the dang download to finish, but it doesn't seem like a gussied-up version of Battlefront II. Remember when you could get on board the enemies ships in space and dismantle them from the inside. None of that here.

I guess I should just suck it up and accept that this is what "Battlefront" is now, but damn if I don't want to just play those old games again.

no phyiscs on anything

... What?

@mike: It really is a very pretty game! Also seems pretty well-optimized, I put it on Ultra, 1080p, and it ran pretty smooth for me too, and I'm using a 970.

I've played for most of the afternoon and this game is fun and quite the looker but I feel as though I'm going to get my fill of if during this beta phase and won't end up buying it on release.

Interestingly, the bolded portion of your text makes me understand why some folks were saying it plays like a PS2 game and why that's a good thing. Sounds like good fun to me, but I can see why some may be disappointed.