The short version is that Star Wars: Battlefront comes across as a great Star Wars game, but only an okay shooter. Full disclosure: I’m not familiar with the Battlefront series, nor am I really a Star Wars fan, but the excitement in DICE’s inspired take on this classic sci-fi universe is infectious. It’s shown off a little better on the Hoth map than on the Sullust map, due to the more open nature of the battlefield making it clear just the scale you’re playing on. Laser shots rip through the sky, AT-ATs stride across the landscape, and there’s that sense of being in the midst of the action that DICE make it look so effortless to pull off. It makes you wonder about other fictional universes they could apply this format to. Note that in the Hoth level the use of flying vehicles is particularly important for winning matches as they can seriously hamstring AT-ATs. It’s a smart move that encourages players to get themselves into a position where they can see the most breathtaking view of the map possible. There aren’t many games where I feel enthused to stress how good even the snow looks. There are other strong references back to the films as well: The dead-on sound of the guns and the way it uses one of the wipes from the movies when you respawn.

The inclusion of Vader and Skywalker as playable characters here is also a nice touch. There is a tendency with a canon as prolific and borderline doctrinal as Star Wars to insist that the beloved characters from the movies are simply too important for players to put their grubby little hands on, but Battlefront finds a way to stir them into the mix and what’s more, give them an imposing presence. An entire single-player game where you control Vader might be cool, but if you’re only ever controlling Vader, you don’t have a personal reference point for how powerful he is. In the Battlefront beta you’re very familiar with what it feels like to be the average soldier on the frontlines and so when you can start cutting through those same soldiers with one of the series’ heroes or anti-heroes, or when you can see a trench full of your side mowed down by one, it gives them the feeling of being a serious force to contend with. You can imagine a lot of the things that exist in this beta just never having been made and the excuse being that it would be too difficult to systemise them all as part of a multiplayer mode, but if this sneak peek is anything to go by, Battlefront is truly committed to giving players what they want from a large scale Star Wars shooter. Want to be Luke Skywalker? Go ahead. Want to get in the AT-AT? Have at it. Want to get into a dogfight with the Y-Wing? You are welcome to do so. The game feels like a solid FPS without just being a reskin of an assembly line AAA shooter, and it feels grounded in its chosen franchise without feeling like cynical nostalgia bait.

The bit where this fell down for me was the general patterns of fighting these battles. I’m not bothered like some that the series may have deviated from previous iterations and I don’t want to talk about the imbalances of the weapons, although there are legitimate complaints to be made about the balancing. Instead, I mainly want to talk about the way Battlefront gives you strategic objectives, but it doesn’t give you enough strategic tools. As much as I don’t want DICE to be remaking Battlefield over and over until the end of time and I applaud them for trying to go in a new direction, you can see why they make their games class-based shooters. In another game if you got gunned down repeatedly at the same crucial point on the map, you might consider trying to change to a support class to help others, or becoming an entirely different kind of offensive class on the fly to attack your opponents in a way they’re less prepared for. It adds an extra tactical layer to the game and it creates a means to feel like you can turn the tide of a battle, even when you’re one small part of a much larger conflict. In Battlefront however, you just respawn as the same generic shooty guy every time and while the maps give you plenty of ways you can approach opponents and you can sometimes sweep pickups right off the ground, it doesn’t go far enough. Most shooters survive fine without any kind of class-based system but keep in mind these are often games that are more focused on deathmatch modes, more focused on loadouts, have more variation in your average play, or have a more relentless pattern of conflict.

I have seen people say about mechanical systems like Battlefront’s that even if they’re flawed they “Get you back into the action fast”, but I want to explore what that really means. It’s commonly used as another way to say “You respawn fast” and in Battlefront you do respawn almost immediately, but unless you can spawn on another player in your squad you’re likely to be plopped out at some remote point on the map and have to run back to the area where the game is actually being played. Your ability to spawn on another player can quickly be confiscated when it’s only two people to a single squad. I get why the game plays this way: If it didn’t take some time to get back into the fray anyone trying to secure an objective would quickly be overwhelmed by a never-ending stream of respawning players, but it’s another thing that makes me think that the play might benefit more from edging a little further towards strategic class choices and away from just being about shooting things. Because the way it is there’s a fair bit of time where you can’t shoot things. It’s easy to understand why a lot of players have just taken to sniping opponents from halfway across a map, a strategy that especially on Hoth where cover is scant, feels just a little too effective. Of course, tactical advantages could also be achieved by a team co-ordinating properly, but teams are 10 people large and the community is going to rely particularly heavily on matchmaking to fill 20 person games. Trying to coordinate people on that scale is difficult to say the least. Again, it could really do with a more clear way to sort people into strategic roles.