This game isn't very good, and yet, I'm still playing it, so there's something here. I'm guessing it's pure nostalgia for the movies, some of the great Star Wars games I grew up with, and/or hype that The Force Awakens comes out shortly, because I would have probably quit on a game with this many flaws otherwise. There's a good chance that I'll probably do exactly that once the Star Wars mania passes, because I already spend most of my time in Battlefront half-wondering why I'm not playing a game like Titanfall instead. Here are a few of my biggest qualms:
Melee es malo.
The melee in this game feels like blind luck. At first, I thought the melee issues were lag-related (which surprised me because my internet connection is usually pretty stable), but then they kept happening. There's some serious latency in it and some really strange hitboxes on it. Most modern shooters have crisp melee that generally works and is an effective, satisfying close-quarters tactic. Not so much in Battlefront. First of all, it's not a one-hit kill unless you get them in the back. That's fine in theory (Halo's melee is fantastic), but the reality in Battlefront is that what it considers to be a melee hit, much less a hit from behind, is questionable at best. Here's an example. Rewatching it now, I still can't tell if I killed the first guy with the first hit, the second hit, or a combination of both. I'm also not sure I actually hit the second guy at all, and if I did, that it should have been a one-hit kill in the back. I find myself using melee out of habit, and immediately regretting that I did after dying to someone who decided to just use their gun at melee range instead because it's more reliable. That's...not good.
Homing Shot, really?
This thing is the worst. For those who haven't played the game, it's basically a missile with quick lock-on and ridiculous range that will chase you across the entire goddamned map. Early on, the only sure way to avoid it is to not go out in the open and constantly hang out around objects to hide behind so the missile hits that instead of you. I say "early on" because you can usually evade it with a jetpack boost. The problem is, you can't unlock the jetpack until level 13, which means until you've put in 20+ hours of multiplayer (which is more time than many seem to think this game deserves), you're getting destroyed by this fucking thing. For an employed adult with a life like me, I'm just now getting to that point and have learned to hate the homing shot in the process. Putting a cheap, game-altering weapon that you can't even use until level 12 is some bullshit, but putting a key mobility upgrade that's the only reliable way to negate it at level 13 is mind-bogglingly terrible. That's the kind of awful "progression" of allowing those who've dumped a ton of hours in it to prey (skill-lessly) on those who haven't, and thus turning off new players in the process. I actually have the homing shot now, but I have little to no desire to even use it (even though it wrecks anyone who doesn't have a jetpack). After trying it for a bit, it's no more fun to use than it is to get killed by it. It never should have been put in the game.
Rebels/stormtroopers need to work on their parkour.
Video games have made some huge strides in mobility over the years. Your average AAA game generally feels very fluid and smooth in terms of player movement, with some little touches here or there like auto-mantling small objects or simply designing the environments to avoid the player getting stuck and breaking immersion. Again, not so much with Battlefront. It's most apparent on Endor, where I far too often find myself thinking "sorry, I'll help you guys in a minute once I figure out how to get past this one-foot tree stump". Your character has approximately a six-inch vertical and zero climbing ability, so anything that's over knee height is insurmountable, meaning you have to go around a bunch of shit and take annoyingly circuitous routs from point a to point b. I can't tell you how many times I've been shot or couldn't get to the place I wanted to go in time because I was ineptly trying to navigate some clunky bullshit. Unless you just enjoy repeatedly getting snagged on the geometry, you'll want to stick to the open areas and serve as easy pickings for the inevitable homing shot garbage. Great choices there. And don't even try going off the beaten path in an AT-ST, because that's truly a fool's errand.
Legacy is the flight control scheme you're looking for (sort of).
I grew up playing flying games, and was fairly good at them. (I'm also pretty sure this is why I'm an "invert" guy today.) So when I picked up Battlefront, I expected to be at least competent at the air combat. Instead, I was about on par with what happens when you hand a controller to your grandma and her character is spinning around aiming at the sky because she can't figure out what the two sticks do. Thinking there must be a better way, I went into the control settings and played around with all the options trying to find one that fit. Legacy was the only one that actually felt somewhat "right". However, this only managed to improve my flight ability from terrible to bad. Attacking players on the ground is still downright impossible for me, as I'm more likely to crash than to hit anything. I can take runs at a fixed gun emplacement, AT-ST, et al. and do some good, and am serviceable enough in air-to-air dogfights, but that's about it. The only time I find myself actually choosing to hop into a Tie Fighter or X-Wing is when someone is tearing the team apart with something like an AT-ST and I decide to go kamikaze on it. I at least don't seem to be alone there, as other players seem to actively ignore the flight powerups. They're available at almost any given time, so maybe that says something.
I think it might be partially a camera issue. The third-person flight is fucking awful. Your ship generally obscures the view of what you're trying to shoot and the level of camera swing is WAY too much. It's like one of the crappy driving games where your car drifts sideways and the camera doesn't so you can't keep much track of where you're actually heading. Too much of that shit makes your sense of "control" feel iffy at best, and that's absolutely the case with flight in Battlefront. I haven't taken the time yet to give the first-person flying a real test, (it seemingly can't be worse), and I'll guess I'll make myself suffer through that in the interest of experimentation shortly. I haven't done it yet due to my general disdain for the flying in this game and how much the cockpits appear at first glance to limit your view. I'm still trying to find a way to make the flight portion of Battlefront enjoyable, but if first-person doesn't do it, I'm giving up on it entirely and just accepting that maybe it's just plain bad. That actually might be a fair description of my current feelings towards the entire game.
I want to love Battlefront. I really do. It's just too clunky and poorly structured/designed. After you've spent enough time getting stuck on objects, getting killed by player-seeking missiles from the other side of the map, and desperately trying NOT to wreck while piloting your so-called power-up, you realize you aren't really having much fun. It's not a terrible game, but it's not a good one, either.
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