A Bit of Star Wars Battlefront Beta

Glorious! Cannot wait for full release.

I pre-ordered it because I'm dumb.

I hope it's good, the Hoth part at least looks fun to play.

Meesa so excited Annie!!!

Lots and lots of random deaths.... yeeep, sure looks like a DICE multiplayer shooter!

Still stoked to play it! ;D

Graphically speaking this game looks great and the sound work is amazing.

Gameplay wise I'm not sure I like what I've seen. Granted I haven't kept up to date with this game but just from this video alone there's numerous things that are rubbing me the wrong way. Health recovery (also not digging the look of the health bar), unlimited ammo, space bucks to gate content (even if it is currency you earn in game I don't feel like it belongs in this type of game as it means 6 months from release any new players that join are going to get destroyed by players who have everything), mini map is lacking of useful geographic detail, screen wipe transition gets old fast after each death, no immediate transition between getting in and getting out of vehicles, not to mention you don't even walk up to a spacecraft, lift off and fly out of a hangar you get on your comm unit and call one in and it just magically spawns already flying in the air, and to top it off it has a power up system.

I'm sure the game is fun to some but to me this is not the battlefront I wanted. Unlimited ammo and health regen sounds like it is asking for a camping issues. Some of the best moments I had in Battlefront 1 and 2 was running low on health and ammo while trying to take a point, neutralizing it and hoping that no one else would show up and finish me off. On top of that some of the most fun I had while playing was trying to sneak into the enemy base and steal one of their space ships it doesn't even look like you can do that in this game.

I heard this was open to everyone but I cant find it.

@devil240z: starts tomorrow I believe

Darth Vader jumping around looked so stupid.

I love it.

This looks invigorating.

This game could be terrible but this Hoth assault is all I've wanted in a Star Wars game for decades. Oh it's just wonderful to behold.

I believe its open to everyone as of tomorrow (8th)

Will Smith - "You've made an enemy today, Vinny Caravella."

On PS4 I put it fully towards Party Audio with Prioritise Party Audio on, no idea how anyone is audible any other way!

I do not support assaulting Walkers.

I have zero love for Star Wars, but this looks really fun.

Vinnie Vainia in Space or Star Wars 2142?

It looks and sounds great, but star wars to me is about scale, galaxy-spanning wars with huge imperial armies bearing down on tiny holdouts of rebels, 20 v 20 isn't that.

Bad Company did smaller scale well, because it replaced the player count with atmosphere. Not even BF3 could match BC's use of destruction. Running around with buildings ripping apart, dust and smoke everywhere and craters exploding in the ground, it made the smaller battles so much more than the sum of their parts.

I don't know if they're doing that with this game, it's aesthetically pleasing for sure, but it's not so amazing looking/sounding that you can ignore the size of the battlefields and the number of players.

@austin_walker's "historically accurate" quip nearly caused me to hurt myself laughing.

Picking up glowing glyphs to teleport into stuff is so stupid. That alone put me off this game.

Man this game completely dropped off my radar. Which is weird since I've been wanting another battlefront game for like 10 years.

Maybe watching this will have some answers, but I want to know if there is just a plain conquest mode. Or singleplayer instant action with a bunch of bots.

@ripelivejam: get out

I like it. It seems pretty cool.

Vinny's situational awareness computer is turned off. :P

I haven't watched the video yet, I just wanted to pop on here and say that reading the deck of this video in newsblur made me laugh out loud.

Wow, Austin you are the best Vader.

"Spawn on your father, son."

I'm an old man of 33 and haven't played a MP shooter seriously since TF2 was new. I really want to play this, but I'm looking at this QL, thinking that if this is how viciously skilled PS4 players are, PC (where I want to play it) is going to be 10 times worse. It seems like I'd be paying $60 to experience little more than spending 30 seconds running somewhere just to get killed before doing anything.

This looks great I'll definitely try the beta when it comes out tomorrow. And will definitely pick it up when it comes out. I've always been a fan of the battlefront games.

Edit: the sounds in this game seem to be the same degree of a battlefield game which is great because I always loved the sounds in battlefield.

Holy crap I got hyped. Found out that this won't have Battlelog, and I'm pre-loading the beta now. Something about the sound design in these games always gets me.

First impression so far is that this looks nice and has a good framerate. Gives me high hopes for the PC version

I'm a little concerned that the full game will end up being a little content sparse, especially compared to the recent Battlefield games, but what's there seems alright. I'll probably pick it up if it doesn't turn out to be the hot mess BF4 was at launch.

This game just feels...inauthentic in so many ways. As a big Star Wars fan, it makes me scratch my head when I see a Battle of Hoth with Y-Wing bombers and X-Wings and TIE Fighters dogfighting over the battlefield. They didn't even get some of the little details right, like having an Episode VI Luke on a Hoth map and letting you use Vader on Hoth. I get that its a game, but as a game that is ostensibly made for fans, this game is littered with things that make me wonder whether the people who made the game have seen any of the movies. Add to that the fact that the game seems just like Battlefield but with a Star Wars coat of paint, and I could not be less interested in this title.

It just doesn't look very good....

@mikemcn: I totally agree with this. This game looks like it plays exactly like BF3 and 4.

Those games were designed around giving the player the freedom to do whatever they want. The side effect being that the recent Battlefield games feel like a meat grinder rather than a true battle with sides trying to work together to achieve victory. In BF3 and BF4 avoiding being spawn killed is a significant gameplay mechanic and it seems to be the same in Battlefront based on the video above. In BFBC the maps were better suited for the pace of the frantic fighting of the series and I truly hope that DICE is trying harder with Battlefront to make the pace of the battles more fluid. Like, I know it's really cool to strap C4 to a helicopter and dive into the enemy base and dmg their vehicles to fuck with them but it eventually get's old and frustrating. I know that whatever plan DICE has for this game, if they give players the level of freedom that they gave them in the new Battlefield games, then I'm gonna be a sad boy (man). Yes, I did actually just advocated for less player choice. In the context of this style of competitive game, I feel it's reasonable.

I'm right there with you. I keep getting pumped up when I see trailers or supercuts, but then I see videos like these and realize how outclassed I am and how little fun I'll have and it brings me back to reality. If it had any kind of worthwhile singleplayer I'd consider it (or any kind of single player for that matter).

A couple hundred bucks for Battlefield 4 for two people. A combined, maybe, 30 hours played between both people. What a waste of money (not for lack of love for battlefield; just a lack of love for the boring result of the server selections, the mish-mash of shitty servers built around fractioning the playerbase, and the endless bugs).

The only way you could make me even less interested is to slap on a coat of Star Wars paint.

The question of "authenticity" just seems hilarious to me (and makes Austin's quip about historical accuracy even that much more hilarious) as it has the pedigree of a series where random soldiers mob the decks of aircraft carriers to swipe choppers, people routinely snipe jet pilots and then steal their planes in mid-air, and tanks can do flips off big-ass ramps. Maybe eventually someone will make the Star Wars equivalent of ArmA but this is probably not it.

As a not-real-fan of Star Wars, seeing Vinny with the tow cable and then later going into the interior of a TIE Fighter was enough to basically make me scramble for the pre-order button.

@austin_walker Vader with a Jersey accent. Thanks for eviscerating my childhood.

@snaptroll: My issue is this game is almost nothing like BF3/4. It has no classes, vehicles are random power up tokens and you can't exit them in the normal sense, there aren't spawn points you select and you only have a single squadmate not to mention the server browser stuff.

My biggest concern with this game is that playing in 1st person like I prefer is a huge disadvantage. With high fov 3rd person you can see around and over most cover.

I really really hope there is a 1st person only mode but even then since it's matchmaking not a server list those will end up dead due to longer queues.

I just wish I didn't have to pick between playing with the perspective I like or performing without a disadvantage.

Watching vinny try to do anything strategic in video games is so damn frustrating. I love my vinny like everyone else, but damn this video made me angry.

Austin kinda touched on it, but the playerbase is probably the reason I'll ultimately end up skipping this. I picked up BF4 a few months ago during a PSN sale and I found most modes to be simply unplayable because they required so much teamwork and people just don't give a fuck. Every match might as well have been a team deathmatch.

I've only seen a little bit of this game and while it looks great and everything, I'm worried that by not having a dedicated group of people to play with, I may find this almost as hard to enjoy as BF4.

@hayt: Those interface issues you mention do seem to be a setback don't they? When I compared the game to Battlefield I meant it seems like the pace of the battles, spawnkilling, gunplay, etc is samey. For example, players standing around waiting for another enemy squad to spawn just barely out of view or not out of view at all and right in front of them so they can indulge in mouse-click-whack-a-mole. This is the kind of thing that I used to be okay with but after sinking hundreds of hours in the Battlefield franchise and with the problem only getting worse with each game in the series, I just don't want that kind of experience anymore. It's like DICE doesn't really have a vision for their games beyond sandbox hi jinx. And all I see when I watch footage from Battlefront is sandbox tomfoolery.

Man this game looks good. If I wasn't already sold on it, when Austin zipped by in the A-Wing that would have done it.

None of these players are "viciously skilled". Vinny just isn't playing very well. Most of the QL is spent with Vinny staring directly at rocks instead of looking around and running out into the open when there are giant-ass AT-ATs wandering around. He had 1 kill and 23 deaths.

FPS players aren't as skilled as people would have you believe. The declining reaction time is not that big of a deal - Jeff handles himself perfectly well when playing FPS games on the site.

OH hey its Jimmy Caravella

The screen wipes are the best part of this.

Vinny seriously just ran out into the open at every possible opportunity, even when he would run up on a whole gang of his teammates hiding behind rocks or something because hey obviously up ahead there is a straight up killing field, but Vinny just sprinted faster into it.

To his credit he says he's not great at shooters. Anyways, I think you shouldn't take that as the game being so hard. Unless you want to be able to just sprint into the open in a FPS then okay.

All the presentation aspects are so top level. The sound, UI, screen wipes. I can't imagine how fantastic they could make single player look based off of this. Shame we aren't getting any of that.

That really sold me on this game in a big way, seeing it like this. I have been overlooking it otherwise, even though I like the Battlefield series and Star Wars.

That TIE Fighting showboating flyby (near catastrophe) moment at 39:17 nearly had me in tears. Half competent half bumbling Vinny and Austin Storm Troopers is the best thing in the world.

Wow this looks/sounds good.

Also, Vinny has zero situational awareness.