Battlefront

image: lukiegames.com

The Star Wars franchise is one of the largest movie franchises ever created, so I think its no surprise that almost every median of entertainment has some Star Wars related merchandise. Everything from TV shows to lunch boxes has had the Star Wars treatment, including video games. The amount of Star Wars related games that have been released is nauseating since the release of the original movie in 1977. Almost every video game medium has a Star Wars title released on the system, and titles have ranged from the really good to the really bad.

One of the really good series of Star Wars games is the original Battlefront series released for the sixth generation of consoles and PC. I recently got my hands on the first Battlefront game for the original Xbox, and I haven’t stopped playing it. The atmosphere that the game creates actually makes the gamer feel as if they were on the ground in Tatooine or even Naboo, and the graphics for 2004 look damn impressive. It is not a hard game to understand as it is a game where the objective is to eliminate all of the enemies or capture all of the command posts. There are a number of soldiers to choose from and famous characters appear although they aren’t playable.

I have not personally played the sequel, but gamers unanimously agree that Battlefront 2 is one of, if not the best Star Wars game ever made. There are more battle maps and there is an opportunity to play as the main charcters, so the feeling of being in the Star Wars universe is very real and very effective. After Episode III was released the whole series was dormant for a long time. Fans were itching for a new entry in the game series and there was hope when Disney purchased Lucasfilms in 2012, but what we got instead was a spit in the face of gamers.

EA was the publisher to release the now infamous re-vamped Battlefront released in 2015 to go along with The Force Awakens. EA has been infamous for absurd paywalls in games and having most of the game be released in DLC, and that was no exception for Battlefront. People have claimed that they have beaten the main single-player campaign in less than an hour. The cost for this game is $60 and people definitely felt duped when they found out that most of the game will be behind another $60 DLC patch. People were rightly outraged about the greedy company who didn’t care about the actual product that many were anticipating, EA seemed to have gotten the OK to make a Star Wars game, and did as little as they could while still making $60 a copy.

I personally want EA out of Star Wars. I want a publisher who genuinely cares about the product and will work very hard to see the standards met. There should be no DLC that expands the game to an outrageous degree and nearly all of the content should be made available upon release. The game should go back to it’s roots and make a game that is not only good, but be something a gamer would be proud to have in their collection.