Battlefront Beta

Kresslack

Battlefront Beta is available on Origin for free right now, if anyone is interested in giving it a try.

Mishgul

it's quite fun, though being a low rank is a serious dampener. The co op missions looks like it might be fun.  Played battle for hoth and damn it took some getting used to but after a while it grows on you.

Kresslack

Best thing ever so far: Getting into an ATAT walker and ruining everyone's day. Also, battle for hoth I think you can play as Vader and Skywalker heros.

Tharvis

I dislike the Hoth battle a bit, it's nigh impossible to win as the Rebels - and yes, you can play as Vader and Luke, played both so far

Mishgul

a party of five of us managed to co ordinate well enough to win as the rebels. The imperials just don't have to put in as much effort

Rangor

People are mostly running around shooting things. While the map is about positioning and grabbing points. Once Rebels start steamrolling to the sattelites they will probably win more. Looks interesting though, but the aim of the rank 1 weapon makes me feel like an imperial trooper in the old star wars movies. Lots of shots, no hits.

Mishgul

Have to.be rank 3 to be able to participate effectively. I had to buy the imperial rifle for my rebel char because the stock rebel weapon is useless.

Tael

Rebels actually have a huge advantage if even a few of them do the objective. It's basically impossible for the Imperials to win - you just have too much time and even a few people shooting the AT-ATs can kill them pretty quickly.

The balance situation on that map is beyond awful. When you lose as Rebels, it's enormously frustrating because your team just didn't do the objective. When you lose as Imperials, it's enormously frustrating because there's not really anything you could have done.

All in all, my impression of the game was really mixed.

After the first fifteen minutes, I was ready to pre-order. They nailed the sound and the look and the look in general. It's easily the most Star Wars-y aesthetic I've ever seen in a game.

After the next fifteen minutes, I'm probably not going to buy it at all. The balance is atrocious, the party system is a nightmare that should have been noticed after a single round of QA, the vehicles control terribly, the lack of classes means that gameplay is 99% just "here's your weapon, go shoot stuff", which isn't helped by the paper-thin vehicles that die easily to a few normal blaster shots as though the developers were afraid that players wouldn't be able to handle needing to use different anti-vehicle weapons or tactics, the air controls (at least for keyboard+mouse) are almost breathtakingly bad despite air combat being hugely dumbed-down, the little hologram pickups are pretty silly-looking, handling vehicles as pickups is incredibly silly-looking, the cycle rifle is thoroughly overpowered and way too easy to use (and does way too much damage to vehicles), the jedi animations look stiff and awful, and Star Cards...Really? Star Cards? That sounds like a parody of EA making a Star Wars game - "Cards are big. People like cards. What can we made cards? The equipment? Okay, but that doesn't make a lot of sense. Doesn't seem very Star Wars-y. Wait, I've got it, we'll call them...Star Cards!". It sounds like a bad joke.

It feels like some of the best art direction I've ever seen for a licensed product that sadly got wasted on what feels an awful lot like a student project. The gameplay feels almost exactly like the sort of games you see coming out of a decent college project - simple shooting mechanics, random respawn locations, weird gameplay abstractions that don't quite make sense (equipment as cards for instance), using pickups to simplify things like vehicles (so you don't have to worry about placing them), balancing vehicles in such a way that you don't have to worry too much about them becoming too dominant, etc. It all feels rushed and amateurish.

Frankly, I'm really disappointed. I was expecting a lot more from this game - I thought DICE had learned their lesson after all of the issues with BF4 and their apparent contrition. But this just seems very rushed. I suspect eventually we'll hear from someone inside the company that that's exactly what happened - it got rushed so it could be used to build more hype for the movie. And it stings all the more after seeing what an incredible job the art and sound teams did.

@Rangor, I'm surprised to hear you say that. The weapons don't even have any increasing spread at all and are pretty accurate - the only thing you have to contend with is a slight vertical recoil. If anything, it seemed to me like it was way too easy to hit with them (though this was on PC, so if you were on console I could imagine it being harder, especially with how slow the bolts travel).

Kresslack

I agree that I'm disappointed in the lack of classes, which added a fundamental strategy aspect to the previous titles. Makes me wonder how Battlefront 3 (and 4) would have turned out if Free Radical studios didn't struggle so much to stay in operation. It was 3/4ths the way done before canceled by LucasArts, iirc. I also don't like the automatic zoom aim that every blaster seems to come with, compared to the previous title aiming methods. I played some Battlefront 2 for a bit earlier and, while I was surprised to see it still has an activity (if but smaller) community, it was fun and nostalgic and the gameplay was great.