Every unlock is hidden behind a byzantine network of obscured systems, all of which imbues the multiplayer action with simmering frustration.īut like I said, it's more complicated than art being ruined by commerce. It's not that it withholds rewards to the point where they will be the most addicting it just withholds them, period. The levelling system, which doles out guns, hero characters, and additional abilities for use in multiplayer, is not the dystopian mind-manipulation the internet would have you assume. But it's terrible for the opposite reason one might assume. The reward structure is, indeed, terrible.
Electronic Arts has taken intense heat for the exploitative way it's treating loot boxes in this game-randomized drops of items and resources offered as rewards at fixed intervals-and for good reason. The multiplayer, likewise, is marred by the ambitions of its publisher.
Versio, with a motion capture and voice performance by the excellent Janina Gavankar, is a compelling character, an interesting addition to the Star Wars universe. The plot is inspired, the story of a special forces Imperial officer named Iden Versio as she wrestles with the messy moral questions of serving a rapidly declining fascist state. The singleplayer campaign, in particular, is a victim of this. Star Wars has entrancing guns, matte black artifacts from another galaxy, and they're preserved here in all their rugged, fire-belching glory.īut on the other side lives a mess of scattered ideas and ambitions, the bone structure of an excellent game torn apart and reassembled to be as time- and money- demanding as possible. The combat is both snappy and clumsy, less precise than a modern military shooter but fast and punchy enough to feel chaotic. The flowing staccato energy of its laser gunfights, the thrown-together look of the Rebel case on Yavin IV and the lush, echoing forests of Endor: from isolated plots of land to deep space, Battlefront II understands exactly how it should look and feel. As in the first game-also created by DICE, the developers behind the popular shooter franchise Battlefield- Battlefront II dedicatedly captures everything players enjoy about the spectacle of Star Wars. On one side is the incredible craftsmanship of the levels, weapons, sights and sounds at play in every competitive map and single-player excursion. In many cases, that would sound like a battle between art and commerce, but with a property like Star Wars it's never that simple. It just has to be mimetic-to skilfully imitate its source in a way that engages and thrills its fans. From a certain perspective, a game like Battlefront II doesn't even have to be good in and of itself. The combat, level design, and team play dynamics don't have to necessary add to the genre, nor do they have to match the best practices of other games. As such, the criteria for success are a bit different in Battlefront II than they would be in most multiplayer shooters. It offers the fantasy of Star Wars as a real location, a place where you can breathe, fight, and die.
The promise of Star Wars Battlefront II, EA's second game in the revived series of multiplayer shooters, is the same as any other Star Wars videogame: It wants to turn the story of Star Wars into a place. I hunker down inside a grounded clone dropship and fire my blaster rifle into the breach, droid bombers circling overhead, until my enemies stop coming. I'm one of the Republic's clones, holding the line at a landing pad, firing barrages of blood red laser fire at a platform across the water, pushing back a seemingly endless tide of beige battle droids. A perennially overcast ocean world pockmarked with high-tech research platforms, Kamino is the home of the Clone Troopers serving the Galactic Republic during the war. Now, as rain lashes down, the droids try to tear it apart. The planet Kamino has always been one of my favorite Star Wars settings: moody, original, and striking.