Star Wars: Battlefront Beta Summary

The Star Wars: Battlefront beta is over, and with it the realisation that it is just a matter of weeks until we return to a galaxy far, far away. With only three game modes on offer, as well as a small max level of five, it didn’t take long to see and do everything in the recent beta. If you missed your chance to jump in, then fear not, we’ve summarised all three games modes in anticipation for the game’s release.

Drop Zone

Drop zone is perhaps the mode that will be most familiar if you’ve played multiplayer FPS’ before. Two teams of eight must battle it out to secure drop ships that spawn, one at a time, at random locations of the map. Once secured, the drop ship must be defended for a minute, preventing the opposing side from claiming it as their own. Once successfully defended, the team then receives one point, and it’s the first to five or the most points once the time is up that is the winner. It’s certainly not an innovative game mode, and one that can take a number of forms; think Call of Duty’s Headquarters, Destiny’s Control or Battlefield’s Blood Money - the very simple formula of capture, protect and defend but with the Star Wars look and sound.

The map was big enough to make it feel like an open area, but small enough to keep you in the battle zone without having to trek miles upon miles before you stumble across an enemy, and offered an excellent balance of open areas, cover and camping spots (if that’s your preference). While verticality has become a huge addition in shooters of late, even with your jetpack boost, in my opinion, it is better when you stick to using your feet exclusively. This may vary from map-to-map come the full game, but if the jetpack has just one purpose, it’s for getting you out of sticky situations as quickly as possible.

It’s an easy to grasp and surprisingly breathless mode that is fine for those finding their feet with multiplayer shooters or wanting to warm themselves up before the larger more complex modes.

Walker Assault

 

For those wanting a high octane, cinematic and adrenaline fueled game mode, the epitome of everything Star Wars, than Walker Assault is the the lobby you want to be joining. Taking inspiration from the iconic battle of Hoth, two teams of 20 take to an impressively large map. While the Rebels must activate satellites to call in Y-Wing attacks on the Walkers, it is up to the Empire to prevent the incoming aerial bombardment by disabling the communications and murdering the Rebel scum. At first look it appears to be one huge mess of gigantic mechanical camels and blaster fire, and although it takes several rounds to get your head around what you’re doing, Walker Assault is certainly one of the most rewarding online games modes I’ve played for a long time. But of course, there is a catch, and with numerous objectives spread across an expansive map, it pays to have a team that works together and spreads out, targeting different areas, if not, be prepared to do a lot of dying, running miles and miles then dying again.

The mode certainly didn’t feel balanced though, and after numerous rounds, the battle would fall into the hands of the Empire much more than the Rebels, whether it was an imbalance of objectives of just the walkers being too damn difficult to destroy I’m not sure, but  EA will surely have noticed any anomalies in statistics and will address the issues… unless of course they are working for the darkside.

Walker Assault of course offers the classic FPS combat, but scattered across the maps are power-ups for both the Rebels and the Empire, similar to Drop Zone, these can offer things such as aerial strikes, ion cannon strikes or mounted weapons, but in Walker Assault these are joined by aerial combat power-ups. Finding one as either side will place you in the cockpit of an X-Wing or A-Wing for the rebels or a TIE-Fighter or TIE-Interceptor as the Empire, and while the exclusive Aerial combat mode wasn’t available during the beta, getting behind the controls of these ships gave us a glimpse of what to expect. Controls are initially inverted, which for controlling aircraft is particularly odd (whoever heard of up making you go up in a plane), but aside from that, the aircraft react well to your input and all feel unique from one another. It’ll ultimately be one of those elements where you hit the ground running, and become a pro at air-to-ground support or can never really grasp; but then again, that’s why we’re not all flying with the Red Arrows.

Survival on Tatooine

 

For those that prefer a more personal approach to their gameplay, then Survival on Tatooine is what you’ll be looking towards. Much like Call of Duty’s now legendary and ever expanding zombie hordes mode, the gameplay is basically surviving waves upon waves of enemies which grow in numbers and difficulty the further you progress. Aside from the hordes of Imperial troopers swarming towards you, Survival has something of a story although it’s nothing more than the squid headed Admiral Ackbar telling you to get to different points around the map, keeping you from finding and taking advantage of one part of the map.

It’s a very simplistic mode, and one that even on the most difficult setting is relatively straightforward - however, come launch there will be more difficulty settings than the three available on the beta; meaning that storm troopers might actually be able to hit something for once. It certainly won’t make up for the lack of a single player narrative, but Survival is a great mode for target practice or testing your loadout but shouldn’t really detract much attention from the various online game modes which ultimately, is what Star Wars: Battlefront is all about.

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Star Wars: Battlefront is EA and DICE’s welcome return to the series and will release on PS4, Xbox One and PC on 17th November.