Star Wars Battlefront I and II are both probably in my top five video games of all time. My love of Star Wars in addition to the addictive gameplay and awesome multiplayer of those games make them about perfect for me. Needless to say, I had a feeling that a new Battlefront game was going to drag me into the current generation of gaming, and I was right.
I told myself I was never going to get an Xbox One or a PS4. I have plans to (someday) build a kick-ass gaming PC and I didn’t see the point in a console other than the Wii U, but I changed my tune when I started reading some good things about the Xbox One, its upcoming backwards compatibility, and when an Amazon gift card for the exact amount of the console landed in my inbox.
My mysterious benefactor
Obviously I haven’t been updating this site much in the last couple years, but I still get a decent amount of search engine traffic thanks to my years worth of posts. Occasionally, I get a tiny amount of money from Amazon affiliate links, but it’s usually only a few dollars a month. A couple months ago, however, someone actually paid over $6,000 for an out-of-print LEGO Star Wars set (from this article) through one of my links, and I ended up with an Amazon gift card for about $350. Crazy.
Rather than use that on something I really needed, I decided that it was the universe telling me I needed to get a new gaming console so I could play Battlefront. Someone spent six grand on a Star Wars toy so I could play this game. Thanks, rich stranger.
I settled on the Xbox One because I have a history with the 360 and it just felt right. So far, I’ve been pretty happy with it. I’ve been slaying Orcs left and right with Shadow of Mordor, replaying some classic Halo 2 for the first time in about a decade, and scaring the crap out of myself with some Alien Isolation.
Then a few days ago the open beta for Star Wars Battlefront came out. I downloaded it and after struggling for a while to find a server, joined a battle on Hoth.
I definitely don’t want to judge a game by its beta, but so far I’m a little underwhelmed. Visually it looks amazing, but it just doesn’t have that gameplay that drew me to the first games in the franchise. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it seems a little too Call of Duty for my tastes. I don’t hate it, I just found that after playing a few rounds (and getting slaughtered), I was ready to hop back over to Shadow of Mordor.
I’ll still buy it and I hope the full game will change my mind, but as of now it just plays a little too much like the games that made me abandon gaming for a while.
I’ll post thoughts on the full game when it comes out. Have any of you tried the beta?
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Dex
