Entertainment
Can you feel the force? the answer is yes and no…
There’s plenty to keep you occupied this month, including kicking back with TheMartian on Blu-ray, listening to Suede’s new album, and killing baddies
in Star Wars: Battlefront
The noise, the look, the feel – Battlefront is without a doubt the most brilliantly recreated Star Wars game ever released. Its authenticity is breathtaking – every vehicle, character, blaster and planet is a spitting image of its equivalent from the original Star Wars trilogy (there’s nothing from the prequels here). But while considerable effort has been made by EA DICE to pass thorough scrutiny from dedicated Star Wars fans, there’s a downside – in their efforts to cash in by making the game as accessible as possible (and this is undoubtedly an entertaining first-person shooter), the developers have made Battlefront a somewhat limiting experience that’s unlikely to satisfy hardcore gaming enthusiasts.
For example, the shooting is incredibly stripped-back and undemanding. You point, you shoot. It doesn’t matter if you’re running and hip-shooting – your blaster accuracy remains the same as that of someone who’s stationary and aiming down their sights at you. There are no revives, no special abilities (outside of hero characters), no double-jumps, even. This is a game designed to make players move, experience everything on offer and not settle for a specific class or role. It’s incredibly refreshing, but anyone who’s spent 1,000 hours grinding a character in Destiny, or who loves to tinker endlessly with their loadout in Call Of Duty, will find it overly simple and painfully... fair. Battlefront is specifically designed to welcome players of all capabilities with open arms, and it gives them the tools to score just as many points as the hardcore players.
The selection of blasters, for example, is hugely limited, and very few weapons feel particularly different to the rest. They all have 100 per cent authentic names, too, like the E-11 rifle – hardly a title you’ll form a great attachment to, even if the gun looks and sounds spot-on. Star Cards, which are the preset power-ups you’ll take into battle, are rather basic and precisely created to feel like part of the Star Wars universe. The net result is there’s no single loadout that’ll give you an advantage over your opponents, and no combination of armaments that feels out of place on a galactic battlefield.
There are 13 maps in the game, split across four planets: Hoth, Endor, Tatooine and Sullust. Each is perfectly suited to the specific modes they feature in – and, yes, they’re all delightfully accurate, containing some neat little Easter eggs for fans to hunt down, like the Wampa lair on Hoth and the Jawa