Game review: Star Wars Battlefront fails to impress

Star Wars: Battlefront will disappoint all but the most easily-pleased gamers, with uninspiring, recycled scenarios and derivative multiplayer modes.

Star Wars: Battlefront fails to deliver the depth of more established shooters such as Call of Duty. On the plus side, this is the prettiest Star Wars game to date. Electronic Arts via Associated PressShow less

Star Wars: Battlefront

Electronic Arts

XBox One, PlayStation 4, PC

One star

There have been about 100 Star Wars video games released since the first film premièred in 1977.

You can count the great ones on the fingers of one hand – the vast majority have been trashy cash-ins.

Still, you can slap the Star Wars logo on something unrelated, such as Angry Birds, and it will make money. And kid-orientated games such as Lego Star Wars and Disney Infinity 3.0 are well made and provide lighthearted high jinks.

Meanwhile, adult fans of honest-to-goodness space opera have more satisfying options, such as Starcraft and Mass Effect.

After Electronic Arts made a deal with Disney to produce grown-up Star Wars games, it was seen by some as, if you will, a new hope.

Alas, Star Wars Battlefront will disappoint all but the most diehard – or easily pleased – Jedi wannabes with its uninspired recycling of scenarios we've already played and replayed too many times to count.

Want to fly an X-Wing through the canyons of Tatooine? Race a speeder bike through the forests of Endor? How about a chance to relive that famous battle on the ice planet, Hoth – you know, the one with those giant four-legged AT-AT vehicles?

Chances are, you've already done all of those in previous games. On the plus side, the planets look gorgeous – not surprisingly, given the latest-gen hardware, this is the prettiest Star Wars game to date – but there's an inescapable been-there-done-that feeling.

Battlefront eases you into the action with missions on each of the three planets (plus the volcanic Sullust), which you can play solo or cooperatively.

But the real action is in online competition with up to 40 players. There are nine multiplayer modes and 13 maps built in. However, only one of those modes – Walker Assault, where the Empire has those big, lumbering AT-ATs – is remotely innovative.

You can choose whether to fight for the Dark Side or the Light Side, and some scenarios let you play as a major-character hero or villain: Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or Princess Leia, and Darth Vader, Boba Fett or Emperor Palpatine.

Any spoilers for the plot of Episode VII – The Force Awakens have been reserved for downloadable add-ons featuring locations from the new film, which will be released closer to the when the movie goes on general release (December 17 in the UAE).

The battlefields do have an impressive scope, and there are moments of shock and awe as rebel X-Wings and Empire TIE Fighters criss-cross the skies, while Darth Vader and his stormtroopers plough through hapless rebels.

But your goals are essentially the same as they are in so many other online shooters – collect kills, capture and defend map points – and so all that beauty ultimately seems shallow.

The foundations of a solid online combat franchise are present and correct – but Star Wars: Battlefront fails to deliver the depth of more established shooters such as Call of Duty.

DICE, the Swedish studio behind Battlefront, is best known for its Battlefield series of Earthbound war games.

And while that experience would seem to make it the ideal fit for this franchise – it is Star Wars, after all, not Star Diplomacy – its first trip to a galaxy far, far away feels half-finished.