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Star Wars: Battlefront dropped earlier this week after months of anticipation, incredible previews, and what EA claims was the largest, most popular beta in the company’s history. While it’s technically the third Battlefront title, we haven’t seen a new release in the series for a decade, and relaunching the series with a new first chapter (EA has already announced it will make sequels) makes good sense — at least in theory.

EA expects to sell 13 million copies of Star Wars: Battlefront. Based on what I’ve seen of the game in the past few days and in the beta, it probably will. Whether or not it deserves to is an entirely different question. While I normally cover and review hardware, not games, I’ve been a gamer for nearly 30 years — and I’ve rarely had such a divided opinion on a game.

What Battlefront gets right

Let’s get the big question out of the way first: Star Wars: Battlefront does a better job of capturing the look, feel, and spectacle of battles in the Star Wars universe than any title ever has. Classic RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel do a far better job of storytelling in the SWU, but if your childhood dreams involved more Death Star trench runs and fewer hours running through a swamp with Master Yoda, no previous game can match the eye-and-ear candy that Battlefront delivers.

X-WIng on the left, A-Wing on the right. The cockpit sways and shifts while flying — exterior views are more useful. Also, can we get someone to clean my X-Wing’s windshield?

If you’ve been a Star Wars fan since childhood, it’s hard to move past the initial rush of seeing huge walkers lumber across the surface of Hoth or racing through Endor’s forests on a landspeeder. Much has been said about the strategic disadvantage the Rebels suffer on Hoth; comparatively little has been written about the pounding the Empire takes on Endor. It turns out that being restricted to various flavors of bone-white armor creates a strategic disadvantage when battling Rebel troops in forest camo. Serves them right.



Forget carbonite. In this universe, Boba shot first.

EA and Dice have built a variety of game modes, from standard death match (40-man Supremacy) to starfighter dogfights. There’s a control point battle mode, a capture-the-flag clone (cargo hunt), and a point capture node that focuses on seizing droids rather than static points on the battlefield. There’s even a Heroes vs. Villains mode that pitches two teams against each other, each with three “Hero” characters. The game rotates who plays as a hero in any given match, and non-heroes have the option to spawn as “Honor Guards” — infantry-type classes with special abilities and more staying power compared to the heroes themselves. Finally, of course, there’s the climatic, asymmetrical battle of Hoth, which needs no introduction. Walker Assault is clearly the game mode that received the most polish, and it shows — big time.

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