When I initially learned the Star Wars Battlefront games would be getting a re-release on modern consoles with the multiplayer intact, I was just as excited as everyone else.
This excitement was ever so slightly diminished when the game launched, and I was witness to an avalanche of disappointment and frustration from players who’d got to the game before I did.
Take a look at the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection below
The OG Star Wars Battlefront games hold a special place in the hearts of many, for the countless hours spent in the online multiplayer and to a lesser extent the single-player story mode.
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Whether you were playing small-scale skirmishes in the Jedi temple, or taking on entire Star Destroyers, the multiplayer felt like the gold standard when it came to Star Wars games, and something EA attempted to recreate with the reboots.
With all that history you’d be forgiven to wonder how on Earth anyone could possibly mess it up, but somehow it’s happened.
The best way I can describe the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection is a shot of espresso chased with a glass of battery acid. Long-time fans of the series will have undoubtedly been met with a wave of nostalgia when they first booted up the game, especially when you see footage from the films played in the background of the main menus.
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Perhaps you started your trip down memory lane by blasting through the singleplayer offering, or maybe you just couldn’t help but dive back into the multiplayer, either way this is the OG Star Wars Battlefront brought back to life and that’s fantastic. When I eventually found my way into an online match, the first game I played brought me back to Hoth and for a solid 20 seconds I couldn’t help but stare across the snowy tundra, listening to the overhead blaster fire and feeling like I’d travelled back in time.
However throughout the first couple hours of playing I knew something was off, with the biggest tell being it took me about 10-15 minutes to actually get into a game.
For some unbeknownst reason, there’s a severe lack of dedicated servers for thousands of players to share. The remaining servers are run by players, meaning if you can’t get into an official server you’re at the mercy of another player’s internet connection - which more often than not is terrible.
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It’s arguably worse at the time of writing, as thousands of players have dropped the game out of frustration, meaning you very rarely play a game that’s full of players and not mostly composed of bots. Even the Quick Match option is broken, as more often than not it tried to put me into a server that required a password, though even if I was somehow omniscient and knew all the passwords it wouldn’t help because it didn’t even tell me which server it was trying to put me into.
Once you’re eventually in a game, it’s the Star Wars Battlefront experience you’d have played years ago, though to be honest I’m not sure if that’s a positive. While the classic Star Wars games have aged exceptionally well over the years, Battlefront included, it’s clear more work could have been put into this port.
The hit detection is all over the place, with several instances where I could see my blaster bolt embed itself into a trooper's torso, only for it to not count as damage, and other times where I could see it soar over the head, but somehow count as a headshot. Combine this with a dodgy internet connection from a player-hosted server and it’s a painful endeavour to play online. In fact, after playing for the first few hours and closing the game I physically held my head in my hands out of sheer disbelief at how little effort was put into the port.
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There has been some work done, after all the resolution has obviously been cleaned up and the framerate is a solid 60fps on the PlayStation 5. All the bonus content from the original releases is available too, though that’s a whole other can of worms following accusations the developer used mods without giving credit to their creators.
All of this criticism is wrapped up in a neat little bow when you realise the game costs around £30/$30 to buy. It’s worth noting that several updates to fix the game are planned, but in the year of our Lord 2024 I don’t think it’s much to ask for to have two decade old games re-released in a playable condition at launch. The install size is also vastly larger than the original releases for some reason, despite there being hardly any new content added to justify it.
The Star Wars Battlefront games are two of the most popular online shooters of all time, and it’s honestly depressing that they’ve been reduced to a broken, punished version of themselves. Sure post-launch support will improve the stability and overall playability, but I fear the damage is already done at this point, with the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection being remembered as nothing more than a cheap cash-grab.
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Star Wars fans in need of a decent shooter should stick to Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017) instead, which you can buy for a similar price to the re-releases, or play at no additional cost via EA Play, which is included as part of an Xbox Game Pass subscription.
Featured Image Credit: AspyrTopics: Star Wars, Xbox, PlayStation, PC