Ello ello. Welcome back to BaicunnPress! Thank you for stopping by. It's a fantastically rainy day outside where I'm at. I hope you beautiful bastards are having a great day. It's Friday so let's get into The Breakdown. Good news everybody! What's better than sunshine unicorns and nyan cats?...Free games, of course. While they are working on StarCraft Remastered, Blizzard wants to keep the game brooding in our hearts and minds. To insure their psy-ops campaign is successful, Blizzard has released the original StarCraft with the Brood War expansion for free. They are calling it StarCraft Anthology. Based on the latest patch notes, they've ironed out some bugs that come with trying to play a nearly 20 year old game on a modern pc, along with some upgrades in matchmaking. Patch notes are here and download are available here. Also more StarCraft news should be unlocked on their official site on Thursday. The day after the new shit drops on the StarCraft site; new Titanfall 2 will have a new DLC drop. Starting on Tuesday; 4/25, Respawn is set to launch 2 new maps, bringing back the Marked for Death gamemode, and adding the M.R.V.N. faction. It's rumored that we may even see a new Titan released.
In an antithetical twist, Activision has announced that they a releasing a new COD (surprise!?). It appears that this time around Sledgehammer is going back to the glory days of World At War with COD: WWII. Activision has announced a live stream event to start here at 1PM EDT on Wednesday; 4/26. Since we're talking about publishers grasping at straws and DLC; EA released a full length trailer for Star Wars: Battlefront 2 at Star Wars Celebration. During the keynote talk EA/ Dice made comments inferring that there would be more options, a campaign, and no season pass DLC. Later further comments were made muddling facts by rephrasing to state, that there is not, not going to be pay for DLC. So who really fucking knows if consumers are going to get screwed again or not. I'm pessimistically optimistic, but I won't be pre-ordering this go round.
The world was given a Star Wars: The Last Jedi taser trailer. The trailer did present a bit of a kerfuffle with some fans, as Kylo Ren's mangled mug getting some cinematic cosmetic work. If you look closely you'll see that the gigantic Tyrion-esque scar has been downsized and migrated, becoming one of those badass brow to check eye scars. I guess the New Order has a pretty badass insurance plan.
While on the topic of the oddly grotesque, the English dub of Attack On Titan season 2 drops on Adult Swim tomorrow night.
In the same hyper japanese vein, Bandai Namco, has announced their newest game; Code Vein. It appears to be one part Dark Souls and two parts anime. The project is being directed by Hiroshi Yoshimura of God Eater's fame. Running on the Unreal 4 engine, this vampire based RPG is likely to attract a fan base quickly when it releases in 2018.
Vampires, aliens, and crazy shit oh my. Running on the heels of a successful 6 episode run in 2016, the X-Files is returning again for a 10 episode. Set to go to season in 2017-18. In other fanboy pleasing news, Steven Universe is returning May 5th. The news comes straight from Cartoon Network via their Twitter account. To help make the announcement, Cartoon Network released a teaser trailer.
And rounding out the break down, Nintendo has announced that they are discontinuing the NES Classic. If you're wanting to add this game to your collection, time is running out; as the current production cycle will be it's last. But have no fear, as it is widely rumored that like their very own savior of Hyrule, Nintendo will be releasing an SNES Classic soon. Thank you again for stopping by BaicunnPress. I hope you have a fucking awesome weekend. I'm headed out this evening for the MTG Prerelease. Crossed fingers for good pulls. Stop by next Friday for another Breakdown. I'm currently working on a few different projects and trying to tighten up my workflow so that I can get more content out to you guys faster. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. -Chali Baicunn
Ello ello, and welcome back to BaicunnPress. I hope you're getting through the week unscathed. If you've been here before, you're likely aware that I was highly critical of EA and their handling of Battlefront. If you're interested in checking out those posts, the links are below:
With the disclaimers out of the way, let's talk about what you came her for; there's been a disturbance in the Force. Today we get our first glance at Star Wars BattleFront 2, via an alleged 50 second leaked Sony ad. Stick around after the show for further discussion. Enjoy!
So what can we see. It appears that the trailer starts right after the Rebels' victory at the Battle of Endor. In the trailer we can see something else though... looks like this title may just span the Clone Wars up to were "Battlefront picks up?" and even some post Death Star play up to the Last Jedi. Looks and sound pretty amazing right? But let's not forget EA's backhandy bullshit, when it comes to ads. To be fair though, EA has made me feel a bit better about their brand. Battlefield 1 was a pretty solid title. I played the beta. Didn't buy the game out of principal,.... but I played it, and liked it. Then EA and Respawn dropped Titanfall 2 on us, and the game is stunning. Balanced gameplay, and free DLC... that's pretty hard to beat. And I know I've said I was done with EA/ DICE and their shenanigans in the past. But the Battlefront DLC that dropped toward the end of last year really did a good job at trying to salvage the disappointment we were given. So I'm skeptical, but if EA can keep it up... I may be interested.
That's all for now guys. I'll be putting up The Breakdown later this week, but wanted to get this out ASAP. I've also started a Monday series titled Back To School, where I'll be putting up educational content meant to teach you some cool shit. Monday's post was about the laws and regulations in the US regarding Unmanned Ariel Systems (UAS). It's been taken down for the moment, as there are some busted links. As soon as they are fixed, it'll be back up. Thanks again for stopping by. I appreciate all of your support. If you like what you see, please share, and make sure to follow on Twitter at @BaicunnPress. -Chali Baicunn
Ello Ello! Thanks for stopping by today. I hope your Tuesday isn't too shit, and that your Halloween weekend festivities were full of booze, frivolity, with extra dose of slutty halloween costumes. (Slutty pirate hookers are a personal favorite of mine.) With all that was going on, I have to ask, "What in the actual fuck is going on with Titanfall 2's release?" *FULL DISCLOSURE* I have not tracked the release of Titanfall 2. This is a bit of 2 parter; 1) I only played Titanfall a handful of times. 2) I don't know any Titanfall fanboys. *Correction, I don't know anyone who has such a raging hard on for Titanfall, that they use every opportunity they have to extol the virtues of the title. The only reason I found out about the release date was because the following launch trailer was at the top of my YouTube feed:
After watching the launch trailer, I had to know more... As I have stated in several Star Wars Battlefront posts; I'm a sucker for the alluring ways of cinematic trailers produced by EA's militant propaganda machine (Marketing Department). But I digress. When we of The Order of The Internet, don't know stuff, we go to our "facts guy". Normal people call it Google (We know it as god like, semi-eternal, mystical figure, that knows and sees all... Even that midget clown porn you were looking at after that whole "scary clown thing" got started). Google showed me the following footage from Vikkstar123:
Naturally at this point, I'm interested. So I seek Google's wise council further. Pearing into the ether, I find that not only is Titanfall2 launching on Xbox One, but it's also launching in parallel with PS4 and PC. In fact, I was a bit taken aback. How could it be that EA would somehow break exclusivity with Microsoft? Seems way too consumer oriented for EA. I watched another gameplay video (see below).
What's this... Single Player Campaign?And it's suppose to be "compelling"?... Nope I don't believe it. It can't be. The publisher of Battlefront and Battlefield: Hardline is going to release a completed game with a proper single player story.... I don't trust it. Read a bit more.... No season pass?.... What? No day one DLC?... I verified that it's an published EA game. Alright so I'm seriously interested at this point, but I know better than to trust an EA game. If this title is so above the standards usually set by EA, what's multiplayer experience going to be. (BTW, thank you StoneMountain64 for the beta montage.)
Alright. Fuck it, I think I'm sold. Little more Googling, and found out Titanfall 2 was releasing on 10/28... screeching breaks... da fuck!... (I started writing this mid-day on 10/28,) Where the hell is all of the fan fair? Where's the hype I'm accustomed to from EA? Hype is like their thing. It's their lifeblood. And now they're launching a AAA FPS between their blockbuster Franchise and Activision/ Infinity Ward's blockbuster without a whole lot of normal EA PR. What the hell are they thinking? Are they trying to kill this young franchise? Then I see it, and why I hadn't before is beyond me. There is an explanation for all of these shockingly non-EA things. And even for this really bizarre release date. It really is simple; SPITE. One of the most basic human emotions, that empowers and emboldens the most hardened of FPS gamers. It's the emotion that makes killing the guy who killed your friends, better than actually having friends.It's that spice in life that seems to make everything task, feel, and appear better. Are you still confused?... Titanfall and Titanfall 2 were created by Respawn Entertainment. If that name sounds familiar, and you don't know why, here's some screen grabs from Wikipedia to refresh your memory:
From where I'm sitting it appears that Respawn has decided, and EA agrees; Titanfall 2 will be a direct competitor to Infinite Warfare. With the bad blood in the water between the Activision/Infinity Ward and Respawn, and so many COD fans becoming more and more unhappy with the franchise. This new war of titans is likely to get interesting.
Thanks again for stopping by today. Still working to get the lost content over the last couple of months back up. I appreciate all of your support. What do you think? Is this a just bad timing? Or is this something more deliberate? Make sure to let me know. Also don't forget BaicunnPress.com and RUM Gaming are teaming up for Extra Life this Saturday. Be sure to show your support and donate, or start/ join a team and participate.
Good morning you beautiful bastards! Thank you for stopping by the blog today. I hope that you've all gotten through the weekend's festivities with your limbs, property, and pride intact. I do apologize for the delay of this post. In Part 1 I asked current players what they thought about the game after the release of the Bespin DLC and the accompanying patch. This post will be my opinions and views about the game up this point. This will be the last post I make about Battlefront unless some very substantial changes are made. Where to start.. Where to start... Well I guess I'll talk about the good first. Lobby wait times seem to minimal. I'm playing on PS4, so it may be bad on another platform. Game mechanics seem more balanced, but honestly "balance" is completely subjective sans a weapon or ability that's completely OP. Bespin maps are fun, but I found that every match on Carbon Freezing Chamber seemed to devolve into a game of "which team has more dioxin grenades?" At first, it was fun, and then the shit just wore on, and on, and on. The addition of new weapons was nice... So to the not so good parts. Primarily, this game is more of a bitter disappointment than Jar Jar Binks. If that's not a scathing indictment of the shallow and hollow husk that this game is. Fucking seriously! This shit is the Kim Kardashian of video games. It starts of all pretty, then after spending some time with it, you're just like, "Why the fuck do people care that you exist? You provide nothing of any substance." I just don't get it. Hut Contracts... Meh... Good thought, but fucking terrible execution. Objectives don't always get counted. Then you have to enter playlists in order play DLC specific maps. I'm not sure if this is an attempt to obscure what would be entirely empty lobbies, or if some how DICE and EA have both forgotten that "game type" lobbies are a thing in other games. Ugh, and there's still no real/ terribly interesting solo play. By now, I was hoping that maybe.. just maybe, EA would have offered some kind of appeasement token. Throw us a fucking bone here. Something, anything.. Shit I'm not terribly picky. As long as the shit is entertaining and actually functional... I think I'd be okay with that. And who the fuck at Disney is signing off on these licenses? It just fucking now hit me. I don't know why I was blind to it before. This is kind of off topic, but it just may explain the flaccid performance of this game. The relationship between EA and Disney seems to have that oddly calm Steve Jobs and Bill Gates feel to it. In this story Disney is Steve Jobs and EA is Bill Gates. they're both basically fucking assholes pretending to be innovators, while creating derivative tripe because, well this is 'Merica and we seem to really love that shit 'round here. Disney more or less gave EA's R&D a literal dick load of money by licensing the use of the Star Wars franchise, much like Apple did with Microsoft and DOS. And when Disney isn't looking, EA is over in the corner finishing the development on the new game engine that was suppose to be powering Battlefront. They more or less rushed the product to market, and the title says Star Wars, so it was certainly going to sell. Now that EA has finally polished their dev work, and is about to launch a full title under Battlefield 1 which seems to show more promise (a pretty substantial amount more that Battlefront). In the end, Disney will probably become a bigger asshole, and will have a nervous break down, and then maybe get cancer after investing heavily in portable music device and 3D animation (I'm leaving out the death part because it seems a bit too insensitive?..). And fucking EA is just gonna keep on going, not giving fuck, and doing whatever they want. And people are still going to buy their shit because.. well, I don't know why. Maybe because of the hypetrain, engineered and driven by the zealous and militant marketing wing of EA. Maybe I'm wrong, but seriously, Disney, I'd dump EA if I were you. So, after my long winded, esoteric, and dare I say angst-y diatribe, here are my final thoughts on Battlefront This game was over-hyped. EA toyed with our emotions and our money (which Big Perm would argue that they're the same thing.) The community seems to be desperate for someone or something to save them, or just put them out of their misery. Seriously, if you put any kind of thought into buying this game... Don't! It's a hollow excuse for a game, and sucks the testicles of a medium sized equine usually used for the carrying of goods and people in dry harsh environments. So what do you think? Am I right? Am I wrong? Have I been unfair? Let me know. As always, thank you for stopping by the blog. Don't forget to follow on Twitter at @BaicunnPress. I'll have a post up in the very near future with a video interview I did with Rick, the US Community Leader for Warhorse Studios. I'll see you soon. -Chali Baicunn
Ello ello poppets! Thanks for stopping by today. If you are a regular reader of the blog, then you'll know that I have been quite critical of Battlefront and EA. With the release of Bespin DLC and the significant patch that accompanied it, I wanted to get a feel of what other players are thinking and feeling at this point. I figure the game is about halfway through it's life cycle, and now is probably the best time to do this post. This will be a 2 part post. The first part will be feedback from players, and the second part will be opinion. I have intentionally avoided playing since Bespin and patch release, in order to do this post. I hope you enjoy, and as always your feedback is welcome. I put forth the following thread out on /r/battlefront & Star Wars Battlefront Community Forums: "Hello Everyone, and good day to you. My name is Chali and I run a blog at baicunnpress.com. I'm looking for player feedback regarding the state of the game after the release of Bespin and the patch that accompanied it for a blog post. I have been quite critical of EA and Battlefront in several posts, and I'd like to know what other players think. A few of the questions I have are: What were your initial thoughts/ feelings about the game, and have those changes? Has EA made any honest changes to get the game to where you believe it should be? What could EA do to address any of your concerns? Is the new patch working/ did it properly balance the game? Any other thoughts you have. Please only reply if you don't mind being attributed in my post. Thanks for any feedback."
I didn't let the threads run too long to avoid any trolls. Ironically, the cynical bastards over on the Battlefront Community Forum, mostly treated me as if I were squeaky troll or with the smugness that only comes with being dedicated wholly to a bad game that gets insulted a lot.
Luckily, I did get two legitimate replies though:
I also received the following replies on reddit:
It seems to me that those still playing and active in both the game and community seem to be dedicated, but are disappointed. Before closing up the thread I asked this final question: "If you are unhappy with the game, why keep playing, and/ or why continue to visit the community forums?" I received the following two replies:
That's the end of Part 1, I'll be playing Battlefront this weekend, and putting up Part 2 at the end of it. What are your thoughts? Be sure to let me know in the comments or on Twitter. Thanks again for stopping by. -Chali Baicunn
Hello, and welcome back to BaicunnPress. I hope you're all having a fantastic E3 week. I'm working as fast as I can to keep pushing out E3 content. In case you didn't know or don't remember from my previous post, EA decided to pull their booth from E3 this year. Instead, EA held their own event from June 12th to the 14th, just outside of the LA Event Center (Home To E3), and an event in London. As you may be aware, and as I have explained before (Here and Here) on this blog. I believe that EA is the pinnacle of everything that is wrong with AAA publishers, and their business model. Their games are usually highly polished derivative piles of gaming excrement. EA has made a reputation for itself, for selling half the game at the whole price, and then extorting microtransactions out of the player after pre-orders have been made. And let's not even get started on day 1 DLC. Due to EA's history, and the back handy bullshit manner in which they have treated their fans, I will not be focussing on any specific title presented. However, in the interest of fairness, and regardless of all of their failures and faults. I believe that EA can redeem itself. EA executives had made reference to EA Play as their hopeful opportunity for redemption. So for now, I'll give them site space to peddle their wares and goods. But let's not forget that the hypetrain is strong with the zealotous marking wing at EA, and damn can they make pretty game trailers. Just a PSA, don't drink the Kool Aid kids. Watch the videos below, and let me know what you think.
Below is the press conference at EA Play. Skip to 40:16 to watch the start of the conference:
EA's look ahead trailer for Star Wars:
So what do you think? Is EA going for gold and shooting for redemption? Or is this all just the same old tired ass attempt to get us to buy more games? Let me know what you think. Thank you for stopping by. I'll be pushing more content up. Be sure to follow BaicunnPress on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. As always, I'll see you guys later. -Chali Baicunn
Ello ello, you dapper dames and chaps! Thanks for stopping again. You know what time it is, right?.. It's that special time of the week where I bring you a quick run down of awesome nerd news. All to help take the sting out of hump day. It seems that the video game drought is coming to an end, and there is a lot of awesome shit to cover from this past week. So I'll stop wasting your time, and let's jump in.
Unless you have been living under a rock, then your's probably already aware that there's a new DOOM coming to market. But what you might not know, and as I incorrectly predicted; Bethesda will release DOOM on May 13th 2016. In the mean time though, they left us with the following campaign trailer:
Next up, prepare to be assaulted by cannibals and sacrificed to the sun god!.. At least that's what Ubisoft is promising from the next installment of Farcry. Instead of gunning down dickish pirates, you'll me bashing skulls with clubs. From the promotional material, the game looks stunning, and here's to hoping
Ubisoft is able to deliver. The game is centered around the player experiencing what it might be like to struggle for survival as a prehistoric tribesman. Scheduled to release on PS4 and Xbox One on February 23rd, and PC on March 1st. Check out the gameplay from the newest 5 minute trailer below in the meantime:
To add to the terrible PC support for Batman: Arkam Knight, Warner Brothers officially pulled the plug for the Linux and OSX port. And let's just say the official announcement was done in a way that clearly illustrates that WB's gaming sector is clearly ran by flaming douche canoes... It was released via a Steam Community post. The announcement is great really, you know because fuck progress. Am I right? If you want to read some of the truly funny replies click this link to visit the Steam Community announcement.
Today the Division dropped a factions trailer on us.:
In further gaming news, Amazon has released a license free game engine, called Lumberyard. Yes you heard that right, I said Amazon. Lumberyard has been promised to cost exactly $0 to use, and publish games with. Based on the CryEngine game engine from Crytek. If you've ever wanted to create your own game, now may be just the time for you to do it. I covered it's release in yesterdays post, just click here to read it, or go to over to the official Lumberyard site for more details.
And just in in case you've been itching for some new info on Mirrors Edge 2, a new trailer was released 2 days ago. I know what you're thinking... This is DICE and EA making this and they can't really be trusted right now. That's fair, but don't let that prevent you from enjoying the trailer:
Now, finally in some movie news, a new X-men Age of Apocalypse trailer was dropped on us during the Superbowl 50.
And as a friendly reminder, Deadpool releases Friday!
And that's all I have for you today, hope you enjoyed. If there's anything I missed, please be sure to let me know. If you liked what you read, please be sure to share it with your friends. I'll be back tomorrow with another post. Thanks again for stopping by. And I will see you tomorrow. -Chali Baicunn
Hello out there in the wonderful world wide web! I hope you're not too terribly scarred from yesterday's philosophical post. It's Thursday, and you're probably questioning the reason you got out of bed. Work sucks, and you're now stuck in the weekly purgatory that is Friday-eve. Well fear not for today, I'll be introducing the first installment of a new weekly series; The Midweek Breakdown. Making sure that you're properly informed on all things nerdy going on in the world. This is going live today, but the series will be making a weekly appearance every Wednesday.
ESA officially announced that E3 2016 is scheduled for June 14th through the 16th at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Coming in next, USA Today announced that Poe Dameron will be getting his own dedicated series. Marvel's Star Wars creators Charles Soto and Phil Noto will be taking up the reins. The Poe Dameron series will be written by Charles Soule of the "Lando" and "Obiwan & Anakin" series fame, with art supplied by Phil Noto. Noto had previously provided art for the "Chewbacca" series. The series is slated to release April of this year. ESPN recently added an eSports section on their Sports Portal. ESPN is promising to cover everything esports related. If you're interested cruise over to espn.com to check it out. In case you somehow missed it, we have the first Suicide Squad trailer released since Comi-Con:
Also just out, Disney has announced, that it ill be delaying the release of Episode 8. Originally scheduled to release in June 2017. Release has now been pushed out until December 2017. It should be noted that Avatar 2 is also scheduled to release at the same time. In other Star Wars news, a patch is coming to Battlefront sometime this month. Along with this announcement came another from Star Wars Battlefront Community Manager; Sledgehammer70. Sledgehammer put out the following statement on the Battlefront Community page: "Just before the holidays, we kicked off the first Star Wars Battlefront community event, where we asked you to play 500,000 hours as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. Today, we’re happy to let the community know that you smashed the 500,000 hours played mark, playing over a total of 1.2M hours as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo between START and FINISH. Most impressive.
This achievement is worth a special reward that directly ties to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. What could this reward be? In true Jedi fashion, it will be revealed in the coming update this month. You will want to look to Hoth to show the fruits of your labor once the January update has been released. Stay tuned to our official channels for more details." Some in the Battlefront community are speculating that this means we'll be seeing tauntauns in game soon. And finally, it's been announced that Darkwing Duck will be making a return to TV in 2018, on Disney XD. Disney has promised that the show will have a “gritty look that this generation of kids love.” but retain the “same energy and bumbling crime-fighting spirit”. Thanks for stopping by again guys! I really appreciate it. If you think we missed anything, let us now. Please share, and comment. I appreciate feedback. And always, I hope to see you in the future.
Hey guys! How's it going out there in the spaghetti western that is the Internet?
Well it's a new day.. and.. I have a confession to make that's been eating at me for a few weeks. I haven't really told anyone because I feel foolish, but I've just got to get it out there, and the haters can judge me... I let EA put it in my butt, metaphorically speaking that is... There I said it; I admitted it. You see what happened was that EA took me out a few months ago. They let me play with their blasters, and we hung out every night for almost a week. Then EA told me that they had to go away on business for a few weeks. And while EA was away, all I could think about was how much I really wanted to hang out with them and their Imperial armor. Weeks went by and we finally got to hangout, it was fun but the date cost me $60. Halfway through the date things got a little steamy until I realized that I was participating in our very own Tijuana donkey show; Like a drug fueled night in Bangkok, I was being bent over. Then when I thought it was all over, EA asked me for another $60 to finish up!...
Dramatics flare aside. I'm pretty pissed at EA and myself at this point. I bought into the hype, and got sold a Star Wars scented bottle of snake oil. And since EA was totally OK with pedaling this turd for $60, I'm totally OK with publicly reviewing their product for free. I'm really going to try to be fair with this, but it'll be hard at this point.
To fully understand my point of view, I need to take you back in time to June 2013.... It was a hundred and stupid outside on that fine day in Oklahoma, and it that seemed nothing would break the drought. I remember fondly the joy I felt when it was announced that Battlefront would making a return. At that point, it didn't matter that the sun had seemed to park itself on the surface of the Earth, because I had found a drop of water in the desert. I resolved to survive the droughtpocolypse at least long enough to play it.
After E3 2014, time seemed to fly by. The sun had returned to it's normal point in the sky, and it seemed that every couple of months, more of its secrets were revealed. And the videos. Oooooo!... Shiny! They glistened in highly polish polygons, like blood diamonds in southeast Asian black markets.
You see, I had been itching for a new shooter for a little while by that time. I had left the caustic communities of competitive FPS/shooter gaming, resigning myself to a quiet retirement of RTSs, survival, and fringe indie games. (A man can only listen to so many unfounded and baseless accusations directed at his mother's honor. All the while dodging the vollies of pejoratives spewed forth from the mouths of 12-year-olds.)
With The Force Awakens just around the corner, the release of the Battlefront beta made October of 2015 feel so hopeful. The week of the beta seemed so right at the time. Walker Assault on Hoth felt like Star Wars. Drop Zone less so, but I was optimistic. It was a time of bonding with my 5-year-old. You see the Battlefront beta was his first shooter. He quickly decided that Vader is by far the BAMF-Y-EST BAMF that ever did BAMF. This set a light in him, a truly deep interest in the Star Wars universe. As we played, I was able to regale him with the lore from long long ago in a galaxy far far away. (feels....)
I had resolved myself to getting Battlefront. Christmas was coming up. The kiddo was on board. I was on board, and the wife approved. (Oh snap!) Then it came, bundled up nicely in it's bland brown Amazon.com box. The wife immediately deemed it to be a Christmas present, and threatened the life of whatever hero should try to liberate the fair maiden from her tower keep; known only as top of the closet. I protested! (Fuck it! I'm a grown ass man, and if I want to play the game I will!)
So Christmas day came, and the boy and I cracked the cellophane on the case. (I know... I know... What happened to all of that I'm a man shit? Do you want to piss my wife off? I don't.) Disc goes in, queue epic Star Wars Theme Song, and draw the shades... It's time to kill me some Imperial scum! To my surprise there appeared to be content missing, and I was already being hit up to drop $60 more on Season Pass DLC, all before I had started a single match. And there are no details given about the Season Pass. I ignored the instant irritation surging through my body, because it's Christmas, and I simply verify that there is not a missing companion disc in the case. I get a prompt that there's an update. Download it, and restart... Nope no more content than before. (I should have prefaced this by saying that due to the aforementioned cockblocking by the misses, I had decided to not go digging for details about the game after release.)
Fast forward to today. I'm now several hours invested in the game, and I've built out the following list of my likes and hates:
What I like: 1) It looks like Star Wars. The terrain and models are beautifully presented and pretty well polished. 2) It does feel like you're in the Star Wars universe, especially when playing on Endor and Hoth in first person. 3) The sound engineering is pretty spot on, with one exception that I hate (keep reading for more on that)... And that's about it. 4) Kid friendly. 5) Fun for a few matches here and there. What I hate: 1) There is a complete lack ofinteresting or populated game types; even Walker Assault is really just a moving point domination game. The populated exceptions being Blast (classic deathmatch) and Fighter Squadron (deathmatch with spaceships). 2) There's no campaign.. Nothing! Nada! Not that I was expecting a whole lot but seriously, nothing? 3) The maps are pretty, but there's basically only four maps to play on for any one game type. 4) With no campaign, this game is really forced to stand on large scale objective based combat. However, I find the lack of team chat disturbing. It's like playing Battlefield 2 circa 2004 with people running everywhere trying to figure out what to shoot next. 5) Remember how I mentioned that there is an exception to the quality? Well that exception happens to be the voice acting for the Heroes. They do not sound in anyway close to their movie counterparts. They really couldn't have just used one liners from the original trilogy? Come on EA! Is it too much to ask that Vader sound like Vader, and Han to sound like Han?! 6) So "deathmatch with spaceships" or as EA calls it, Fighter Squadron. I'm willing to concede that it can be a fun mode to play for a short time, but for whatever reason the devs saw it fit just not set up decent controls. There's no real roll command except for an evasive maneuver that has a god damn cool down timer before it can be used again! Oh, and your spaceships never get the opportunity to, you know, fight in space! 7) The spawns are terrible, and I don't mean that in a dramatic way. I mean that they are genuinely awful. With issues ranging from spawning in the wide open, and spawning in on a gun fight. Or my all time favorite; spawning in basically where you died! You know, so you can immediately die again, and your respawning teammates can also die with you.
8) There's no accuracy penalty for not going ADS, and there's no accuracy buff for crouching. Because fuck game mechanics. So basically it's just running around and hip firing. 9) Vehicles feel like an after thought. No Snowspeeders flying out of hangers on Hoth or TIE fighters dropping from the belly of a Star Destroyers. Not even an AT-ST being unloaded from a dropship, Instead teammates are stuck racing each other around the map trying to pickup floating blue "coins" in order to use the vehicles. And even then the vehicles feel forced at times. 10) There's a dick load of unlocks in this game. Unfortunately, they're mostly character customizations and, well.. lazy! Here's a video post to illustrate my point:
11) Did I mention that when playing as Palpatine, you're squishier than the level 5 healer you took on your last dungeon raid? And as a plus your only real attack is force lightning, which conveniently has a cool down timer. 12) So there's a ranking system, but it really isn't anything more than a timer used for your unlocks. It means nothing in the grand scheme. It doesn't prevent a noobie from being fed to the wolves and their much more powerful loadouts, as all ranks are tossed in the same lobby. And not having a real ranking system pretty much destroys the possibility of the game being recognized as a competitive shooter.
There's more, but I'm honestly just tired at this point. My son is still into it (It's just a shame his "first love" is so basic), and I guess I'm just playing the game out of spite at this point. If you have young kids they'll probably like it. Or if you're just looking to play a new Star Wars game, you'll probably like it. However, a franchise title from this publisher, with this title, and with the budget this one had, has absolutely no reason to be this lacking in substance.
I once had high hopes for Battlefront. In hindsight, I'm not real sure why. @PonStory had warned me to not get too excited. I'm also keenly aware that in recent years EA has become more and more hostile to their customer base. Hammering out title after title, with very little change or innovation, and then flooding the market with paid DLC. It seems that EA's marketing strategy is a pump and dump scheme; they push the hype, sell you half a game, and then extort you for the other half, year after year in a seemingly endless cycle of communal profiteering.
I guess what I got is what should have been expecting. To be honest, I would have been satisfied with re-skinned and updated Battlefront 2. Instead, EA's Battlefront appears to be a clear downgrade from a game made a decade ago. I think that a picture of EA's executives flipping you off--instead of the content on the disc--would have been more intellectually honest and less lazy then what they gave us.
I don't know who made this, but it paints a telling picture. It's a little old and is missing the game modes that are available
Thanks again for stopping by. Let me know what you think of my review. Was it fair? Was it not? I think it is fair to say that I fell prey to nostalgia and pageantry.
We have a fantastic archive post for you today from our previous site. It's by a contributor Luke Putnam AKA @PonStory . Luke and I had opposing views on Battlefront 3 on the announcement of its release. Suffice it to say, I think he may have been correct in his assessment. Read on and let him know what you think.
-Chali Baicunn
The internet is abuzz; not just with the recent reveal of the newest trailer for Star Wars Episode 7, but also for the first official Battlefront 3 reveal trailer. Gamers have reason to be excited, for sure. The only problem is that the reason stinks. Check out the trailer below to catch a glimpse of why that is.
My first criticism involves the fact that no gameplay was shown (after all, we are talking about a video game, not a movie), but that's an easy shot at EA. I'd rather point out the lesser-known facts regarding Battlefront 3, which design director Niklas Fegraeus came out and proudly admitted today.
First, let's hear the good news. Thankfully, Battlefront 3 will feature a leveling system, plenty of customization, new gadgets (like Halo 3's bubble shield), it runs at 60 frames per second, and even retains its split-screen functionality, with a maximum of 40 players online. But come on... we were kind of expecting all of that anyway. What we weren't expecting was for Dice to limit all battles to the original trilogy, throwing out the clone wars entirely. That means we won't be playing as any droids, either. Just stormtroopers and rebels. Yeah. I was hoping to actually get, I don't know, like... maybe something MORE than Battlefront 2? I honeslty wouldn't even settle for the same content being published again without anything new. I'm buying Battlefront 3 because I see where Battlefront can be improved and added upon! If I wanted to go back and play Battlefront 2, I would. I wanted to play as all manner of aliens, modified droid units, republic commandos, and jedi during the purge of Order 66!
But that's not even the bad news. If you're a Star Wars fan, you probably already scoured the internet a long time ago for any and all Battlefront 3 news, back when Free Radical (the creators of Timesplitters) were developing it. Even though their version of the game was cancelled, we were still treated with - and tantilized by - alpha footage depicting seamless transitions between ground and space combat. In addition, the developers even said that actual star destroyers and separatist flagships were piloted by actual players! Now THAT would have been awesome, especially if it were improved upon.
So naturally, I was very much looking forward to seeing whether Dice implemented what was possible on the PS3 almost a decade ago (and also on the PSP, if you count Star Wars: Renegade Squadron). But guess what? Dice has officially informed us that there will be no seamless transitions between land and space. Okay, I'm disappointed. But at least I'll get an updated version of Battlefront 2, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case either. Niklas Fegraeus officially announced that there will be no space battles whatsoever.
All right, things are getting crazy now! What other essential components of Battlefront have you gotten rid of, Dice? Well, players will no longer be able to grab vehicles like AT-ST walkers from the start of the match and go to war against others. Instead, Dice is implementing a scorestreak system where players must first get a number of kills in order to earn powerful vehicles... which I'm sure will lead to even more points, leading to more vehicles, leading to even more unbalanced circumstances where one team has an abundance of vehicles while the other... doesn't.
Why is Dice doing this? Don't they know that this is both unbalanced and contrary to Battlefront's tried-and-true design? Some of my greatest memories from the original Battlefront games come from me joining up with my buddies (in four-player split-screen) and forming a barrage of vehicles to attack an objective - ranging from walkers, to speeders, to flying ships, to tanks, to you name it. Limiting vehicles to scorestreaks will completely ruin the core idea of a battlefront at the start of the match, where the main action is taking place between two sides!
But I fear that these are the first of more saddening revelations to come. It seems that developers are more concerned with aesthetic nuances like high framerate and flashy graphics than they are with creating the game we'd all like to play. I'm sure I'll buy Battlefront eventually, but I have no reason to be excited for it. Not anymore.
