Zero Punctuation: Star Wars: Battlefront

[karamazovnew]

Maybe I'm old and bitter, with watery eyes and trembling wrists, but I just don't enjoy fast shooters anymore. Battlefront is the perfect example of a game I like to watch on youtube, but hate playing for fear of breaking another keyboard. Actually, maybe my keyboard would be safe, since you die so fast that you can't really put any emotion into it. My mouse would be much more at risk from over-clicking the "respawn" button.

I don't mind dying fast, but I need games that have a tactical side, so that I can think and outmaneuver my Imperial Army trooper level of accuracy and awareness. Hence I play games such as World of Tanks, and more recently War Thunder. And to be honest, I can't understand why anyone would play anything else (multiplayer I mean). I wonder why Yahtzee never played them. The FtP model is as good as it can get, the progression is nice, you can stick your keyboard into your monitor about half-way... I mean you can get emotionally invested in your play, and you can get a nice blend of nipple hardening duels and glorious team battles where both teams actually know wtf they are doing. Although what I love the most is the "buddy" factor, where after about 1000 battles you realize that it's not a good idea to die alone, so you start to bromance with a nearby vehicle, communicating with that player subliminally or through subtle cues. I actually do better with mute strangers than with loud friends. That's what multiplayer is supposed to be.

To me, World of Tanks was like discovering Skyrim. Love it at first, then becoming annoyed with the limitations and weird game mechanics. So I switched to War Thunder(planes at first, then tanks), and it was like playing Skyrim with 250 mods. Same game, great graphics, a much more realistic play, but also more unpredictable, unstable; anoying, boring, exiting, glorious, all at the same time. I've played little else in the last year. So recently going back to fast shooters like TF, and seeing the beta videos of Overwatch made me wonder why or how the hell people can play them. So I bought Arma 3 instead, hehe.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Star Wars Battlecunts

Ok, I got a damn good laugh out of that one.

I'd extend your complaints about Leia to half of the Heroes. Luke, Vader and Bobba are the only ones that really make any sense. The Emperor is supposed to be a frail old man who focuses more on scheming and Han is...an ok fighter I guess.

I remember the Emperor from Battlefront II shooting lightning from his fingers and carving up dudes with his lightsaber. At least that's how I remember playing him.

Oh this review made me smile with glee, I was looking to seeing Yahtzee tear this game a new asshole and he did not dissapoint. The lack of a single-player campaign(not to mention character classes, galactic conquest and space battles) was a deal-breaker for me(As was the truly disgusting 50 dollar season pass), there's no good reason why this game should not have had one. Hopefully that's one area the sequel improves upon.

What? They cut those out?! That's not how you do sequels/remakes! You can't cut out features that were an improvement on the original! I liked space combat! Do they have make-your-own-class from one of the PSP versions?

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Fair enough, but you do have to admit that's a bit of a departure from the movies.

 

[Evonisia]

Funny enough, the "A**hole System" is what PvP games in general run on. I've given up on Titanfall and Team Fortress 2 because most of players are experts who have played for hours per day over all the time the game has been out and the rest (i.e. my team, usually) are players so inexperienced they don't even use grenades/melee. It then leaves me losing a majority of rounds and feeling like such games are a complete waste of time.

If you suck at TF2, you can always be a medic, and always be useful and always be in demand.

I'd suggest they go Pyro. Bad Medics are painful to put up with, especially ones who don't know how to prioritise or assess damage being done to the team.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I both like and hate Battlefront.

I hate the fact that it has absolutely no story mode and no real reason for a player to come back other than to see your online number increasing, but I do enjoy the spectacle. I like running around on the field and watching starships crash onto the ground in dramatic effect, but I also hate how every other asshole on the field has a better gun than you.

Seriously though, even after I unlocked most of those guns, I just find myself getting killed a lot from every angle. The Hero classes are alright, but there is a massive unbalance. Boba Fett is extremely unbalanced where the other classes are concerned and when your teammates haven't learned that they shouldn't be shooting Luke or Vader while they're defending, lest blaster bolts get reflected back at them, I find that I am the one those bolts are getting reflected back at.

The game suffers from serious balance issues and a lack of depth, but I'm surprised he didn't complain more about the accuracy of weapons, which sometimes were spot on, and other times felt like I might as well have been rolling a D20 to hit.

It's a pretty game and I'm having more fun with it than I was with Halo 5, because at least shit isn't randomized in order to encourage micro-transactions, but once I max out my rank I'm sure I will be bored with it and will get rid of it, just like any other game that is multiplayer-only. I mean, I'm definitely not playing Evolve or Titanfall anymore.

 

[CaitSeith]

Funny enough, the "A**hole System" is what PvP games in general run on. I've given up on Titanfall and Team Fortress 2 because most of players are experts who have played for hours per day over all the time the game has been out and the rest (i.e. my team, usually) are players so inexperienced they don't even use grenades/melee. It then leaves me losing a majority of rounds and feeling like such games are a complete waste of time.

Pretty much why CoD invented the Noob Tube (so you can be an A**hole from the very start)

 

[Canadamus Prime]

"Star Wars: Battlecunts" That's what I'm going to call it from now on.

 

[Yuuki]

"Shallow empty fun" is how this game is best described. I feel absolutely nothing when I go on a killstreak in this game because anyone can do that if they get lucky. There is no depth or any skill curve to speak of. This has to be some kind of new accomplishment for a multiplayer shooter (if it can be called that). Everything I do feels meaningless. 10/10 for visuals & audio, but maybe 2/10 or 3/10 for base content, gameplay design and lasting appeal. This game on PC now has almost 40% less online players than BF4 PC, and may I remind people that BF4 is 2 years old!

Once the broken matchmaking system finally puts you in a proper match that isn't empty (where the fuck is server browser for PC??), the next hurdle to get over is how much cheesy one-shotting is constantly going on. From the MOMENT you spawn you get insta-killed from the other side of the map by pulse cannons, turrets or the AT-AT. And then you can have your turn in doing the same to others. If it's not those things then there is always eating repeated deaths from your local Boba Fett's cheesy weapons from half a mile away, or a Luke/Darth that can soak-up enough gunfire to kill 20 people before finally going down. Oh and the hero pickups are 100% random, which only adds to the sheer chaos of it all.
Whatever happened to DICE's combined arms philosophy from the Battlefield games?

Also Yahtzee exaggerated the asshole cycle a bit. Once you unlock the most cheesy star cards (thermal/impact nade, pulse cannon, jetpack, personal shield, explosive shot, etc) that's the end. You're fully ready for noob-stomping and never need to use anything else. There is nothing to this game, absolutely nothing.

 

[MHR]

They all bought it knowing it had a ton of features gutted, and was being run by EA.

What the hell did they expect?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

"Shallow empty fun" is how this game is best described.

It's also how you can describe masturbation. Except this game is like masturbation, but without the pay off.

 

[King_Julian]

seriously what absolute **** decided it would be a good idea to let E fucking A make a star wars game...........*sigh* jokes on us for even hoping it would be good in any way in the first place......

 

[LobsterFeng]

seriously what absolute **** decided it would be a good idea to let E fucking A make a star wars game...........*sigh* jokes on us for even hoping it would be good in any way in the first place......

EA themselves did as they're the ones that bought the rights to Star Wars games.

 

[JCAll]

No Yahtzee, when your lightsaber's battery goes dead you're supposed to wank it like Travis Touchdown.

 

[QuadFish]

Funny enough, the "A**hole System" is what PvP games in general run on. I've given up on Titanfall and Team Fortress 2 because most of players are experts who have played for hours per day over all the time the game has been out and the rest (i.e. my team, usually) are players so inexperienced they don't even use grenades/melee. It then leaves me losing a majority of rounds and feeling like such games are a complete waste of time.

TF2? Last time I checked (which admittedly was a couple years ago) it was full of sidegrades, but no straight upgrades, with many vanilla loadouts being pretty damn viable, if a bit boring compared to some stuff that came out later.

That...was a long time ago. Crazy huge amount of content now. Crafting, hats, and Free to Play.
I miss old TF2, even though I didn't play much.

It still hasn't changed much in the way the original comment was talking about though. No amount of alternative weapons will help you beat someone who's played a thousand hours more than you and there are quite a few of those people since the game came out 8 whopping years ago. (I was "that guy" before I stopped and I didn't consistently use a primary weapon that wasn't vanilla.)

 

[elvor0]

Funny enough, the "A**hole System" is what PvP games in general run on. I've given up on Titanfall and Team Fortress 2 because most of players are experts who have played for hours per day over all the time the game has been out and the rest (i.e. my team, usually) are players so inexperienced they don't even use grenades/melee. It then leaves me losing a majority of rounds and feeling like such games are a complete waste of time.

That wasn't the point. It was that you'd never be able to compete because the other people would be higher level and have access to objectively better weaponry and power ups, the point was that skill got tossed out the window. TF2 may have players that kick your ass but they do so because they're better than you, not because you haven't unlocked basic functionality such as a fucking shield.

It's the same as in BF3 where you need to level up your jet in order to get fucking flares or even a rocket. How you're supposed to level up your jet when you cant even engage in a dog fight or avoid being shot down is anyones guess.

 

[iller3]

Disappointed there was no common refrain of "Spunk Gargle Wee Wee" And really, The whole thing makes me wish there was a legit Sci Fi massive multiplay open world game out there that truly reflected what happens in an RTS. ...Can any of you imagine the cooperative comradery in a game like that where going where you're supposed to go when you're supposed to go there doing your objective would be more important for your "Combat Advantage" than your dumb Twitch aim or the amount of hours you grinded Perks? And by that I specifically mean ANOTHER scifi MMO besides Planetside b/c that POS is even more mindlessly focused on farming & K/D ratios than even these Bottlefield clonewars.

Let's just look at the one and only Upside to this game: which is BattleField Friends possibly getting to parody it assuming the House of Mouse doesn't snipe them in their Goolies first for IP infringement

If you suck at TF2, you can always be a medic, and always be useful and always be in demand.

A bad medic who doesn't know who to heal, and when to look behind for spies, or when to pop, is worse than no medic at all because they instill false confidence

 

[otakon17]

Campaign for campaigns friends. I enjoyed Team Fortress 2 for about two years then dropped it for things that had more interesting stories than "The Sniper is a Spy!".

By bringing up my experience with Team Fortress 2 does that mean I'm a hat hater? Hell no. I enjoy the gameplay of TF2 and should a friend ask me to join in, I wouldn't hesitate. What I won't do though is follow the multiplayer crowd around from release to release of the next new shiny title. I found my niche in Wargaming games and I'm aware of the lack of campaign there. A good campaign in a FPS title I like however ensures more repeat playing and more justification in dropping money on it. That's what seems to always end up happening with multiplayer only titles my friends (and myself) get into. Either they find 'the one' and are forever loyal to it (sticking around even after official server support is dropped) or they title hop like [insert simile here].

Its a convoluted way of saying 'fuck off multiplayer only shooters' but hey, I'm drunk after an incredibly stressful final exam in a Zero Punctuation comment section, so whatever. There's my 2 cents.

I think the biggest difference between TF2 and Battlefront is one is FREE to play 100% and the other has a $60 cover charge and a $70 upgrade fee for more maps later on. And still only has the same amount of depth as TF2.

Also the video is broken for me, stops around the 1 minute mark for some reason.

 

[TP Potato]

I actually agree about that single player disclaimer. This game in particular was mainly pitched for the multiplayer, so I wasn't very surprised to hear of the sparse single player, but it would be nice if titles had to distinguish between having a "single player mode" and a "single player campaign".