(I managed to grab Luke's X-wing in the last minute and was chosen to do the trench run, in which I succeeded. Man that was an epic moment)
I think this personifies my ongoing personal grievances with Battlefront despite still playing. When the Star Wars magic comes together it's a legitimately thrilling experience of elevated highs. A tight game of Walker Assault is another good example; I love getting to that last phase, either side, and feeling the adrenaline of
just scraping in to victory. The game definitely has those moments.
But they're just few and far between for me, compared to Battlefield which is far more consistent on my end in providing those highs. Like even the flying; it looks insanely pretty, sounds authentic, and popping off opponents feels great. But the control system feels shallow (particularly the goofy, clumsy dodge functions), the balance is shit, and dogfighting remains littered with hitbox and hit feedback issues. And I can't escape this in any game I play. There's always some layer of total bullshit that I
loathe, gnawing away at my enjoyment. But then I get that good fix high and I keep playing hoping for more.
The Death Star interior is another good example. On one match I was pretty much the only fucking player who knew what they were doing with R2 (one player actually captured, went the wrong way, and lost us ground). We won the round, almost right on the dot, and I got a great thrill in zipping down paths, using my teammates basically as distractions, popping shield to capture R2 and gaining as much ground as I could. But that doesn't take away from the awful bottleneck level design, with a climax that seems to be literally two corridors leading out into an open area, where the only method of play is people hurling themselves against a funnel of explosions and blaster fire. And that, to me, is just so goddamn boring, lazy, and uninspired as game design.
I know I don't speak for everybody else and it's totally subjective, but yeah. That's kind of the guts of my back and forth with Battlefront. The moments and stuff I love I really, really,
really love. But the shit I hate is so consistent and prevalent across every single mode and almost every map that I can't play a match without having at least one moment of clarity where I wonder why I'm playing at all.
Oh well. I'll probably end up buying Battlefront 2 anyway. Part of the problem.
