I have been a Star Wars fan until The Last Jedi so naturally I am inclined to play games from that universe. So as a kid in 1977, the Lucas franchise captured my immagination and even made my Granny take me to the movies to watch it. She became a fan too.
I remember taking her again after she suffered a stroke to watch a restored Empire Strikes Back rerun. She enjoyed it.
Then came the game.
I knew that Star Wars Battlefront 1 was a multiplayer game, so I didn’t bother buying it but got it free one day as a subscriber to the PSN service.
The single player modes were nothing more than practice runs to train you for the multiplayer maps.
It did jack shit for me when it came to fun.
Then there was Star Wars Battlefront 2, with a single player campaign.
And I paid good money for it.
The single player game is very ‘meh’. It isn’t bad, just that it was badly executed. The story telling was good but the gameplay was made to dumb down your sense of fun. Not sure if that was intentional but it sure looks that way.
Imagine the horror after I downloaded it.
How the Lootbox Craze doomed it
I remember this fondly.
It was EA’s way to make money off you, which to my horror, was far worst than never having played Donkey Kong. (for the record, I have but imagine those who didn’t)
The thing was that the loot boxes was the only way you can ante up your character abilities and vehicles. Every day, the moment you log in, you are given three for just opening the game screen.
What disturbed me was that many of the items in those loot boxes were repeat items.
So the whole thing was a scam from the onset to get you to buy more.
And the other thing that disturbed me was that you had to PAY for the damn game.
Come on. If you need to pay to play from the onset then you should have given the game out for free.
The other interesting nugget is that the multiplayer option tied to the PS4 was also a scam.
You cannot play the multiplayer maps if you don’t have an active subscription to PSN.
It’s like buying a new car from a dealer and as you try to drive it out, they tell you they don’t provide the gas.
So with the fiasco in full swing. EA decided to cancel the launch of the loot boxes after so much hate was spewed online. Then the government got into action to deem loot boxes as a form of gambling. That made EA cringe.
A Year’s wait for Geonosis
The latest DLC content that was dropped was recently, a multiplayer battlemap called Geonosis.
What good is that if you didn’t have an online subscription to PSN?
But prior to that there were two updates.
An Ewok map. Which is utterly stupid. You get to play the choice of a band of Ewoks trying to take down a storm trooper in the dark.
Then there was the extraction map. This is based on the Solo movie which bombed so heavily at the box office that should had it been dropped on Afghanistan, it would have killed all its inhabitants.
Anyway, I digress.
How good was the Extraction DLC?
Having played it a few times I have come to the conclusion that it is a flawed game that only needs a few sound minded folks to defeat.
First you play the rebels who are moving stuff to the Falcon. There are no heroes here so the Kessel run in Solo doesn’t apply.
As long as you keep moving the shipment the falcon and reach it before the time ends, you win.
The only problem is that the Storm Troopers can be positioned outside the cave entrance among the cliffs to take you out like a Turkey shoot.
Not fun I tell ya.
So what is the take away from this?
EA should have done a better job
First, they should have made the game more playable by allowing players to use ALL the hero characters in the map all at once.
In the normal Galactic Assault game, the heroes available are limited by the stage progression. So if someone takes Luke and Leia in that stage you can’t take Yoda or any other heroes.
This was bad.
And the other thing was that you needed mucho points to redeem a hero. So if you are struggling to score 6K points, your chances at playing a hero will be limited. And if they are taken by someone else, you can bet your sweet ass that you will be left waiting in the lobby till you get piles.
So this meant that fewer people are playing the game and with that, fewer people would be online at any one given time to play that game.
If you happen to doubled down on Preparation H for your piles, there is a good chance that after a lengthy wait you would be able to find a lobby with enough players in it for a game.
EA started to heavily discount the game just after a few months of its release. And for some periods, the offer was up to 60 percent off the original retail price.
EA should have found an alternative strategy once the loot boxes were no longer allowed.
Even though they have fixed some of the issues, I hear that the disappearing Walker on Crait map isn’t going to be fixed till after Christmas.
So after a year, they are still fixing stuff. It kinda shows that EA isn’t very interested in the game anymore.
