Demo\ Beta available from Fileplanet. PC version, obviously. It's about 1.2gig.
Impressions are...it sucks. Big time.
I quite enjoyed the first game - it created a fairly decent feeling of being on the Star Wars battlefield and it felt pretty good too. The AI was awful in single player and it was hardly the deepest game ever, but it was enjoyable enough.
This, on the other hand, just feels awful. The movement feels very clunky, something that may be part of design to make it more 'real', but it just feels wrong. Aiming is all over the place and shooting is just feeble, slow and dull. Battlefront 2 is feeling like a cheep mod you'd find on the Unreal engine. It no longer feels like you are firing the infamous Star Wars blasters, and thus it no longer feels like a Star Wars game.
The beta features three maps, one is the same area where the 4-armed robot dude gets pwned in ep3. This map is too large, empty and dull.
Another map is a non-descript cruiser, with each corridor looking the same as the last. No open areas, just 100% pure suck. Honestly, it's one of the most lazy attempts at level design I've ever seen.
The final map is a little more interesting - a space fight between two huge cruisers. This is the only time where the beta shows hope of the final game being anything less than ****e. You get to walk through your cruiser (however small your bit may be), grab a Xwing or tie-fighter, take it to outside dogfighting, dock to their ship and kill things on foot again. The scale is impressive (even if the graphics are anything but). The controls are weak, at least with a k+m setup, making dog-fighting very slow and dull. I admit the potential is pretty damn huge, though.
The only other thing of note is the heroes which now make a playable return. Every noteable character from all six films features in the final game, and the likes of yoda and vader make it into the beta. Unfortunately they feel incredibly inbalanced. One 'hero' can easily take down an entire team without too much trouble. What you'd expect, but hardly what I'd call fun.
I had high hopes for this game, particularly as the first almost got it right. The sequel had so much going for it, but this beta really is one of the most dreadful things I've played in a long, long time.
Bleh.
Impressions are...it sucks. Big time.
I quite enjoyed the first game - it created a fairly decent feeling of being on the Star Wars battlefield and it felt pretty good too. The AI was awful in single player and it was hardly the deepest game ever, but it was enjoyable enough.
This, on the other hand, just feels awful. The movement feels very clunky, something that may be part of design to make it more 'real', but it just feels wrong. Aiming is all over the place and shooting is just feeble, slow and dull. Battlefront 2 is feeling like a cheep mod you'd find on the Unreal engine. It no longer feels like you are firing the infamous Star Wars blasters, and thus it no longer feels like a Star Wars game.
The beta features three maps, one is the same area where the 4-armed robot dude gets pwned in ep3. This map is too large, empty and dull.
Another map is a non-descript cruiser, with each corridor looking the same as the last. No open areas, just 100% pure suck. Honestly, it's one of the most lazy attempts at level design I've ever seen.
The final map is a little more interesting - a space fight between two huge cruisers. This is the only time where the beta shows hope of the final game being anything less than ****e. You get to walk through your cruiser (however small your bit may be), grab a Xwing or tie-fighter, take it to outside dogfighting, dock to their ship and kill things on foot again. The scale is impressive (even if the graphics are anything but). The controls are weak, at least with a k+m setup, making dog-fighting very slow and dull. I admit the potential is pretty damn huge, though.
The only other thing of note is the heroes which now make a playable return. Every noteable character from all six films features in the final game, and the likes of yoda and vader make it into the beta. Unfortunately they feel incredibly inbalanced. One 'hero' can easily take down an entire team without too much trouble. What you'd expect, but hardly what I'd call fun.
I had high hopes for this game, particularly as the first almost got it right. The sequel had so much going for it, but this beta really is one of the most dreadful things I've played in a long, long time.
Bleh.
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