Review Round-Up: Star Wars Battlefront Is "Absolutely Gorgeous" But Not Yet "Fully Realized"

We regularly do "Early Buzz" reports for movies, and sometimes the occasional television series, but in the ten plus years of the site history, we're never done one for a video game... until now. Yes, Star Wars warrants a break out of our usual boundaries because everyone is so excited for Star Wars Battlefront, which was released for Playstation and Xbox this week. So lets take a look at the early Star Wars Battlefront reviews and see what the video game critics think of the first big Star Wars video game of the Disney era.

From the early reviews, it looks like Star Wars Battlefront is getting mostly favorable reactions, with a few mixed reviews here and there. I have yet to come across a out and out negative review from a big outlet. Here are some review excerpts:

Game Spot: "If nothing else, Star Wars Battlefront is an exercise in pure spectacle, laid out in all of its neon glory."Hardcore Gamer: "Star Wars Battlefront is a solid proof-of-concept that should be fully realized in an inevitable sequel. Like Evolve, Titanfall and The Order: 1886 before it, Battlefront chooses style over substance. It's absolutely beautiful and captures what it's like to be in a Star Wars film, but style can only take a game so far. Star Cards and Heroes help make battles interesting, but the combat is too simplified to create long-term engagement. There is fun to be had, especially when the spectacle of Star Wars is in full effect. That spectacle, however, soon wears off and what's left is a game with too few weapons, maps and heroes."IGN: "Aside from awkward performances and a poor original score, Battlefront is a master class in aesthetic authenticity. Beyond a few essential modes built for casual competition, however, Battlefront is unfocused, relying on excess game types to compensate for an absent single-player campaign."YahooGames: "An artistic triumph, Star Wars Battlefront poses a difficult question: Do features make a game? If they do, this one's got problems. Stand Battlefront next to most other multiplayer-oriented shooters and you'll find it lacking in variety and depth. But none of those other shooters let me blast Slave-1 out of the sky from the Millennium Falcon, or take out an AT-ST with a well-timed thermal pod, or block ten laser blasts and force push a stormtrooper into a pool of lava."Giant Bomb: "It's hard to not get caught up in the occasional moment in Battlefront if you're a big Star Wars fan. I loved stalking towards rebels as Darth Vader, force choking them as the Imperial March played. As I played as a Stormtrooper on Tatooine, I stopped for a moment to watch Luke and Vader battle with lightsabers as X-Wings and TIE fighters engaged in a dogfight above them. There's a whole lot of Star Wars seeping out of every pore of Battlefront, and no amount of forced fan service took away from the fact that some moments in this game reminded me of the many things I love about the film franchise. If the impending release of The Force Awakens has you in the mood for a casual online shooter set in the Star Wars universe, this game can certainly provide that for a dozen or so hours."GameTrailers: "What still makes it so exceptional is how incredible it looks and sounds. It's an absolutely gorgeous game, and the sound effects are chaotic, but still passionately authentic. The music doesn't run the John Williams score ragged, but instead highlights the best moments of a match and lets the rest play out in silence. New pieces were written for the game, and they blend seamlessly with the legendary scores from the original trilogy. It's this attention to the minute details of Star Wars history, from the Jawas fleeing for cover into a Sandcrawler, or the satisfying sting of each TIE Fighter blast, that make Battlefront feel so different from the other incredible shooters this year."GameRevolution: "One of the biggest problems I have with Star Wars: Battlefront is how tightly packaged everything is. The larger modes like Supremacy and Walker Assault have the area of combat tightly gated, so that spawn points are tied to capture or timed objectives, rather than the areas of faction control. This means you always spawn just behind the area of combat. One way to break the game is to run as far around the active battlefield as possible to the next objective area, jump into an anti-vehicle turret and just wait for the objective area to move to you, then pick off all the enemies spawning in the area."