I have sunk a lot of hours into the Star Wars Battlefront beta. While I have heard plenty of criticisms being lobbed in the game’s direction from friends and colleagues alike, with these complaints ranging from “it’s too similar to Battlefield” to “it’s not similar enough to Battlefield,” I have largely found myself disagreeing with the majority of qualms people are reporting that they’re having with this early build of the upcoming shooter. As a Star Wars fan, from the moment I threw my first grenade at a crowd of enemies and heard a Stormtrooper let out a Wilhelm scream in the ensuing explosion, I knew that DICE had created something that was going to strike a chord with me.
But there was one major problem I had with the beta initially, and that was its seemingly poorly balanced Walker Assault mode. Walker Assault pits the Rebels against the Empire in a battle to take down a pair of AT-ATs before they reach the Rebels’ generators, with the Rebels having to capture and defend Uplinks that call in air support in the form of Y-Wing bombers. These Y-Wings will drop a series of bombs upon the AT-ATs which lower the walkers’ shields, with the amount of air strikes that they perform depending upon how many times the Rebels have successfully captured the two Uplinks.
Walker Assault is currently only available to play on Hoth, and if you’re familiar with the battle that takes place on that planet in Empire Strikes Back, then you’ll know that it’s a devastating loss for the Rebel Alliance in which they’re outmanned and outgunned by Imperial forces. Over the course of my first couple of hours playing the mode it seemed that DICE had remained unreasonably loyal to the source material, and as such had created a frustrating, asymmetrical game type in which Rebels were doomed to almost exclusively face defeat.
In Crave‘s ‘Star Wars Battlefront: What We Like and What We Dislike‘ feature penned after a few hours of playing the game, I even suggested that the amount of firepower at the Empire’s disposal should be limited, and that Rebels should immediately be placed in control of the Uplinks with Stormtroopers then being tasked with deactivating them. After putting much more time into the beta I now understand that while Rebels may fight an uphill battle in Walker Assault, it’s far from impossible for them to pull a victory out of the bag, and it’s actually considerably more fun and rewarding to play as them in the mode.
I, along with practically all of the Battlefront beta’s early players, didn’t have a great first experience with Walker Assault. Taking the mode’s objective verbatim, I did little else as the Rebels other than constantly charge at the Uplinks, dying a regrettable amount of times in the process, before the AT-ATs shields were brought down allowing me to fire my pathetic blaster at them for a short while, dealing very little damage in the process. Winning the mode as the Rebels felt impossible at this juncture, and mostly everyone playing it came away with the same opinion.
For the first three hours I spent playing the beta, playing as the Rebels would almost always lead to a defeat – even in the instances in which we won I was confused as to how we had managed to do so. But thanks to the inevitable slew of YouTube videos politely informing me and other frustrated Battlefront players how to play the damn game, I’ve come to realize that Walker Assault is a flawed but thrilling game type, and one with quirks that I hope aren’t removed or straightened out by DICE come the game’s full release.
The two major advantages the Rebels have on their side are the Snowspeeders and the Orbital Strike. As seen in Empire Strikes Back, the Snowspeeders can be used by the Rebels to tie the legs of the walkers together with a tow cable, and though this initiates a reasonably tricky mini-game it’s very possible to accomplish and immediately brings an AT-AT to its knees. On the other hand, the Orbital Strike can deal a great of damage to an AT-AT and you can use it without having to put yourself in harm’s way, though they are more difficult to obtain due to them only appearing as one of the random pick-ups.
Now that this is becoming common knowledge, Rebels have a much higher chance of securing victory than they did in the early stages of the beta. Though it’s still possible to find yourself on a team in which those controlling Snowspeeders are unaware of their game-winning capabilities (not to mention those who still insist on shooting the AT-ATs when their shields are up), whenever I’ve been a part of a team who know what they were doing, Walker Assault becomes less frustrating and more wonderfully intense, with it almost always leading to a nail biting finale in which Rebels and Stormtroopers fight tooth and nail in the snow-covered trenches whilst TIE Fighters desperately try to prevent Snowspeeders from tripping up the walkers, and as laser fire continues blasting away at the AT-ATs from all angles of the map.
There are issues with Walker Assault, or more specifically with Walker Assault taking place on Hoth, as spawn points leave a lot to be desired. This is most apparent during the second phase of the mode in which the Uplinks are located inside/around the small Rebel base, as the Rebels’ spawn points are placed within this base as they’re tasked with shooting down the walkers. With the base only having two exits that provide decent vantage points for attacking the walkers before their shields go back online, this means that the Empire can camp outside and shoot down the Rebels with wild abandon, an issue which will hopefully be rectified come the final release of the game. Aside from this flaw, though, I believe that while Walker Assault may not be as perfectly balanced as we’ve come to expect from our shooters, there’s a strong argument to be made for this mismatch actually providing a much more exciting experience, and one that would be considerably reduced if Walker Assault was altered to fall in line with more traditional multiplayer modes.
The inherent risk involved with creating a competitive game mode that grants one team an advantage is whether or not it will lead to many quitting before a match has even begun, thus causing the game type to become underpopulated. However, I found myself actively willing the game to put me on the side of the Rebels, as even though the Empire have an easier life as they only have to concern themselves with killing the good guys, it’s far less satisfying to gain a victory as them than it is their rivals. There’s nothing quite like taking an AT-AT down with your Snowspeeder’s tow cable in the dying moments of a game, or standing alongside your comrades and relentlessly pelting the walkers with laser fire while X-Wing fliers give their lives to the cause by crashing into them headfirst.
I hope that the rewarding feeling of winning as the Rebellion isn’t diminished come the release of the final game, and that Battlefront‘s community doesn’t abandon the game mode just because they’re less likely to gain that extra XP when they’re placed in the shoes of the heroes. I’ll take a fun game type over obtaining arbitrary in-game currency any day of the week.
