Much like Goldeneye 64 changed the landscape of the FPS genre in the 90s, Star Wars Battlefront and its sequel were instrumental in defining console gaming in the online landscape. It was one of my first online games on the original Xbox, and one that battled it out for my attention with the likes of Halo 2 and Rainbow Six 3. Needless to say, I had high expectations for this collection, in hopes of reliving some of my fondest online memories – even if it was through those fancy rose-tinted glasses. Unfortunately, even nostalgia isn’t enough to keep this package afloat.
For those who never experienced what this package has… or should have offered, it throws the player into massive battles akin to those found in the Battlefield franchise set in the Star Wars universe. There isn’t much of a narrative outside of the standard good vs. bad plot of the films – even its solo mode is essentially playing the PvP modes with bots – it’s the large-scale combat that was simple yet deep enough for casual and hardcore gamers alike that kept us coming back. You know you’re dealing with a certified banger when people are still playing the originals on PC almost 20 years later. Unfortunately, it seems that this remains to be the best way to do it if possible.
What should have been an easy slamdunk release that simply ported over the original games with all of their associated DLC in a single package is somehow one of the worst releases thus far of 2024. All I wanted was the exact same experience, one that I could easily still play on my Xbox One Series X through backward compatibility sans online play, with the option to take it online. What I got was something where nearly every aspect other than the option to register my copy of the game is broken in one area or another.
As of this writing, there are currently only three dedicated servers per game in the package, meaning if more than 100 or so people are playing, it’s going to be a problem. While you can join other servers, these are plagued with extreme levels of rubber banding, infinite loads, and just about any other connectivity-based issue you can name. These issues also appear in the dedicated lobbies here and there, but to a much lesser extent. There is also the fact that you cannot group up prior to searching for a lobby and it is currently hit or miss whether Xbox Live registers that you’re in a game where others can be invited; I am not sure if this is on Microsoft or Aspyr, but I’ve heard similar complaints from friends playing on PC or PlayStation since its release. If you were hoping to play locally, the split screen option has also been dumbed down from four players to two, so don’t bank on that being a suitable replacement.
As of this writing, the sweet spot for avoiding the online issues seems to be a max of 10 players – any more and it’s a problem, and any less means mostly just shooting bots, which is the same experience you can get for a fraction of the price. Whether you are playing solo offline in the narrative mode or online, the bots are a huge problem due to how awful the AI is. Since most games will be won or lost based on the reinforcement levels, it’s easy to lose even when you’re cleaning house because the AI has a nasty habit of just walking off ledges or standing right in front of a tank shooting at the floor or admiring the sky. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to this as the difficulty has no bearing on their focus or deadliness – even hard bots act like they are brain-dead zombies.
Visually, you’re essentially getting the same experience now that you did in the early 2000s, just in a widescreen format with slightly upscaled visuals, albeit with some issues here as well. These are mostly cosmetic glitches where there are missing textures, character limbs are stretched and bent in awkward angles where the uber-powered Jedis in the second entry have their lightsabers jutting out of their heads or torsos at all times, or in some cases your gun is invisible which can make aiming outside of ADS kind of troublesome. I’ve also noticed a handful of weapons that don’t actually seem to shoot anything at all, so it’s kind of difficult in these situations to see whether or not your hits are landing, or if they are even traveling at all. It’s almost laughable at times, and in a few instances came out in my favor as I was playing a capture-the-flag match where I was controlling a Jedi who miraculously gained the ability to jump over and over again midair, clear across the battlefield to grab the enemies flag and rinse and repeat this until I had nabbed my first and quickest win in the history of all of Battlefront.
The controls are also abysmal at times, mostly when it comes to the lack of or forced inversion, depending on what you’re doing. This was a quality-of-life improvement added when the games were ported over to the OG Xbox version that was seemingly left out here, but it makes jumping into one of the various vehicles a crapshoot on whether you’re going to be able to use it effectively or not since some of them will handle normally and others are inverted and there’s really no way to determine which is which until you’re in the cockpit.
Adding insult to injury, this is by far one of the most bloated and unoptimized games released this generation. The originals clock in at 3GB each, whereas at its largest after the first update, this was taking up 90GBs of my internal storage that later was brought down to a still staggering 58GB, which for those of us keeping track is larger than Elden Ring, Dishonored 2, and Skyrim. This is inexcusable, especially taking into account that this has to be installed on your already limited internal hard drive.
As it stands, the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection is nothing more than a shameless cash grab that will eat up your money and your hard drive space and spit out nothing but frustration and annoyance in return. While it may be patched into a somewhat playable state in the future, it’s currently in a state that I couldn’t recommend even at a deep discount.
3 out of 10
Pros
- A Complete Offering of Both Battlefront Games
- A Widescreen Presentation
Cons
- Horrible Online Play
- Wonky Controls Due to Lack of or Forced Inversion
- Gameplay and Visual Bugs Galore
- Takes Up Massive Amounts of Storage Space
Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection was developed and published by Aspyr. It is available on NS, PC, PS4, PS5, X1, and XSX. The game was provided to us for review on XSX. If you’d like to see more of Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection, check out the official site.
Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.
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