Game Changer

Battlefront II is a beautiful, expansive game and it's hard to believe it's now over three-and-a-half years old. It won me over from a rocky launch, evolving into an online / offline shooter that lets you take part in hectic battles across some of the most iconic Star Wars locations. For most of its life, however, it has also been a torturous multiplayer experience for the casual player.

I consider myself 'ok' at video games. If I put in the time and effort I believe I can even become 'quite good' at them. Playing against other human beings in a game like Battlefront II, however, is very different to wandering around on your own in something like SWTOR, and if you're not prepared for it the experience can be pretty traumatic.

Battlefront II's major mode at launch, Galactic Assault, has a breadth that just about allows less-experienced or more casual players to stay on the periphery of the action and have a good time, mostly. Any interaction with the objectives or the player enemy team in force, however, and it can quickly descend into: spawn, run forward for a few seconds, get killed, respawn, repeat.

I'll admit that Battlefront II fell out of favour with me for more than a year in recent times, largely because of this dynamic. I didn't have the time or inclination to learn in detail what I was doing wrong to compete with the really good players out there. I just wanted to jump into a Star Wars environment and shoot some stuff! The offline single player modes were a little basic compared to the scope of something like Galactic Assault, so that didn't really float my boat either.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I decided to give the game another try and found a new mode: Co-Op! (Note I am very much behind the times here and understand Co-Op is no longer 'new'!)

I had assumed, knowing nothing about it, that Co-Op would be four human players going up against map-based objectives. A bit like the multiplayer Strike mode but with enemy AI. Imagine my further surprise when I realised Co-Op was basically a mash-up of the large-scale Supremacy and Galactic Assault modes, with large teams of AI enemies and allies and four human players (all on the same side) thrown into the middle of it.

I'd finally got exactly what I wanted out of this game: the ability to dive in, not have to remember exactly how to play and have fun running around and shooting at things. Perfection.

The AI isn't super-intelligent, but it's come a long way since the launch of the game, and is suitably impressive to have fun with. And the introduction of your human teammates means there's still an element of strategy to be had: it's entirely possible to be defeated if you don't work as a team and end up splitting your energies.

I would say that Co-Op is good and demanding fun with a well-orientated team, but can be extremely difficult if the team is less experienced or divides its forces and becomes overwhelmed by the huge numbers of AI opponents that spawn.

No longer do I have to watch from the side-lines for fear of dying every few seconds...

Importantly, even in defeat Co-Op mode is exciting. It's fun to go down being swamped by twenty enemies. It's not fun being sniped by a single, jumping, rolling, too-much-time-on-their-hands human player in Galactic Assault... (Can you hear the bitterness?)

So Co-Op has completely changed how I look at Battlefront 2 and given me something of a renaissance with the game. It's the mode I now almost exclusively play. Every so often I dip into Supremacy or Galactic Assault just to see if I get a decent game, but I'm soon back in Co-Op mode. This is what I'm here for: relaxed, engaging fun. I don't want to be able to play the best at Battlefront 2, I just want to be able to play.