Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection Review (PC)
Summary: An acceptable but ultimately underbaked re-release which doesn't justify its own existence, or its hefty price tag.
2.8
I've got a bad feeling about this.
The Star Wars Battlefront duology is, needless to say, an iconic staple of the mid-noughties gaming scene. Star Wars videogames even at that time had always had a history of being particularly good, and the Battlefront games were no exception, gaining praise from contemporary gaming publications, and now in 2024, they’re fondly remembered (and still played) by gamers worldwide. But this article is about Aspyr’s suddenly-announced Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection, released on the 14th of March. Not as much a remaster as a re-release, its announcement was met with both jubilation and well-placed skepticism, especially when the trailer appeared to be using a fan-made mod to represent some of the new additions. Despite this reviewer having been disappointed with one remaster this year already, I’m a massive fan of the old Star Wars Battlefront 2, so I (perhaps foolishly) went in with high hopes.
I will give it this much: The Classic Collection does run very well, being a pair of 20-year-old games (feel old yet?). The framerates are smooth, the gameplay still works nicely and both games now have a much-needed FoV slider, as well as previously Xbox-exclusive maps and characters now available on all platforms and the ability to play the incredibly-fun Hero Assault mode, which sees all of the Star Wars saga’s famous heroes and villains duke it out saber-to-saber.
Watch those wrist rockets.
I’ll start with the collection’s version of Battlefront 2 in particular, for reasons which will be explained later. Battlefront 2’s new coat of paint begins as early as initial menus. These are now visually more in line with the original console versions of the game, which is a welcome change indeed considering the cheap-looking, fixed-resolution menu of the original which didn’t scale nicely on modern PCs. Something about it, however, feels a little cheap and low-effort, which is a theme that continues throughout this review. Looking at the game’s new graphics, they definitely have been updated, and they do look better… but then again, so do fanmade AI-upscaled texture packs for other classic games, to which the graphics in this new release bear a frightening resemblance. In places they’re rather muddy. and UX elements have an odd haze around them which gives the impression (or perhaps, the suspicion) that they’ve been remastered by machine rather than by an actual artist, and while it does undeniably look good, they subsequently end up looking a bit hastily cobbled together, like a cheap mobile game.
I’ve discussed Battlefront 2 first because that seems to be where the bulk of the effort seems to have gone in this re-release. I feel this is why Aspyr have shied away from calling these games “remasters” – and where one of my most scathing criticisms of this collection lies. To put in bluntly, the version of Battlefront 1 in this collection is nearly identical to the original release. Graphics, gameplay, almost everything is seemingly wholly unchanged to the current Steam version of Battlefront 1, with the only changes being the aforementioned FoV slider and new maps (which are also available in Battlefront 2) as well as some slightly different font choices. It’s really disappointing when, in what’s supposed to be an updated re-release of two games, the effort only seems to have gone into updating one of them. It makes me wonder why they bothered including it at all.
Don’t set for stun.
I also must wonder why they bothered releasing this collection as a whole separate entry in players’ libraries when it’s practically little more than an update. The above mentioned updates are pretty much everything that’s been done to the games that I could see – so it’s rather questionable at best that it’s being sold for a price closer to that of a new game than a remaster: £29.33. That’s just over £5 less than Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game: a new release from just a few weeks ago. Just under £30 seems very steep for a remaster in the first place, let alone how little this duology offers, especially to PC players who may well already own both games in the collection.
Final Thoughts
The best I can say about the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection is that it isn’t bad. The technical updates mean it’s the best way to play SWB2 Classic 2005 now, but only by a hair’s breadth, and it’s by no means good enough to be worth paying nearly £30 for. The game itself is still an all-time classic, but the textures in Battlefront 2 look like Aspyr just ran the old ones through ESRGAN a few times; they look marginally more crisp for certain, but also strangely muddy. Not to mention that these tweaks to Battlefront 2 represent the vast majority of what you’re paying for; the updates to SWB1 are so paltry that one would at first glance think it’s completely unchanged. If you already own the originals on PC then in its current state you aren’t really missing much by skipping this poorly-conceived pair of re-releases. If you must pick this up though, either wait for a deep discount, or buy it on Switch, where the upgrades will likely be better felt.
About the Author
Edward Gosling Ed has been playing games since he was in primary school, and now has a Steam library of over 2000 games, only a fraction of which he has actually played!
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