STAR WARS™: Battlefront Classic Collection Review

STAR WARS™: Battlefront Classic Collection

Developed by: Aspyr

Published by: Aspyr

Date of Release: March 14, 2024

Price: $34.99

Well, it was too good to last I suppose. Coming hot off the heels of the AMAZING Tomb Raider I-III remaster from last month, Asypr has chosen to fling off it's trousers and drop perhaps the biggest turd of a remaster so far this year, in the STAR WARS™: Battlefront Classic Collection. Taking Battlefront I and II, two timeless classics, Aspyr has managed to botch nearly every aspect of this remaster. From overinflating the filesize to around 8 times the original by using uncompressed shoddy AI-upscaled textures, to leaving out important accessibility options for certain controls (hope you don't need to invert the y-axis!), Asspyre (sic) has managed to set the original games on fire, and then piss on their smoldering corpses. 

One of the first things you'll notice is how the games don't really look much different from the originals. Despire taking up a whopping 60+GB on PC, and 30+GB on the Nintendo Switch, all that AI upscaling has done a bare minimum of difference. Then you'll notice that Aspyr has applied their trademark vert- presentation for "widescreen" by cropping the top and bottom of the picture and stretching what's left to fill the screen. Battlefront II has it's cutscenes missing, and what cutscenes there are are squashed and stretched out of proportion, and rather washed out looking as well. It's just an all around poor presentation. And that's before we get into the gameplay itself.

Asspyre's gaping arse.

One of the most common accessibility option in first/third person games is the ability to invert the Y-axis for aiming. This stems from the natural feeling of tilting your head back to look up, and tilting it forward to look down, which is mimicked by the thumbstick or mouse movements when using inverted aim. For those of us who have our brain wired that way it's just natural and intuitive, but there is no option at all, and the infantry and vehicle axis are non-inverted, however starfighters are locked to inverted which is natural for flight controls, but it is also pissing off those who prefer it the other way. On top of that there is a fair amount of input lag on the Switch version which makes things even more awkward.

Yep, that's a pretty big tur-- no wait, that's Jabba. Sorry Jabba.

Then there is the main reason that 99% of the fanbase bought this game: multiplayer. It's what the games are designed for. So of course Asspyre launched the game with only 3 servers available which have collapsed under the weight of the masses queuing up, and at the time of this writing are still buckling under the strain. Even when you CAN get connected the lag is unbearable, with players just blinking in and out of existence, or bouncing about like pinballs on crack. For some godforsaken reason Asspyre has decided this experience is worth paying $35 for, but if you're on the PC you can just purchase the originals for $10 each and just get better graphics and functionality with the plethora of fan patches and mods available out there. Plus you've got $15 left over to spend on pizza. Now THAT's a deal!