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! 

Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Switch Review

Tomb Raider I-III Remastered

Developed by: XProger

Published by: Aspyr

Date of Release: February 14, 2024

Price: $29.99

Back in the good old days of 1996, PC gaming was really starting to enter the realm of real 3D games rather than the sprite based affairs of Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. Games such as Descent and Quake had really made an impact, and proved the power of polygons beyond a doubt. Tomb Raider exploded onto the scene with it's third-person 3D exploration and action, choosing to show the main character on screen at all times, rather than viewing the game through their eyes as FPS games of the era chose to do. And what a choice that was, as the main character in question was none other than Lara Croft, who would immediately become the face of 3D action/adventure gaming for quite some time. With Tomb Raider II and III hitting the scene in the coming years, Lara's status in the 3D action scene was set in stone. And now Aspyr has brought that original trilogy to modern systems, with a decent glow-up for Lara to boot.

Here's the kicker though: Aspyr has been pushing out half-assed "remasters" for some time now, and they have all been pretty much colossal piles of jank, basically taking community-made patches incorrectly applying them to games that have been quickly and poorly ported to consoles without much thought to things such as graphical aspect ratios and proper optimization. A perfect example of such a scenario can be seen in their "remasters" of Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, both of which took the games original 4:3 aspect ratio and simply chopped the top and bottom off of the image to make it "widescreen", losing quite a bit of the viewport and first person weapon model in the progress. Third person view modes are just as bad, cutting off visibility for the legs of the character models.

Fortunately however with Tomb Raider I-III Remastered that is not the case this time around, as Aspyr had wisely decided to hire someone who actually gives a shit to oversee the project for them. Thanks to the work of fan modder Timur Gagiev, AKA XProger and his team, the Tomb Raider Trilogy has actually been treated with the care and respect it deserves, basing the remaster on his previously unauthorized personal remaster project. It may be shocking, but for once Aspyr has not shat the bed with one of it's remasters. Tomb Raider is definitely the series to finally break the Aspyr curse.

All three games in the trilogy have been overhauled with upscaled cinematics, redrawn textures, 60fps gameplay and much needed modern controls (you can choose between modern and tank controls in the settings), however at the click of a button you can switch back to the original pixelated software-rendered 30fps experience at any time you wish. Comparing the old look to the new is very much impressive, with the character models and a fair amount of the level architecture getting an impressive boost as well. Add to that a photo mode that can be used to create some very interesting shots, and this is quite an impressive package, and one that is well worth the asking price. Anyone who is a long time fan of Tomb Raider should pick this collection up immediately, and those who want to experience Lara Croft's adventures for the first time would be hard pressed to find a better way to get started than this fine remaster.