Star Wars Battlefront: Death Star Review

"Space Battles?"

Multiplayer

After what I considered a great DLC pack featuring the glowing clouds of Bespin things are turned down considerably as we head to the Death Star. Taking place on one of the most iconic set pieces of Star Wars we get to fight inside and around the Death Star. This is first off done during ground combat combat with a couple of Blast (team deathmatch) maps. These maps are absolutely horrible being tiny spaces of combat and lacking any sort of unique detail. One distinct part of this was a long tunnel that led off the map and was just a white wall. The maps are basically a series of small corridors in the Death Star lacking any sort of spirit. I also had numerous issues of terrible spawns since the maps are too congested often appearing in the open space or in front of enemies. The set of Blast maps were bizarre and I could tell that little thought was put into these.

Opposing the awful Blast maps we're given a space battle scenario over the Death Star which was neat, but nothing we haven't felt before over planets. The big draw for this pack is the Battle Station playlist which is a three part battle for the Death Star. The Empire attempts to defend the moon (space station) from the Rebel assault across space and inside. This is mostly in favor of The Empire as the Rebels progress very little while on the assault. This mode was a decent change of pace, but it didn't quite capture the feeling I was hoping for in regards to space battles. While it presented an open area of combat it still felt very closed in and focused, being no different than tied together maps from the regular experience.



Aside from the maps we also have an assortment of new weapons, toys and heroes to use as well. The heroes start with Chewbacca that brings a large thundering presence to the battlefield with his powerful Wookie Crossbow. Opposing the Wookie is Bossk, a fierce bounty hunter and actually I'm glad he's gotten a shot here. Both are somewhat similar in design being larger than the previous heroes and it's nice to see some unique models being added. New vehicles include Luke Skywalker's Red-5 X-wing and Darth Vader's Tie Advanced which are authentic. The new set of weapons include the TL-50 Heavy Repeater; K-16 Bryar Pistol, Medical Droid and a Laser Trip Mine. These are alright additions, yet they don't dramatically alter the battlefield.

The Conclusion

I was ultimately disappointed by the selection of maps for the Death Star DLC. When you take such an authentic and straight forward location you would expect them to do something special with it. The Blast maps are absolutely awful and I'm not sure why they even bothered making them. While these actually take away from the experience the three part Battle Station is a neat expansion on what already exists. It's incredibly one-sided towards the The Empire and this shows in combat as The Rebels have a hard time getting progression. While it's different, the game mode really just stitches together maps that we've already played and the space battles felt too focused. This takes away from the open world feel of space battles they were trying to emulate and it just wasn't exciting. I'm sure some might enjoy taking on the Death Star, but I felt it was a disappointing DLC pack.

Star Wars Battlefront: Death Star Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by 47

Rating Overall: 5.5