The Force is strange with this one…

 

It has been a while since my last post and whilst there are many excuses for this blog’s lack of content over the last two months (general laziness, work, house work, bloody kids, life getting in the way, a healthy dose of writers block) my lack of output comes down to two reasons, one occurring before Christmas and the other after.

Before Christmas: Fallout 4 – My last post went into how I had fallen for Fallout 4’s charms in a big way. Well since that last post I played Fallout 4 pretty much exclusively up until Santa’s arrival. My thoughts being, “why write a blog when I could be exploring the wasteland?”. The Fallout fans amongst you will no doubt approve of my choice.

After Christmas: Star Wars Battlefront – Yep, that beautiful fat red bastard stuck a copy of this EA delight under my tree. And I’m hooked. Proper hooked.  My thoughts being, “why write a blog when I could be flying an X-Wing?”. In fact since unwrapping Battlefront, Fallout has been, dare I say it for fear of internet fury, pushed to the side and not touched since.

So there are my reasons for not putting pen to paper. But you don’t care about that anymore. Those who haven’t closed their browser in fury of my Fallout sacrilege now only care about why I am neglecting the RPG masterpiece.

Allow me to explain/defend myself. Whilst both offer completely different gamer experiences, the obvious multiplayer only (those single player “missions” are an insult to anything other than a tutorial) nature of Battlefront against the all-encompassing campaign of Fallout (I have played for 1 day and 15hrs and I’ve not even touched the sides), my main reasoning for opting to load up Battlefront, and the reason for this crazy comparison, has come down to the following:

It’s Star Wars. Good Star Wars. No shit prequel shenanigans here. This is based on the classic trilogy and that means an awesome nostalgia trip. Also, due to the release of the Force Awakens, I’m in kind of a Star Wars mood at present, well more Star Wars-y than normal. Put it this way, I also own Halo 5. Halo 5 is by far and away a better multiplayer game, with a wider variety of vehicles, guns, better designed maps and far better FPS experience. But as much as I love Halo, it’s not Star Wars.

Being a Stormtrooper is cool. “What’s cooler than being cool? Ice Cold” goes the Outcast song. Wrong. Being a Stormtrooper is and always will be. Why anyone “unlocks” any of the troopers without a helmet on is beyond me, they gave you the best character as a default. No amount of Fallout Power Armor is better than being a Stormtrooper.

The ships are awesome. Poke your Banshee. We all want to fly an X-Wing. Christ even 343 knew this when they made Halo 4. Halo 4’s last level is essentially their version of the Death Star trench run. We all want to fly X-Wings and Tie Fighters. What’s that? Race to a power up to be the Millennium Falcon?  Fuck yeah.

Just a quick game of… And this is the biggie. What I have loved the most about Battlefront is that you can have a quick game of Fighter Squadron, Walker Assault and so on. With Fallout there is no such thing. As soon as I load Fallout I know I’m saying goodbye to the next 4 hours, to the extent that I feel I now need to book out “Fallout Time” with my wife. This of course, is a load of rubbish because nine times out of ten my “quick game of Battlefront” turns into an all evening affair. But as each game normally only lasts 15mins tops I feel like I can walk away at any point and therefore have a get out, whereas I know undertaking a mission in Fallout can take anything between 1 and 3 hours. And no, I can’t quit mid-mission, anyone who says they can is a liar.

Being a Stormtrooper is cool. I did mention this right? I just want to make sure you got that.

And there you have it. However the thing I find strangest of all is not why I’m choosing Battlefront over Fallout, it is why I’m playing Battlefront at all?

Over recent years I have come to despise competitive multiplayer, particularly those of first person shooters. Whilst practice makes perfect, an evening of spawn, die, repeat is not my idea of fun. I prefer co-operative multiplayer with friends and some of the best, and funniest, evenings I have had involved a co-op campaign of Halo, Gears of War, Left for Dead etc. I have said previously that I am a massive Halo fan, yet whilst Halo 5’s multiplayer mode has been lauded (rightfully so in my opinion) I was never that bothered. It was all about the Campaign for me.

As Battlefront has no campaign, is 90% competitive multiplayer and I do spend most of my time in the spawn, die, repeat, circle of doom (except for Fighter Squadron. I am the nuts at Fighter Squadron), I should hate the thing but I don’t. I don’t know, maybe the Star Wars nostalgia will wear off and it will be soon become another multiplayer shooter that pisses me off.

All I know now is that the force has awakened (see what I did there?) in this 36 year old idiot and it is causing me to play something that I should hate. Ultimately it is not the radiation that keeps me out of Fallout’s wasteland, it’s that the battle in a galaxy far, far away has my undivided gaming attention.

Red 5 standing by.