When Dice announced the Night on Endor update for Star Wars: Battlefront 2 final week, you didn’t must look far on-line to see would-be stormtrooper gamers proudly declaring their intent to mow down a thousand fuzzy little bear-folk. Today, their bravado places them on the prime of the teddy bears’ picnic menu. In the brand new (and sadly time-limited) Ewok Hunt multiplayer mode, it’s the Ewoks doing the looking, and so they’re frighteningly good at it.
Weird because it sounds, the Ewok Hunt mode takes the favored Infection/Zombie format and reworks it into a real Star Wars survival horror expertise for Battlefront 2. Up to 19 stormtroopers want to carry out till an evacuation shuttle arrives, though when and the place it’ll seem isn’t indicated on the HUD till the ultimate moments of the mission. All you understand for certain is that it is advisable survive, and there’s one thing on the market looking you.
It’s very darkish (and simply to maintain it that approach, the brightness slider is locked) and stormtrooper gamers are locked to first-person view. Their solely actual technique to see what’s happening is a too-narrow flashlight that won’t solely blind fellow troopers however has a really restricted self-charging battery. You’d assume once you’re solely being stalked by a single Ewok, there’s not a lot to fret about, however between its capability to scatter your squad with a sack-full of Wisties (little flaming fairy-things) after which choose off stragglers, it rapidly turns into nerve-wracking.
Once you’ve misplaced one squad member – and it’ll in all probability occur prior to later – you’re out of the blue up in opposition to two Ewoks, then three, and so they carry on respawning whilst you don’t. Before lengthy you end up more and more helpless to guard your fellow troopers from dying round you, firing wildly into the darkness at what you assume appeared like a shadow in opposition to one thing glowing within the background. You assume you hit one thing, after which thud. Oh, that’s a spear behind your head. The probability to then play as an Ewok out of the blue feels empowering.
Terrifying Ewoks apart, Battlefront 2 actually does appear to have discovered its footing as of its final main replace. Dice made good on their phrase, and whereas loot crates technically nonetheless exist within the sport as a method by which to be rewarded random beauty goodies, they’ve been decoupled solely from each the development mechanics and the premium storefront. As of the Night on Endor replace, now you can purchase Gems (a secondary, premium foreign money) with actual cash as soon as extra, however they will solely be spent on direct purchases of alternate character skins.
It’s not good (the marketing campaign is a bit repetitive, and the hero/automobile spawn system rubs some gamers up the fallacious approach), however that is the Star Wars: Battlefront 2 that ought to have launched again in November of final yr. Considering that I’ve by no means needed to wait greater than about two seconds for a 40-player match, I contemplate the enhancements neither little, nor too late and Dice have reconfirmed they’re in for the long-haul, too. A second season of free new maps, modes, characters and so forth is because of be unveiled quickly, almost definitely primarily based round subsequent month’s Young Han Solo movie.
