One of the biggest surprises of last month’s Nintendo Direct was Aspyr Media’s Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection. As a compilation of two of the most beloved Star Wars games of all time plus some bonus maps and characters, fans were eager to revisit their childhood.
Unfortunately, the final product has been nothing short of a complete mess. Following today’s launch of the Battlefront Classic Collection, players quickly took to the internet to report widespread issues with the re-release. At the time of writing, the Steam version of the game has a “Mostly Negative” rating based on nearly 2,000 reviews.
The most recurring complaint stems from repeated connectivity issues, with people noting that there were only three servers available amid nearly 10,000 players on Steam alone. Battlefront Classic Collection supports 64-player matches on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox consoles, Nintendo Switch and PC, although cross-play isn’t available.
Naturally, this meant that swaths of players simply couldn’t even join a single game. Worse still, those who did found the matches unplayable. Steam user Kamaji noted that in one of Battlefront‘s most popular modes, Heroes vs. Villains, no one could join the former side, leading to no one for the latter team to actually fight. Another Steam reviewer, nightnight, said players just weren’t spawning in general.
Players have also been reporting minimal aim assist, bugged hitboxes, broken split-screen multiplayer on Xbox Series S, instant crashes, poor ping, stuttering, missing cutscenes in the campaign and more.
At the time of writing, Aspyr hasn’t addressed the issues on social media, with its most recent activity on X (Twitter) only being a retweet of Nintendo of America’s post about the launch of the game.
However, this isn’t the first time the company has bungled a Star Wars title. Last year, the company cancelled free DLC for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II that was set to add previously cut content for the first time on consoles. While it claimed this was due to the objections of an unnamed third-party and offered other free Star Wars games as compensation, this doesn’t change the fact that the KOTOR II re-release was sold for months under the promise of this DLC. This even led Aspyr to be hit with a class-action lawsuit.
Aspyr was also the original developer of theStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake that was first announced in 2021 but has since never been shown again. The following year, Bloomberg reported that the game had been “delayed indefinitely” after Aspyr “abruptly” fired the design and art directors. Development of the remake later shifted to Saber Interactive, which was also owned by Embracer Group but just this week went independent and retained the rights to keep making the game. It remains to be seen whether this remake will ever see the light of day.
For now, though, fans are understandably upset about how Aspyr has botched the Battlefront Classic Collection. It’s the latest in a seemingly neverending string of shoddy re-releases of older fan-favourite games, including Xbox’s Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Rockstar’s GTA Trilogy and Konami’s Metal Gear Solid Master Collection.
Sadly, the Force isn’t with Battlefront Classic Collection at all.
Image credit: Aspyr
Via: IGN
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
