Split screen in Star Wars: Battlefront

Josh Riley
1/26/2016, 11:59p.m.
Tweet to: @Slickster_Mag

Star Wars: Battlefront on PlayStation 4.

For anybody who is familiar with the Star Wars: Battlefront series, you may have noticed that the split screen options aren’t what they used to be when compared to the prior games in the Star Wars: Battlefront line. In the first two games, there were plenty of modes and maps to choose from for split screen cooperative, whereas the new Battlefront has seemingly all but cut ties with the old style of split screen gaming, leaning more to the more popular online gameplay.

Modes such as Conquest, Capture the Flag, and the popular Space Battles from the second Battlefront have been eliminated for local split screen cooperative. If you are not familiar with the Conquest mode, it’s a cross between a team death match and a zone capturing where you stay inside the limits of a flag and capture the area for your team; you could play it online or locally with AI bots. A variant of the old conquest mode does exist for local split screen gameplay; however, it’s not cooperative only head to head.

Not that playing against your friend is a bad thing.

It’s just confusing that EA would only make that mode, a normally cooperative capable mode, only head to head. Before it seems like I’m not a fan of the new Battlefront and I’m cutting it down, I will say that they did a good job as far as single player modes go, and they didn’t exactly cut out split screen entirely, they just didn’t do justice to the prior games. There is a Survival mode that has been introduced, but it would seem that the Survival mode didn’t get as much attention as it should have. If you haven’t played it, the Survival mode is essentially just that: surviving waves of enemies along with other side objectives that you don’t necessarily have to beat to complete the mission. Instead of the plethora of maps the previous games have offered, there are only four maps that you can select from for the survival mode.

Visually, the maps are astounding and, by all means, phenomenal, but great graphics don’t make up for the lack of maps to play on. With that said, the ability to choose what blaster you get to go into battle with is a really cool new feature that didn’t exist in the prior games. So, there are little improvements like that that exist that are a bonus. Hopefully, some more maps for the survival mode will be introduced as downloadable content (DLC). It is understandable that doing split screen cooperative gameplay just isn’t a relevant piece to games anymore with the online capabilities that we now possess, it’s just sad to slowly see the end of playing games with friends in person. If you don’t mind the lack of split screen cooperative modes, then you will really enjoy the online multiplayer, which contains many more map options than split screen has to offer.