At launch, Star Wars Battlefront 2 and its predatory monetization represented everything wrong with modern gaming to legions of people that looked forward to playing it. EA removed real money transactions, but the damage was done. It reminded me of a similar situation with Evolve. That game crawled so that future asymmetrical titles such as Dead By Daylight could run in a loop continuously.
Those that stuck with Battlefront found one of the best Star Wars games in recent memory. If you ever watched one of those movies and wanted to fly a landspeeder, or bounce across the battlefield wreaking havoc as Boba Fett, your dreams came true gloriously.
But in most cases, you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. Then somehow, Palpatine returned. Battlefront 2 recently hit a concurrent player count of 35,000 on Steam. Not bad for a game nearly a decade old that was almost killed before it arrived through a bad lootbox plan.
Those who really played Battlefront 2 realized it is an incredible game. And that number of fans includes NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving, who recently streamed it on Twitch and like so many of us, called for Battlefront 3.
I wrote a bunch of those "Star Wars Battlefront 2 Needs to Die in A Fire" stories until I sat down and played it. Time stood still, and I was a 10-year-old kid popping womprats back on the Tatooine of my Louisiana backyard. I've been evangelizing for it ever since, and will continue to do so. There aren't a whole lot of eight-year-old games that make me put down WWE 2K25 for a minute.