Wow.

No idea how I missed this but in the age of ChatGPT and LLM's, Eliza asked important and thought provoking questions of the player's own views of the technology, the collection of private intimate data of everyday people and how that can be used to help or hinder humans efforts for a better world rather than a thicker bottom line.

I played it start to finish on Steam Deck, took me 7 hours and would highly recommend.

Spent $43.49 on this stupid meme (because I am a stupid man) that I will use to torture as many friends as I can trick into playing this with me until the end of time. First showing/play through involved my roommate who had no idea what this was (it's now his very favorite game, of course) and our one friend who, like myself, is well versed in the early years of the Angry Video Game Nerd, who's video on this "game" gave it a new life and eventually led to this Definitive Edition (I imagine this is his Oppenheimer moment/legacy). Good trash, sure, that I'm surprised didn't bore me/us more. Unlike actual passionate works with the mostly dreaded/misused "so bad it's good" title this is just really embarrassing/worrisome when you think about it's inception. Still, I look forward to torturing many more friends with a prime example of something that should've been left in the past.

1 star, obviously, but should be zero stars because of, you know, everything along with the addition of how much Limited Run Games sucks. Especially because of their added Plumb the Depths section, a bizarre, intentionally poor Doom(ish) knockoff used to unlock bonus content that should normally already be available once you complete the story but they needed to pad this thing out more given how short it is, which is maybe the stupidest thing I've ever seen in a "videogame". Looking forward to the day someone breaks into my apartment and as they're going through my physical Nintendo Switch collection they see Mario, Metroid, WarioWare, Tetris, Plumbers Don't Wear Ties. Can't wait to give this Best Narrative during Backloggd's Best of 2024 awards at the end of the year.

Far and away the most egregiously misguided attempt at myth-making in games history. This isn't the worst game ever. It's not the weirdest game ever. It is not the 'first American produced visual novel.' Limited Run Games seems content to simply upend truth and provenance to push a valueless narrative. The 'so bad it's good' shtick serves only to lessen the importance of early multimedia CD-ROM software, and drenching it in WordArt and clip art imparts the notion that this digital heritage was low class, low brow, low effort, and altogether primitive.

This repackaging of an overlong workplace sexual harassment/rape joke is altogether uncomfortable at best. Further problematising this, accompanying merch is resplendent with Edward J. Fasulo's bare chest despite him seemingly wanting nothing to do with the project. We've got industry veterans and games historians talking up the importance of digital detritus alongside YouTubers and LRG employees, the latter making the former less credible. We've got a novelisation by Twitter 'comedian' Mike Drucker. We've got skate decks and body pillows and more heaps of plastic garbage for video game 'collectors' to shove on a dusty shelf next to their four colour variants of Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl on NES, cum-encrusted Shantae statue, and countless other bits of mass-produced waste that belongs in a landfill. Utterly shameful how we engage with the past.

Bonus Definitive Edition content:
Limited Run Games is genuinely one of the most poorly managed companies on earth and I will never forgive them for giving me a PS5 copy of Cthulhu Saves Christmas instead of what I had actually ordered, a System Shock boxart poster. They also keep sending me extra copies of Jeremy Parish's books. Please, I do not need three copies of Virtual Boy Works.

Refunded it when I saw the negative impressions.
Bought it again to see for myself.
Immediately refunded again.

Man, what the hell. Xbox quick match multiplayer seems to keep routing me private matches that require a passcode. When I started my own match I found that the aiming is totally borked with a weird acceleration not present in the old version. And no one joined. Just a bummer.

This port is so bad.

It's already bad enough the file size for the collection is 60 gigs because of the uncompressed ai upscaled textures but the multiplayer barely works at all.

Instantly there's already audio bugs with BF2 being much quieter than 1 even at max volume settings as well as the loading screen sound from BF1 when loading into a map being incorrect (which is a sin.)

First few experiences of me playing this game started with me in BF1 doing quick join and joining a server requiring a password, next match directly after that has me join a match and the game instantly crashes.

Then I try BF2 quick match and end up on a match in Utapau on Conquest. The hit reg is terrible despite having my ping only being around 40 on the server and there was a glitch that me and several other people in the server experienced where when we on a respawn timer, it would just be stuck at 1 and never would go down.

The new textures and graphical changes don't look very bad and I like the upscaled hud and everything but the background cut scenes on Battlefront 2's menu that are upscaled look so horrible.

It's so disappointing because I love these two games but I'm gonna have to refund it because this is ridiculous for a +$30 dollar collection that really doesn't have anything better than the original games on PC. I'll probably only pick it up again on discount if the biggest issues are fixed.

How in the HELL did this release in the state it did when we have perfectly functional ports already available on PC? You are essentially paying $30 for a "fresher" online community and Xbox DLC you could have modded in, yourself.

Netcode is terrible, hits do not register as they should. PTP servers do not work. Aspyr's servers crash all the time. No online support for split-screen modes and lacking crossplay when these games and community really needed it. Utter trash and I would have this refunded in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the fact this was a birthday gift from a friend and he has to authorize the refund.

First Impressions: Online multiplayer is unplayable day one, but the singleplayer is as fun as I remember. These games have never looked so good either! Here's hoping they iron things out on the multiplayer front following such a rocky launch. Will update my rating based on those efforts.

Final Impressions: Look, I love the original Star Wars Battlefront games. If you're just trying to hop into Instant Action for a couple matches, play through the campaigns, or enjoy some classic local split screen multiplayer (a rarity nowadays), this collection might just be worth it, at least for us console players. It really is the most convenient way for me to enjoy what I love most about these classic games. As far as the online multiplayer, god, don't even bother. It's a disaster. I don't even bother, and you know what, for the reasons I listed prior, it doesn't bother me. I never really wanted to play these games online to begin with. But hey, if that was the main selling point for you, save your money. Hell, go buy both games individually on Steam. They're actually functional and it'll be cheaper too. For sake of fairness, regardless of my personal enjoyment of this title as a singleplayer experience, I gotta rate it with all of it's issues in mind. It's got the good, it's got the bad, and, dammit, does it have the ugly.

Brief, unrated, purely informational. This information should be accurate as of 3/14/24

I played on PC for about an hour. I can, at the current moment, wholeheartedly say I do not recommend this release to any PC players, and i would wait on a drastic sale for console players. Also, the game somehow uses over 60gb of storage.

While the game runs and looks better for modern systems than the original releases, it isn't by much, or enough to warrant the price. Single player experience is good, but the multiplayer experience is non-existent. Considering the biggest reason to even buy this game is in hope of having functional online multiplayer, this is a huge slap in the face especially for the pricepoint. There isn't even cross-platform online. There are a total of three (3) PC servers at launch, which cannot hold nearly enough players, and from what I understand, they are laggy servers.

I will update or remove this review when the main issue of matchmaking servers are addressed, but otherwise, think before you spend over $35 on this title.

I write this with a heavy heart.

I never played battlefront 1, so having that as part of the collection was nothing but a plus for me but if it had anything wrong with it compared to the original I wouldn't know. 1 is very basic. Its story mode is very barebones, its just a bot match with a slide, a character telling you your mission and maybe movie footage before it. Before I installed the update the movie cutscenes that were really low quality, maybe 360p at best. The update fixed it but the videos were choppy a lot of the time. That same update REMOVED the option to invert the Y axis and also corrupted my saves in both titles. In BF1 I was about 3 story mission in and 2 I just booted to check the menu since I wanted to play while it downloaded. Aspyr you are something else.

Battlefront 2 is one of my favorite and most played ps2 games and I'm happy that I seemed to reacclimate well. Also it has the real menu unlike that awful, lazy concept art that the originl pc version has which I checked last week. The movie cutscenes are also still here unlike in the pc version which again, I check last week, and wern't as choppy as in 1. So as for as I'm concerned this is a better version in that regard natively. Battlefront 2 also seemed like it had more work put into it when it came to the texture upscaling cuz it blew 1 out of the water but it has that issue where using a scope to zoom is still 4:3. Its not all sunshine and rainbows though. Just like Battlefront 1 there is no ability to invert aim despite it being in the older versions which I put in my ps2 to check. Some of the cutscenes cut off early despite me not pressing a button and the last cutscene on hoth didn't even have sound. Also the post mission 501st journals did not exist so I missed out on one of my favorite ones for post Felucia. Some of the heroes voice lines when you are able to play as them are cut off, usually the sith's "what is your bidding" is cut off. Right before I sat down to finish writing this I had the sound die on the main menu as well. I tested it after and its reproducible after leaving instant action. Aspyr might be some of the most inept devs I've ever seen. No wonder you were kicked off the kotor remake and couldnt get the restored content dlc for the switch port of kotor 2 dsepite it being part of your marketing campaign if you can't do something as simple as keep fucking cutscenes in games. They're also too stupid to compress cuz the game was 25gb, and there was zero reason they should have been. Not as bad as on pc where there game is 50.

One of the reasons I was interested in this collection was because it has the content from the xbox release I never had cuz I was a ps2 boy. Kit Fisto and Assaj Ventress were in Renegade Squadron so I got to play them there but never in BF2 proper. Kit was cool with his force ball but I found his moveset to be unwieldy and Ventress had this dual saber connected with a chain with throwing stars. I remember seeing claims that these versions of the characters were a stolen mod and I'd believe it. They don't even have voice lines. The maps were just maps from battlefront 1, I thought they were gonna be wholly new. Assault on all maps ended up being what I thought, force pushing people into pits. Assault on every map is still cool don't get me wrong but I was always sure there was a reason it was only on Mos Eisley.

I had no intention of playing the multiplayer initially as I couldn't give less of a shit about it but with all the complaints about it so I went to see for myself. I booted it up at 9 am on a Thursday and saw several full 64 player matches and many others with 50+. I counted 30 dedicated aspyr server choices among the player created matches. Tried 2 of the 64 player, my internet is comcast bad so it was pretty laggy even wired but hits were registering as I was getting kills and respawning worked. A 30 player lobby had less lag but still there. Whenever someone says something is unplayable, we should all know by now that they don't know what the word means.

This should have been a slam dunk, and EASY slam dunk. Battlefront 2 is still VERY fun to me and the new stuff, new to me damnit, freshened up a game I had over 100 hours in back in the day. However its just all around sloppy in presentation and every mistake the game makes reeks of not caring. Make no mistake, I'll be booting this one up for some splitscreen fun every now and again, but with how stacked the beginning of this year has been and how it WILL be later on, there are better things I can spend my time on like getting a dlc character ready for shadow of the erdtree. I would hope these issues get fixed but as far as I'm concerned its too little to late. You're a joke and a liar aspyr, you deserve the star wars license as much as EA does. Which is not at all.

Damn I despise aspyr. How do you fuck it up so bad?