Star Wars Battlefront's VR Mission Might Be My Favorite PSVR Experience

Best of all, it’s free for anyone who owns the base Star Wars: Battlefront game.

By Brian Altano

Star Wars Battlefront has seen a steady trickle of new content since it launched last year, spanning classic characters and planets from the original Star Wars trilogy, Jakku from the Force Awakens, and recently, Rogue One’s Scarif DLC. With the new Rogue One VR Mission, however, Battlefront might have some of its coolest post-release content yet.

Before now, experiences like PlayStation World’s Ocean’s Descent and Batman: Arkham VR were my default games to show uninitiated players how cool PlayStation VR can be. With the Rogue One VR mission, I have my new go-to. If you grew up with Star Wars and have always wondered what it’d be like to pilot an X-Wing through an asteroid field, take down waves of TIE fighters, and go head to head with a massive Imperial Star Destroyer, Rogue One VR is probably the closest you’ll be able to get right now.

Everything from the X-Wing hangar to the cockpit itself is a thrill to look at in VR.

The mission itself is pretty straight forward: form up with three other AI controlled X-Wings and protect a U-Wing as it travels through space towards increasingly larger perils. Alan Tudyk who voices K-2SO in the upcoming Star Wars: Rogue One lends his voice as the droid piloted U-Wing and your own character is voiced by either a male or female protagonist, depending on who you choose to be. Everything from the X-Wing hangar to the cockpit itself is a thrill to look at in VR. Looking left and right into space and seeing your X-Wing foils open and close, pulling up Luke’s targeting computer from A New Hope or physically looking behind you to see your own personal Astromech droid chirping and spinning behind your cockpit seat are all incredibly cool details as well.

If you’ve played lots of first-person VR stuff like Eve: Valkyrie and RIGS Mechanized Combat League, you might be a little disappointed to find that your X-Wing in Battlefront’s VR mission maneuvers a little slower than the vehicles in those games, meaning you won’t really find yourself in speedy and intense upside-down dogfights. However, the control scheme and pacing lends itself to a more comfortable VR experience in general, and if you’ve spent any time in the cockpit of a ship in any of Battlefront’s pre-existing flying modes, you’ll feel right at home.

Best of all, it’s free for anyone who owns the base Star Wars: Battlefront game either digitally or on disc and I’m really hoping it leads to future Star Wars VR missions from the developers at Criterion who put together this endeavor. I’d love to see a VR speeder bike chase, Battle of Hoth, or even Episode One podrace sequence down the line, but for now, Rogue One’s VR Mission is a great place to start, whether you’re new to VR or just looking for another one of a kind experience on PlayStation’s new virtual reality headset.

Let's block ads! (Why?)