8 brilliant, weird moments from the Star Wars Battlefront beta

Roll of the DICE

Like the Battlefield games it builds on (but does NOT imitate), Star Wars: Battlefront throws up some incredible moments. Play for long enough, and you'll always see something that has you scrabbling to get it recorded, in the hope that you'll become the next viral star.

Of course, there are a million videos better than yours - as proven by the selection of our favourites that follows. Skills, spills and glitches all made the Battlefront beta a brilliant place to spend a weekend. If you've got any favourites you want to share, pop them in the comments - we're always on the lookout for more.

Look, let's just get this one out of the way - you've probably seen it, but this has become the beta's defining image. Battlefront's alternate-universe Hoth battle invites many questions about how the Star Wars universe would play out afterwards, but none more so than this, as Luke's quasi-religious prescience deserts him and he's crushed like so much Sunday morning kebab meat under an AT-AT's iron hoof. Score one for the Dark Side.

The Force must be brought into balance and, luckily, Luke's not the only one prone to a lapse in concentration. Battlefront's heroes are graceful, leaping tanks but they are, ultimately, tethered by gravity - which tends to make you only pay attention to what's on your level. BIG MISTAKE, ANAKIN.

When the two heroes meet, the game likes to throw them into a sparking mini-QTE to decide who comes off better. A lot of the time, however, entire armies have forced lasers into each famous characters' skin for the best part of a minute, meaning they don't get a chance, and collapse simultaneously, leading to a beautiful evocation of the intangible tie between father and son, as well as the kind of camera shot and choreography we're more used to seeing from videos for the Backstreet Boys' slow jams.

For all its froth and madness, the Hoth Walker Assault centres around a single tug of war. The Rebels want to call in more Y-Wings, and the Empire wants to stop that from happening. Those Y-Wings drop Ion Bombs that allow the Empire AT-ATs to be damaged by weedy ground troops - but it turns out they work just as well as massive, invincible sky-bullets.

Those Walkers might seem like the map's one constant, their slow lumber to explosive victory for the Empire acting as portent and hourglass simultaneously - but it turns out they can throw up some surprises. Once in a blue moon, something goes wrong, they get stuck in the snow like some mad idiot sheep, and then things go nuts. I think it makes them all the more lovable.

Partner Spawning is a gamble - you could pop up with a head-start on the usual spawn point slog. Then again, sometimes your assigned buddy has vainly thrown themselves on a Thermal Imploder, and you appear just in time to be crushed into burning atoms (and, I'm extrapolating, sucked into a sort of Hell dimension, like what happens in Event Horizon). Thing is, some partners are more industrious than others, leading you to brilliant, juddering vantage points like this.

Ground troops have more power than they know - it's just using it correctly that's the problem. Once you learn your limits, however, you can do amazing things. Take this shot (from PC Gamer's own Samuel Roberts, no less) - concentration, knowledge and luck combine to make for a moment that, quite frankly, I'm angry ever happened, because I'll never do it. I present to you, the TIE Sniper.

20 players on a team seems like a lot, until you realise that Luke Skywalker can bring down a quarter of that number in a single special move. Are we absolutely sure that the Rebels are underpowered?