Very fair comments. I find the chaotic and atomized action easy to get into and less stressful than a more organized, team-based approach; it requires less commitment and almost makes it into a solo game with lots of other players, albeit a game with little more than the mechanics of combat to propel it. As I usually just pick servers at random, and rarely play with a group, I don’t expect teamplay and therefore am not disappointed with its absence! I’ve always had a soft spot for DICE’s take on this genre, and IMO this is the best of their efforts so far, though I’ll never forget Wake Island.
I play online with another old man like me, my best friend. We try to always stick together because neither of us are very good shots or very twitchy. Usually when one guy dies the other tries to take out the killer. We always joke “it takes two old men to kill one of these kids”. Last night we were just getting destroyed and realizing even that’s not enough. I’m just around to provide atmosphere for the other players and soak it all in. Makes it that much sweeter when I pull off something cool like blow up a whole squad full of guys with a grenade.
Hasn’t Battlefield always been this way? My memory of BF:Vietnam and BF2 were that they could be just as chaotic. I’m not sure what they can do beyond Operations to make it less so. I wonder if it is more players teethed on CoD are more pervasive and so they pay no mind to squad/objective parts of the game.
Ooh, I had forgotten BF: Vietnam. That was a cool one too.
Great news. You just sold me on this game. I’ve been holding back because of the dominance of teams in games like these, but it’ll be refreshing to step away from that.
As an old guy, I’m crap at this game, especially in the larger maps with so many possible attack angles. So yeah, my stats suck, and I’ll likely never earn a single medal or unlock some glorious high level gun On the other hand, the maps are quite spectacular in scope and scenery, with all kinds of mini dramas playing out on what feels like a wide-screen Cinemascope. I’m half useful as a medic/suport with healing/resupply, and dropping mortars on defended points never gets old.
I really like Operations, with its huge maps and lengthy struggle for points. The cap/recap tension with medics running around, gas and fire everywhere, planes strafing, it’s quite glorious. I die all the time, but it’s still glorious as points change hands and defenders struggle to hold on. That Italian map with the bunker is crap, though. Ugh.
My other fave is Pigeon chase, which is much smaller and faster. Instead of ~ 30 minutes for a full Op or Conquest, you get a 7-10 minute blast in generally close quarters. I can equip a hip-firing loadout and rush around while still staying true to the team goals. Very quick time to death, but some very fun firefights and I like the city/village maps a lot.
I’m sure some organized team meta will develop which will make me even more outclassed, but I’ll have lost interest by then anyway. For now, it’s incredible fun despite my age-atrophied reflexes.
I don’t really find much comparison with CoD at all in this BF, and I play a ton of CoD. This is quite like previous BF’s in most regards, just updated. The games have always been quite dissimilar despite the genre they share and that seems to still be the case.
Yeah, I don’t see too much comparison to CoD either. That game is a completely different beast at this point. I think that the game is a bit more hectic than older BF games, but the whole “lets sneak around to point C that nobody is guarding” tactics that those TDM focused CoD games lack.
Honestly, this game reminds me a lot of BF1942, which was super hectic at times. Particularly the Secret Weapons maps.
The game is though, a LOT faster. I can see comparisons with the speed of the combat being closer to CoD games, but I still think the Battlefield flavor is heavy in this game. I also think that the squad mechanics, introduced many BFs ago, make for easier teamwork and collaboration. You don’t even have to talk to teammates to know the squad objective (if the leader is paying attention). The medic class is really fun to play, so there are plenty of people reviving teammates.
I think it is more hectic and a lot faster of a game, but I don’t think that it feels more like CoD to me, it just feels like a faster, more streamlined battlefield.
I am loving this so far, on PC.
For whatever reason the chaos and dying all the time just aren’t getting to me like it did in BF 3 and 4. The game just looks and sounds so great I don’t even care when I die. It’s all just so glorious! Had a great moment on that mountain map the other night. Managed to get the special weapon drop with the armor and the double barreled SMG and just tore up the mountain for almost 10 mins before the other team managed to take me down. That gun is just so much fun! Good thing it’s not a regular unlock though, its just crazy op.
I find the tankhunter to be my fav hero class.
Once I even took out a plane! :D
I’ve been watching a lot of RivalXFactor on twitch and his ability to snipe pilots and gunners out of the zepplins and planes is scary and hilarious. I’m just happy if I can manage to have a positive K/D and/or get enough points to level up lol.
Digital Foundry’s PC vs PS4 vs Xbox One.
it’s definitely the best anti-infantry sniper class XD
A few things DICE doesn’t get enough credit for in this game:
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Very solid destructability. Pretty much a return to Battlefield Bad Company levels of “(almost) everything you’d expect to blow up, blows up” This makes a Battlefield game!
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Persistent ground deformation from explosions. They nibbled at this in BF4 but here it’s represented in full. Dynamic battlefield craters so deep they can be used to hide from snipers and sneak up on people. The map terrain gets super chewed up like it would in a real battle, such that it affects gameplay!
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Total nerfing of the spotting / mini-map mechanic. Firing an unsuppressed weapon is no longer the kiss of death. You have to actually listen to figure out where threats are coming from. And scouts can spot properly with their signal flares, so spotting becomes a bit more of a class based ability, which is … logical. Finally you can play the game without feeling like you have to have a third eye constantly scanning the damn mini-map looking for threats!
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Dynamic weather that feels like a completely natural and integrated part of the maps. You’ll play these maps hundreds of times, so having a dynamic night, fog, rain, morning, and even storms on offer for each map, is HUGE. No longer is it the same exact map played the same exact way a hundred times, but 20-30% of the time you will have a different experience based on weather conditions that affects the gameplay. Instead of the same 6 maps, it is now 6 × 6 = 36 maps. And it’s sooo beautiful!
One of the things that bugs the shit out of me in this game is the marketing prominently featured the Harlem Hellfighters. The cover image features a black member of the Hellfighters, the super-deluxe version of the game comes with a statue of that soldier, the press announcement stuff all included material about the Hellfighters and how they got into WWI, one of the pre-order incentives is the Hellfighters Pack, etc.
Play the game and where is this soldier? Well, he narrates a bit of the beginning, and shows up in a cinematic at the end of the prologue mission, silently facing off against an enemy. Then he pops up in a cinematic at the very end of the campaign. That’s it. That’s all the Hellfighter you get. No story. No historical context. Just a bit of fluff. If you didn’t look up who the Hellfighters were on your own, you’d never know what a big deal it is to feature a black soldier on the cover of a WWI game.
I’m not asking for a 30-hour cinematic spectacle of the Hellfighters’ journey through prejudice and war, but this is just weaksauce. The pigeon gets a more emotional beat in the campaign.
I liked in the mission that you sneak through the enemy lines back to your base, you hear the german infantry talk about a regiment of americans that never get captured, and never allow their trench to be over-run, referring to the hellfighters.
But yeah, I was expecting a mission starring the hellfighters, but there is none outside of the prologue.
Yeah, that’s a fair criticism. The campaign is mostly unconnected stories, which is fine and part of the design, but there’s not even a story for the Hellfighters!
Also check this story out. Amazing:
Yeah, I thought the “Mud and Blood” story was going to be about the Harlem outfit. As good as they all are I think they should have had a story centered around them. Not doing that and making it your marketing effort just makes it look like they are getting some cheap publicity from it. Dissappointing.
Loving the operations game type for multiplayer here! It’s such a nice departure from the CoD killbox style multiplayer that is so prevalent these days. I’ve been wondering if I was fed up with multiplayer games these days, but turns out I just needed something that changed it up a bit.
As someone who had generally preferred COD to battlefield, in enjoying BF1 way more than the most recent COD games.
Operations is a cool mode, but the basic deathmatch mode is really solid, and actually plays like COD in a lot of ways. The old COD games, like COD2…
This game is solid. I’ll play COD MWR, but I see myself playing BF1 more than COD IW.