Battlefield 1 - DICE, gas attacks, biplanes, cavalry, bayonet charges

I was pretty interested in the single player too…but then I started MP and SP was forgotten. I think I made it through a couple of the campaigns and then got bored. MP is so good in this that it’s hard to compare.

Even against strangers?

What makes it so good?

And what game mode should I try? (I hated the beta. It was nothing besides trying to take down a train and constantly dying, or trying to find vehicles and never finding any except the ones the enemies or teammates were using).

Yeah, just about all my games are with strangers, except the rare times Merryprankster & I are both on & playing. Just the overall gameplay has a great feel to it for me. I can jump in, play a few rounds, do some bombing runs, find a decent squad to take objectives, etc.

I like the regular Conquest mode the best, though the new Operations mode is pretty good too. Everyone has a fair shot at the vehicles as you can pick them from the respawn screen pretty easily. When starting a game it actually seems to help to have an SSD or hybrid as I always seem to load quicker.

The only map I really dislike is the non-beta desert map. They rebalanced it since launch but it still doesn’t feel right to me. Haven’t tried any of the newer ones though.

I concur with Rowe that BF1 is superb if you are flying solo in a multiplayer shooter. I think the huge team sizes and lack of complex role interactions make it easier to play anonymously. Coordination is simple and effective unlike other games with fewer players when the team needs to be highly coordinated to succeed.

I still have more fun when I play with Rowe, but it’s not like Overwatch where I refuse to play unless I have a couple teammates.

Note: there are people who loved the beta, that was already what they considered ‘good’.

?

No doubt. I didn’t mean to offend you.

Thanks. I’ll try to give multiplayer a try tonight based on you and Rowe’s recommendation. I also asked my XB1 owning friends to download it for the free weekend, so I might actually get to try it with people I know.

By the way I played the single player campaign last night for a couple of hours and came away really impressed. Pretty brilliant of them to start the game the way they did, and then start you off in a tank campaign. That’s a lot of fun. Do tanks work in a similar manner in multiplayer?

Well, kind of. They sort of work the same way, but it all depends on who is driving the tank. You might get a player that’s a kickass tank driver, or you might get an idiot that spends the whole match driving into walls and ditches.

Speaking of which, I love the tank physics and feel. The way you see the tracks coated in mud when you’re driving through the muck, it really sells the idea that the tank should slow down. And the way they introduced you to the idea in the cutscene that the tank would just drive over the trenches, and the way it breaks wooden planks and structures, and how brick walls fall apart when you drive your tank into them. The audio is also part of selling it. You can hear the wood as it splinters and bricks in such a clear crisp sound.

These tanks feel much more powerful to me than the ones in World War 2 games. I think they are trying to portray that idea in the campaign too, that the few tanks were a big factor. Possibly because anti-tank weaponry was not as common in WWI?

The destructibility got a HUGE upgrade in BF1 and people don’t talk about that enough! BF1 basically has BF2:BC levels of destructibility, pretty much everything you see that’s a building or structure in the multiplayer maps can be taken down to almost nothing.

So as for tank: try driving it through walls and buildings.

Great point! I’m so used to everything going boom that it’s second nature by now.

I think the destructibility is less obvious because only assault can really blow things up effectively, and even then, only when equipped with the anti-tank gun.

(support has the HE crossbow, which is neat and underutilized…)

Thanks god I didn’t buy this game, I’m seeing there aren’t 48 players conquest servers. Yuck.

I’m loving this game so much.

I finished the level where you are descending into the village to try to find sparkplugs for the Tank. The fear… the fear they showed by the characters as they realize they’re probably done for, I found it really compelling. It made me realize that developers have in recent years perhaps tried to do away with the fear because they want to avoid narrative dissonance. (After all, every player character is a walking death machine, right?) But because it’s so rare now, I found it a great way to set the mood.

And the whole level was just brilliant. Sniping with a silenced sniper rifle from the top of a windmill was so empowering. And then on the second windmill, I completely screwed up and had to improvise. I improvised poorly, and used up all my ammo in killing the rest of that group. And then for the rest of the level, I was scrounging ammo from the enemies I killed, trying to sneak up on some to club them from behind, trying to snipe others at point blank range when a sniper rifle is all I could scrounge up from someone.

The level ended with me having five bullets for 3 enemies I was trying to sneak up on that were across a little ravine from me. I was trying to sneak across the bridge when one of them started turning around. I had to make a split decision: try to start the shooting, or try to hide? But hide wear? I jumped over the edge into the ravine. It worked! I didn’t get spotted. But before I could actually sneak up on them to try to club them, I got a really good sniping opportunity, so I actually drew a bead on them one at a time and sniped all 3. I did miss with 2 bullets, so my last bullet was used to headshot the last enemy. Ah. So glorious and satisfying. And almost none of it was scripted. It was all game systems.

This game is fucking brilliant.

Always been a big stealth game fan so was weird but then turning fun to realize I was sneaking around back stabbing guards and using silenced weapons in a BF game. It’s not Dishonored or a Metal Gear game depth but still a nice addition to what is usually just running, shooting, and lots of explosions.

Can confirm this. The game you start a match is not the same map you end the game. Destroyed buildings, craters, all that slowly shape gameplay. Its similar to BF2BC levels, with much better technology.

I finished the Tank campaign, and started the flying campaign.

Oh man, this is so much fun. This kind of reminds me of the old days on my Amstrad when you bought a game that was essentially four or five games in one. That’s how it felt anyway, since different aspects of the game had different gameplay and each one felt so different that it felt like it’s own game.

The air campaign was great. And the Italian one-man-killing-machine campaign was great too.

Now I have to make a decision. I have $54 in my xbox account. I could spend $50 and get the Battlefield 1-Titanfall 2 deluxe bundle. Or I could wait a couple of weeks and get the new Mass Effect instead. I kind of wish there was a way of knowing how the new Mass Effect is turning out.

Either way, this was a really enjoyable free preview weekend. I wish I’d gotten to try multiplayer, but there was not real opportunity that came along when I was in the mood for multiplayer.

I agree that the tank and air campaigns were great. It completely ran out of gas for me during the next one, where you play an Aussie I think.