World War 1, the war to end all wars, which directly preceded a second world war, and is widely considered one of the worst conflicts in history, playable now in the latest instalment in the Battlefield series. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that was both so much addicting fun and fundamentally broken at the same time. It is a wonderful quick paced shooter, and the sheer scale of the matches can cover the horrendous interface and load times. Its wild ride, where one minute I’m having a hell of time running down narrow streets with 20 other people while the other team does the same, both hoping a tank doesn’t round the corner, or a bomb doesn’t hit from above, and the next I’m trying to quit out of matchmaking but the 15 second window to do so was taken by a 16 second load time. I love this game, and you should buy it, if this review seems jumpy it is because I am taking breaks to play it.
Story
I have a special rule about games; I always finish the whole single player campaign before I play a single round of the multiplayer. It helps me learn the mechanics and get good at a more comfortable pace, and I don’t believe game developers should be able to skip out on the single player in favour of multiplayer. I still view video games as fundamentally single player experiences, I love multiplayer and especially co-op play, but a game needs to be something I can spend an afternoon on by myself, with or without internet, to unwind. Historically Battlefield games are pretty bad at this, not as bad as Call of Duty has gotten (CoD: Ghosts is one of the worst single player stories I have ever played), but Battlefield 3 is up there with terrible quick time events and poor, linear, heavily scripted, action sequences.
Battlefield 1 is thankfully not that. The campaign is fun, its well put together, interesting and spans several theaters of war. You fight in Verdun, you storm the beach at Gallipoli, and you play through a position as a member of Laurence of Arabia’s inner circle, as well as few others. The prize of the campaign though has to be the prologue. Set in a flailing American offensive in France, you go from point to point defending against an aggressive German assault. And each point you are simply instructed to hold x objective, and you do so until you die, at which point you are given the name of your character and their dates of birth/death, and you pan to the viewpoint of another character further back on the line. Its poignant, it gives a view of a futile fight of enormous death for little to no progress. Given the entertainment problems with a slow, painful, drawn out, trench based war, this was a good way to show the mass of death for every yard, without having you peak over a wall every couple minutes while you die of dysentery.
The campaign has a healthy/hefty stealth focus with a ton of your character sneaking through heavily armed bases, using melee and distractions to clear enemies. There is also a plane campaign and a tank one too, but most of it feels likes stealth and they did it well. I love a good stealth game, and it was a huge win for me to see this kind of work in major multiplayer titles. It’s not super long, but it was better than it needed to be for Battlefield and I am very grateful for it.
Multiplayer:
The bread and butter of the Battlefield series, play the classic Conquest mode, fight to the death in Team Death match, ignore every other kind of game mode (there is something with pigeons this time). New to the series is Operations, play through a historical battles on both sides, either defend points against an assault with unlimited troops, or push forward to capture points with 3 waves of limited troops. If the assault wins then they move onto the subsequent historical battle for another shot.
64 person matches (32 vs 32) on what are honestly some of the best designed maps I’ve played in multiplayer shooters. It is amazing to run down streets and over kills and just see the whole theater of war, as zeppelins shoot from above, bombers make strafing runs, horses sprint through the lines followed closely by tanks and armoured cars, and gas attacks force you into cover. I play medic personally, I like the semi-autos and healing, each class is unique and customizable, with a large selection of weapons and equipment for you to have while being shot by some asshole with Lawrence of Arabia’s sniper rifle sitting on the other side of the map.
But Here’s the Thing
I wish they had put half the effort they put into this game into Star Wars Battlefront, it’s the same thing with way more work put in, and a functioning single player. I would say functioning multiplayer, but as amazing as it is, that wouldn’t be fair, what it has is excellent map design, phenomenal weapon balancing, and an active community, what it doesn’t have is a functioning interface, reasonable load times, or any semblance of background support. Look you can’t even change your class load outs unless you are in game. It’s ridiculous that you can’t customize anything, or unlock anything unless it is taking time of your games; it’s been ages since that was a staple of gaming. It’s like they stripped out everything besides the actual matchmaking to make it run as slowly as it does.
You can’t quit out of games except for the 15 seconds immediately after a game ends, but that screen takes 20 seconds to load, and then you sit looking a screen that says scoreboard but is blank. You sit staring at that screen until you realise it both automatically puts you into the next game, but also doesn’t tell you that it did, so you sit while your team starts losing cause you’re sitting in a loading screen. And then it is immediately forgotten when you start running on the map, ugh its frustrating.
God I love the game, but I’m so conflicted about the state of the game, on one hand its broken, missing standard features, the between game options are confusing, as are the arbitrary battle packs system. I can’t stop playing; the conquests are some of the most fun things I have played in ages, and then 45 seconds of pure loading frustration, and then we begin again. I think this game is worth a purchase, get in on the fun while the numbers are there to make it fun.
Comments