Battlefield 4
So the single player campaign has been EA’s abandoned child for a while now, though Warfighter did have it’s bright spots EA’s focus has firmly been on the multiplayer, which isn’t surprising, as that’s where the majority of time will be spent, and where the most opportunity is for raking in a few extra bucks through a steady stream of DLC packs coming out over the next six months or so.
But Battlefield 4’s single player campaign started out with a bang, looking like it was going to buck the rend and actually be pretty damn engaging. And I was truly lost in the action right up to the point where I had to take control of a car, and when I hit accelerate (or what SHOULD have been accelerate) the horn blared. What the hell. Oh, you’re kidding me, you’ve gone and used Halo’s buggy controls? Well that’s going to suck the crap out of any driving sections. Oh well, on with the car vs helicopter chase. Must make it to the tunnel. Made it, oh crap, it’s not that long, I’ll go off road and weave between the oil derricks. Oh what, you’re taking over control of the car because I’m not heading in the right direction for your set piece cinematic that sees me loose control and crash into the sea below. Bastard.
And that’s where the game dragged me back to reality. From that point on the single player campaign was a mix of awesome and mundane, with a pretty heavy dose of lets get this over with so we can get onto the multiplayer. But it was better than I had anticipated, and looked quite stunning for the most part.
The stunning visuals however had one drawback. The game pushes the XBox 360 to it’s extreme, and the game suffers from being a tad glitchy, from texture just not loading, to destructible cover rebuilding itself, to being able to walk through solid walls. Battlefield 4 it seems, really wants you to play it on a next gen console.
So then it was onto the multiplayer aspect. This is where Battlefield has always excelled and still does. There are still a few graphical glitches, though these are infrequent, and for the most part don’t bother. The game typically flows well, and there never seems to be any great deal of unbalancing of play. I’ve not found myself up against an overwhelmingly superior enemy, no game I’ve played ever seemed to become a hopeless struggle, and this is EA’s masterstroke.
The maps are well thought out and each have their own unique events and moments of pure awesomeness. You still have to level up to unlock a variety of weapons and such, but your start with good solid load outs that you never feel like you’ve joined the party way too late.
Finally, the thing that makes Battlefield the standout FPS series for me, is the squad based nature of the game, somehow attracts more team orientated players than that ‘other’ popular military shooter, making games less about a rampaging John Rambo, and more about tactical team play.
Battlefield 4 gets my vote for best FPS this year.
Rating: R16 Contains violence and offensive language.
GAMEGUIDE rating:
