REVIEW – I hope you aren’t bored by my presence, so let’s go for lap seven in one and a half weeks, this time, it’s about the World War II Battlefield, which I think underperforms quite well, as Electronic Arts and DICE tries to sell it cheaper nowadays than they usually would. It will hurt them in the long run. Maybe this is one of the reasons why a few developers left…

The game splits the audience quite sharply. If you look at the Metacritic ratings, you’ll see a significant difference between the critics’ and the audience’s average score. The critics have a 74/100 average via 21 sites, while 1253 ratings from the website’s users average at a 2.1 out of 10. I’m not joking, here’s a screenshot of it.

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Live services!

I don’t feel this game. It’s not because it’s set in the second world war (wow, what a twist, the franchise’s story started here; Battlefield 1942 is still one of the highly regarded games in the series), but because the developers might have gone a step too far with their creative approach. I still remember Patrick Söderlund, who has left EA since, saying that if we are critical of Battlefield V, then we’re just unintelligent and not know anything about World War II or something like that. (Then why did they use such critical comments on their Swedish launch party of the game? Electronic Arts have learned nothing.)

I’m not sure if using a woman with a prosthetic limb as the cover art is historically correct. Black soldiers, I can get behind that, but I believe DICE and EA are going far off the road this time, which is why the Internet was angry at the game in the first place. You may have four War Stories (these serve as the single-player campaign), where one focuses on some soldiers in the British Special Boat Section, another one has Norwegians resist the Nazi occupation, a third one has black soldiers fighting in Western Africa against the Nazi collaborate French rule, and recently, the fourth one got added, too, (Yep, despite the delay, it wasn’t ready in time for the game’s launch.) It features a Nazi soldier’s story.

I’ll also write the names down: Under No Flag, Nordlys, Tiralleur, The Last Tiger. The same topics are here again. Why couldn’t they try something with Eastern Europe, like the Yugoslav partisans or Hungary? How about the Balkans fighting to get rid of the Nazi occupation? How about making a story from a Hungarian perspective during Operation Margarethe? (Budapest getting occupied, and all you can do is run…) At least Tiralleur (resistance in Senegal) and The Last Tiger tried something unique, but the latter one has Peter Müller surrender at the end. Eeeeeh. What about the gameplay? It doesn’t derail, and it does its job, but it does feel like running out of breath on more open areas, so it’s hard to say that the gameplay is excellent.

Multiplayer

Electronic Arts‘ new form of EA-failing is by continuously expanding the game over time via live services (aka Tides of War), which is going to be the same for Anthem, too. However, the game mode that they announced during EA Play (Firestorm, that battle royale mode…), is still nowhere to be seen. Battlefield V came out as an unfinished product; something similar was seen in early 2016 with Street Fighter V (what is up with the fifth games in the series…?), where it was another major issue.

The gameplay itself is good, even though you can die fast, but DICE has been working on that recently, and there are several gameplay modes that will be added in the next few months. Meanwhile, we should hope that there won’t be loot boxes, which is the reason why Star Wars: Battlefront II has flopped significantly. (I think Battlefield V should flop as well, so EA would finally learn their lesson; they recently released Command & Conquer Rivals on mobile, and its announcement video was hated so much that they announced a remaster of the first two games on PC…) Multiple game modes are present (starting at six, but it should reach 8-9 by the Spring), with a total of sixty-four players – that’s another lacking factor right there. Sure, the Tides of War live services will expand things. I like how after Battlefield 3, Combined Arms has returned, which is a cooperative mission mode.

Team Deathmatch and Domination need no explanation. Frontlines is from the previous Battlefield games, and the same goes for Conquest, too. However, DICE has expanded Operations further into something that goes over several days with different objectives for the two teams. Grand Operations’ mistakes can backfire later in the fight – for example; you might start with even less ammunition than usual (and you already aren’t packed with a million bullets, to begin with!). No matter which class you pick (assault, recon, support, medic), you can customise your characters and your weapons’ skins (here’s where the monetisation steps in). You can also build fortifications, which seems to have taken a few cues from Fortnite.

Maybe for free.

As I’m far over my character limit and I don’t do this for no reason, I’ll just say it’s a 7/10 game. The multiplayer is alright, and that’s why people buy this game. It could be more than a 7, but the game is still buggy, and it was released half-complete. EA would have been better off if it released the game under a different name than Battlefield. So here’s a new glitch video and alternative box art.

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-V-

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: DICE

Genre: FPS

Release date: November 20, 2018