EA’s Battlefield 6 seeks to take the series back to the basics that made the franchise such a hit. Huge battlegrounds, vehicles and destructible scenery make for chaotic first-person combat in both a single-player campaign and a plethora of multiplayer modes.
Battlefield 6 immerses players in a near-future conflict where a private military company has declared war on the West. With NATO fractured, a global conflict ensues. It’s an unlikely premise, but perfect for a game like Battlefield 6. The PMC, Pax Armata makes for a politically inert opponent, filling the position of the villain without the risk of offending anyone. The near-future imaginary conflict slightly removes the realism that you’d get from a real-world conflict zone with real-world protagonists and antagonists. Whilst this may make perfect sense from a marketing point of view, I feel it is still a bit of a cop out.
The somewhat unrealistic premise, whilst easily overlooked in multiplayer, is amplified in the solo campaign. But it’s not the campaign’s worst issue. Rather than the tight, polished, Hollywood-level, scripted campaigns of Call of Duty, which both set up the multiplayer element and work on its own merits, the Battlefield 6 campaign seems wanting.
I’m usually a great fan of first-person shooter campaigns; I’m old enough to see them as the main course and the multiplayer part as the bonus, and not the other way round, as they are today. Past Battlefield games have had excellent campaigns, which have been solid throughout. I’ve played the Battlefield 3 campaign countless times, and it still holds up fourteen years later. The same won’t be said for Battlefield 6. And this is a shame, as for many, the campaign will set the tone of the game. What should be a showcase of what the game’s otherwise superb engine can do with its crazy, destructible environments and huge open world battles seems half-finished.
After a solid start, infiltrating Gibraltar, the campaign starts to feel like a hastily cobbled-together set of bot matches roughly hewn from the game engine editor. Whilst the environments look fantastic with the visuals cranked up to the max on PC, the character faces and animations look appalling and not what I’d expect from a AAA game. It’s not until the campaign’s last scenario, some five hours later, that it finally pulls itself together, delivering pulse-pounding action and delightfully coordinated combat moments.
The game has been developed by Battlefield Studios, which is really a smorgasbord of EA’s internal development houses: DICE, Criterion Games, Motive Studios, and Ripple Effect Studios. Battlefield 6 seems to have been an “all hands to the pump” development; perhaps this is why the campaign seems so disjointed.
Thankfully, Battlefield 6’s multiplayer is where the game shines.
EA have gifted players with a physics sandbox that makes every match different. The level of destruction in the environments I’ve not seen since Battlefield Bad Company 2. The result is a battleground full of emergent gameplay that will take your breath away.
Battlefield is mainly about conquest/domination-style team matches played over huge areas featuring a vast array of vehicles. The game sticks with the simplified and familiar four combat roles of assault, engineer, Support, and recon. In the field, players can control vehicles such as tanks, jeeps, jets and helicopters. With progression, weapons and equipment loadouts can be upgraded and customised.
The effort seems to have really gone into the superb multiplayer map design. This makes sense, as most players will likely spend many more hours online with the game than the six or seven hours needed for the single-player campaign.
As well as a plethora of curated maps and match types, the game’s Portal app allows players to create their own maps. Already, players have created Battlefield 6 takes on classic Call of Duty maps, and there’s even a version of Counter-Strike’s iconic Dust II map.
The whole game is packaged with a remarkable level of polish. Aside from my campaign gripes, multiplayer games are easy to get into (now the servers have settled down) and offer breathtaking combat environments, offering something for everyone.
As I’ve got older, I’ve found that the capture-point mechanics of Battlefield offer more fun than straight-up deathmatches. Even if you are not as quick with your reflexes as you once were, there are plenty of opportunities to capture positions and provide a forward spawning point for your squadmates and earn points that way.
As with all these games, there is a cadre of fans that will live and breathe the game, which can be a bit intimidating for more casual players. The maps, however, are so well designed that, with the help of the squad-based spawning system, it’s no trouble to get right back into the action, even if you are up against superior players. If you are into the participation over your kill/death ratio, you will still enjoy yourself.
With maps that can literally be blown apart in front of you, the game offers players constantly changing battlefield environments. These are the most realistic battlegrounds that you’ll ever have faced and are guaranteed to put your heart in your mouth.
Whilst Battlefield 6 does little for single-player first-person shooter campaigns, it raises the bar for multiplayer squad-based combat. Huge levels full of vehicles and large-scale environmental destruction give the game an epic feel, and every match is unique. With the game’s first season now underway, Battlefield 6 is a return to form for the online shooter.
Verdict: Very Good