Back to the war. It’s been a while.
I haven’t played a Battlefield game since Bad Company 2. Yes, I know, that’s been a long while, but online multiplayer shooters fell off my radar for a while. I’m willing to give everything a shot and with Overwatch still being my go-to game any day of the week, I have found myself jumping back into the team-based online shooters that I used to love all those years ago, and with Battlefield V, I find myself in welcoming arms.
Battlefield V returns to its roots of World War II. To begin with, the single player offerings here come in the form of War Stories. These roughly two hour experiences tell multiple tales of different areas of the war in a decent enough manner. While most of them boil down to players becoming a one-man army of sorts like the older Call of Duty games, they rely on mostly objective taking/destroying and some stealth elements. I enjoyed my time with them and with the exception of the British story, Under No Flag, they try to tell a serious tale and for the most part, it works, but with only three available at launch with a fourth coming in December, players are looking at a rather short single player experience.
Platforms: XB1, PS4, PC
MSRP: $59.99
Price I’d pay: $59.99
Of course, Battlefield is always been known for its multiplayer, and even though it’s been a while since I’ve touched a Battlefield game, I fell right into the action and actually didn’t have to take very long to acclimate myself to it. The shooting felt tight and responsive while movement felt fluid and really natural. Time to kill seemed a bit short on both sides of the bullets, so moving and standing out in the open would get me killed pretty quickly. Even playing solo, I was always spawned with a squad that allowed me to respawn onto them as long as they weren’t in combat, and working together with my squad was both rewarding in the battles as well as helping with my progression.
There are four classes in multiplayer with their own roles that really help out a well rounded squad. Classes like the Medic and the Support are not just there to restock and revive, they have arsenals ready for certain situations and on top of that, each role has two sub categories that allow them to change up their abilities to act differently in combat. Leveling up comes in multiple ways as well. Players can level up not only their classes and their vehicles, but also their weapons, allowing for more customizations.
There are multiple modes for players here in the multiplayer. Conquest is the go-to standard mode where players try to capture and hold three points on a map while respawning runs out lives faster depending on how many points the team holds, Breakthrough has attackers trying to push through the lines to take over sections of the map while defenders try to hold them off, Frontlines has both teams trying to take a single area and then move to another in a tug-of-war of sorts, Domination is a smaller scale version of Conquest, and there is a Team Deathmatch mode as well. But the piece de resistance is Grand Operations. In this slightly story-driven mode, players do multiple matches with differing modes that represent days in the war. Depending on how well the team did in a day, players will receive better bonuses that will help them out in the next match. It’s a nice take on a mode mix and I enjoyed it a lot, but keep in mind, three days of matches can take a little while to get through and if both teams are at a standstill, there is a final fourth day that serves as a tie breaker.
Completing matches and special assignments along with daily challenges will give players coins that they can use to customize their characters with different cosmetic skins for weapons and outfits. So far, there has been no microtransactions for these, and players get a decent amount as of right now doing their challenges and matches. There’s a lot here to go for and players can mix and match whatever they’d like.
Visually, the game looks stunning. Playing in 4K on the Xbox One X really shows off the visuals and the smooth frame rate. Bright colors of flower beds and bleak snowy mountains are contrasted amazingly with explosions and smoke that really show off the graphical prowess of Battlefield V. It really is a spectacle.
If there were some issues with the game I would have to go with the standard online bugs here and there. Sometimes, my character just would jump over something even though I’m holding the button to vault and some of the ragdoll physics had me almost laughing when I saw a guy go flying. Of course, this is going to happen in these games so I can’t discredit it that much. Sure, it sucks to see it but it was a rather rare occurrence for me. The biggest issue I had was navigating the menus. Not because they were confusing, but because it seemed like the game would get hung up going in and out of them at times, especially coming from a multiplayer game back to a lobby or the main menu. I’m talking a nice 20 second hang up too, long enough for me to look at my screen to check to see if it had hardlocked.
Battlefield V was a nice return for me. With a few little issues here and there, I was able to look past them and get a nice multiplayer focused game that has seemed to improve a lot since Bad Company 2. Emphasis more on teamwork and class roles has given it an identity and is more than just a spawn, kill, die game. Battlefield fans should pick this one up, and I think casual first person shooter fans looking for a quick fix with some pretty great visuals can’t go wrong here either.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
