Battlefield 1 (BETA)

Battlefield 1 is a gorgeous, technically impressive first person shooter set during World War 1. It’s a fantastic looking game, and the organic terrain destruction and deformation is incredible to witness over the duration of a match. Performance is rock solid, loading is fast, and I had zero issues with matchmaking.

And, most importantly, it’s fun – in a mindlessly repetitive sort of way. But that’s really the problem with Battlefield 1. I enjoyed the beta in the same way I enjoyed the Star Wars: Battlefront beta – fun, for a short time, but the flaws quickly became apparent. Because like Battlefront, Battlefield 1 is a fun, but undoubtedly shallow and repetitive shooter, with serious questions regarding content and pricing.

But let’s start with the good stuff, shall we? As I said, Battlefield 1 is gorgeous, but it’s the terrain deformation that I found to be the most impressive aspect. As bombs are dropped, tanks open fire, or artillery shells explode, entire structures are destroyed or collapse. The ground is pockmarked by shell craters and the entire nature of the map and your engagement with the enemy transforms as a result.

Craters become cover for advancing infantry. Tanks roll through walls or blast houses to pieces – and anyone hiding inside. As planes race overhead, strafing the ground or dropping bombs, Battlefield 1 is an incredible spectacle in motion. The chaos of the Conquest mode creates an exciting and engaging conflict.

And chaotic is really the best word to describe Conquest. There is some semblance of order to be found in matches, but it tends to be fleeting and depends heavily on how willing your team are to coordinate their attacks. Fortunately, the game is designed to encourage cooperative play, with many vehicles requiring multiple players to be at their most effective.

But the mode also isn’t without its problems. The map available in the beta may have been impressive in terms of scale, but much of it was simply empty terrain, with one capture point placed out in the middle of nowhere. You could cut that entire area out of the map and it would benefit the ‘flow’ of the action far better, as the conflict would then be focused across a central corridor.

The map also doesn’t cater much to close range, infantry assault outside of the central town, with so much open ground making it heaven for the scout/sniper class, able to go prone on a rocky hill and rack up easy kills on players who are unfortunate enough to spawn out in the middle of the open desert.

And spawning, as it was in Battlefront, is a real issue. Sometimes I’d select a spawn location, only to be shunted elsewhere at the last second. And your placement around the spawn areas can be very hit or miss. Sometimes you’ll spawn near cover, but many times you’ll spawn completely exposed in the open and promptly be shot before you can even react. Several times I spawned in the path of an enemy vehicle.

Bad luck? Maybe. But there really needs to be more feedback for a player prior to spawning – such as the health of a vehicle before you choose to spawn inside of it. A few times I spawned into a vehicle only for it to suddenly explode. It’s these little irritations that drag the experience down. Too many deaths feel cheap because of how the game handles its spawn system.

Oh, and vaulting. Vaulting is one of most annoying aspects of the game. It should offer more fluid movement over and around the environment, but over half the time you attempt to vault an object (the rocky terrain is the worst) you’ll continually bounce back and be a sitting duck for anyone nearby. Also, doors. Doors really shouldn’t be an issue, but attempting to open doors when you’re not charging through them is a frustratingly hit and miss endeavour.

Vehicles in Battlefield 1 are also ridiculously effective. With the ability to infinitely self-repair, you can spend entire matches roaming the map in a tank, racking up kills with ease. All of my top scoring matches in terms of kills came from simply sitting in a tank. If you’re careful, repair when you need to, and don’t get overconfident, you can stay in a tank from beginning to end and tally up an impressive kill/death ratio. But is it fun to do that? Well … not really.

Classes are another issue, with the Medic and Support classes being almost entirely useless. The Support lacks the mobility or anti-vehicle versatility of the Assault class. It’s not as effective at close range, or even mid-range, and it doesn’t have the long range power of the Scout. The Medic, on the other hand, is simply redundant.

When playing as a Medic you’ll never know who needs healing because there’s no real visual feedback of that. But people regenerate health within a matter of seconds anyway, so why would you need to? People die, respawn or regenerate so quickly that the Medic class is entirely unnecessary. Nearly every match of the beta was dominated by the Assault and Scout classes – with people switching between the two depending on which area of the map they were spawning into.

Although I enjoyed the controlled chaos of Conquest, I was more hopeful for the second available mode – Rush – as it provided a more direct, objective focused push from A to B. But Rush, due to the open nature of the map, quickly became dominated by a heavy focus on sniper play, with many matches descending into both teams taking shots at each other whilst laying prone amidst the rocks.

Of course, many of these issues can be fixed or improved over time. And despite my concerns regarding class balance, map design, vehicle effectiveness and the spawn system, I can’t deny I had fun playing this beta. Because the game is damn spectacular at times. Like Battlefront, it’s a game with many wow! moments, all of which arise unscripted from the chaos.

But also like Battlefront, I have concerns regarding content and pricing. I can’t find any clear indication of how many maps or modes will be available at release, but they’re already pushing lots of pre-order, in-game content in addition to ridiculously priced ‘deluxe’ and ‘ultimate’ editions. When Titanfall 2 is offering all future maps and modes for free, it’s certainly a more attractive option.

I hate to be too negative about Battlefield 1 though, because it does seem to be offering more content than Battlefront did, and as I’ve said multiple times – it is pretty fun to play. But I have my doubts about long term appeal and how the new modes and maps will be split between content DLC packs – and potentially splitting the player base. I won’t be picking it up at release. Like Battlefront, I may eventually get it on sale, but if Titanfall 2 is as good as I hope (although the beta has me a little worried) then I’ll probably quite happily forget all about Battlefield 1.

I love the horses though. They’re like super fast mobile tanks. Riding about and slashing people to death with a sword on horseback is great!