Battlefield 1 Review: Large-scale multiplayer, and then some

Julio Franco

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Staff member

Matthew McConaughey once said that sometimes you need to go back to move forward. The team at DICE must have been very moved by that sentiment. Taking it to heart and pushing the Battlefield series nearly 100 years back into World War I for this year’s release of Battlefield 1 was a gamble. It has largely paid off.

The Battlefield first-person shooter series has incrementally embraced modern warfare and its technology ever since 2005's Battlefield 2. Only smaller projects like Battlefield Vietnam explored the series’ potential for diverse historical settings. By 2013's Battlefield 4, players may have been exhausted with all the attack choppers, AK-47s, and Abrams tanks. Suffused in the same military fetishization gleefully exhibited by its rival series, Call of Duty, Battlefield was wasting away.

Battlefield 1 reinvents the tone of the series, retaining the awesome turbulence of war while emphasizing a human element. The game shows the storming of the beaches at Gallipoli but also takes time to have a young soldier vomit with dread as he observes the mass of dead bodies. Battlefield 1 maintains an impressive balance between emotion and spectacle. All the better for a series that was starting to feel a bit too clinical.

Read the complete review.

 
Battlefield 1 sucks. The older BF where much better, they where bigger, more advanced, had more complex vehicles and much more freedom.
 
Battlefield 1 sucks. The older BF where much better, they where bigger, more advanced, had more complex vehicles and much more freedom.

They had to tone it down to get it to run on consoles (where there is much more money to be made), but I also pine after the days of BF2 and BF2142.
 
Kotaku writers are always amusing:

"The AAA commercialization of war is among the video games industry’s worst traits. It packages the blood, sweat, and sacrifice of our ancestors into a “fun” consumer product or else cynically speculates a future defined by unending war."

As if no American ever played Cowboys and Indians, or Viking children never played battle with wooden weaponry, trivializing war. Please.

Also, if anyone wants the real scoop on the "amazing campaign," check out Total Biscuit's WTF Is. The single player campaign in this game is immensely shippable due to poor development choices.
 
BF1 = Sniperfield 1

Seriously, I would venture off to say that BF4 had less snipers sitting around.
 
I miss 2142
Some clan just made a revival of it - same ones who did the revival of BF2. They striped out the punkbuster files and put in their own anti-cheat service, so the game is essentially back. I don't know if your old soldier will work, or if you can even rank up - if not, I would imagine a 'everything unlocked for everyone' style.
 
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