REVEALED: OUR PICKS FOR 2016’s TOP TECH ACROSS 60 CATEGORIES!
WE REVIEW THE LATEST BIG-RELEASE AND INDIE GAMES ON PC AND CONSOLES, STARTING WITH THE GREAT WAR IN BATTLEFIELD 1.
Battlefield 1, Civilization VI, Titanfall 2 and more.
Battlefield 1 LARGE SCALE MULTIPLAYER COMBAT HITS WWI, WITH GREAT RESULTS. $99.95 | PC, PS4 & Xbox One | www.battlefield.com
WAR IS TERRIBLE. That is the common attitude among those not in the habit of waging it on a global scale, and also ostensibly the attitude of Battlefield 1. Set during World War I, the singleplayer component takes great pains to demonstrate how bloody, miserable and ultimately futile war is, and you have to acknowledge — if not admire — the studio’s efforts to do so. The games industry is terminally obsessed with rendering warfare in as graphic and palatable manner as possible, and DICE’s vignette-style approach to individuals relentlessly dying mid-combat is oddly affecting, though maybe not in the way they intended.
It does feel strange to be paying tribute (because that’s what it feels like) to an abominable war at a time when the world feels more volatile than it ever has, and it feels stranger still to be consuming it as entertainment. DICE’s tone wavers between austere and sympathetic, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that this sense of gravity is romantic, that every meaningless death is considered intrinsically noble. The campaign is more appealing than any in the series’ recent history — you have a sense of agency, and the storytelling is transfixing enough — but I don’t think a multimillion-dollar studio, employing hundreds of people, is capable of telling a story like this with any of the requisite subtlety.
However, everyone buys Battlefield games for the multiplayer, and this instalment is a hugely satisfying objective-based skirmish. World War I is a period few shooters visit, simply because staying true to the era’s weaponry wouldn’t result in the style of play that’s popular. DICE has navigated this with skill, though: the makeshift sniper rifles are harder to use but more rewarding to master, and every weapon seems to throttle and pop with more severity than most modern warfare games. Similarly, the vehicles — tanks, bombers, boats and horses, to name a few — don’t feel underpowered or less fun compared to their modern equivalents in Battlefield 4 or Hardline.
Conquest, DICE’s infamous 64-player capture-the-flag equivalent, remains the jewel of the series, though the new Operations mode is a decent attempt to simulate real skirmishes across a series of thematically linked maps. There’s also Team Deathmatch (largely avoidable) and War Pigeons — a diverting enough rush for carrier pigeons capable of ushering in reinforcements. If the series’ history is an indication, Battlefield 1’ s MP will endure for years to come, and so it should: it’s brilliant. Just don’t expect this to be more than a big, dumb, triple-A video game.