SHOOTER GAME MINES PAST FOR FRESH IDEAS
First World War havoc makes players grateful to get out alive
Why doesn’t the First World War get more attention in popular media? Sure, we all know it started when some archduke got assassinated, but few could explain why it took over a whole continent. There are no blackand-white good guys and villains, just a lot of mayhem that led to some 17 million deaths.
Battlefield 1 (Electronic Arts, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, $79.89) takes that ambiguity and builds a surprisingly effective narrative around it. The latest war game from EA’s Swedenbased DICE studio offers few rahrah moments of triumph; more commonly, you’re just relieved to make it out alive. DICE has taken a savvy approach here: Rather than following one unlucky grunt through a gauntlet of the most renowned engagements, you get an anthology, featuring different characters in each location.
You begin as a member of the Harlem Hellfighters, hopelessly trying to stave off a German invasion into French territory. After that, you take the roles of a tank driver in France, a British fighter pilot, a desperate Italian soldier in the Alps and a wily old Australian veteran in Gallipoli. The final story ventures into the Middle East, where you are a Bedouin fighter in Lawrence of Arabia’s guerrilla campaign against the Ottoman Empire. The anthology approach gives DICE a chance to show off its flair with gorgeously rendered landscapes, as well as its skill in building weapons and vehicles that feel like they have genuine weight. This is the 1910s, so you don’t get the cool hightech gear DICE flaunted in its last game, 2015’s Star Wars Battlefront. Instead, you’re stuck with sluggish rifles, clunky grenades and a temperamental tank that tends to get stuck in mud.
As a result, Battlefield 1 feels much different than most contemporary war games. Unlike, say, Gears of War 4, you can’t just run screaming into the fight and expect to make it out alive. Most scenarios demand a more tactical approach, where you must find a way to quietly eliminate enemies one at a time before breaking out the heavy weapons.
There’s a full suite of online multiplayer contests, highlighted by DICE’s signature Conquest mode, where up to 64 soldiers fight over a sprawling wasteland. There’s also the new Operations mode, a tense tug of war between offensive and defensive troops that moves from map to map.
Battlefield 1 is the first war video game I’ve played in a while that felt like it had some fresh ideas — and one of the few I’d recommend to people who don’t normally care for the genre.