MUSIC, BOOKS & GAMES

First person shooter fans are like pigs in muck at the moment, what with Call of Duty Black Ops 4, extensive Overwatch updates and Battlefield V which launched last week.

It’s hard to believe how far the Battlefield series has come, this the 16th instalment in EA DICE’s hit franchise.

If, like me, you have spent the best part of the last month hammering COD Black Ops 4, then the biggest thing you will notice when you fire up Battlefield V is speed and chaos.

Pure unrelenting pace and spectacular drama set the tone early on, and it really is a thrill-aminute ride.

Unlike CODCO4, BV does have a single player campaign and this time DICE has actually put some effort into it.

But the game, like most FPS titles nowadays, can be very much reviewed by each of its modes, not all of which are a success.

There is a bigger focus on player customisation this time around with the new Company system, where you can create multiple characters with various options.

I can’t possibly analyse all of it in detail in this space, but perhaps the crowning achievement in BV is Grand Operations mode.

Each round sees you handed specific objectives, and performance in each stage will influence the next. Games culminate with a “Final Stand”, with players using only a primary weapon with limited ammo, and no respawns.

This mode really brings out the best in Battlefield, but it also highlights just how much more could have been done across the other modes with the immense tools at DICE’s disposal.

Other successful elements to BV are Frontlines and Breakthrough, which are exhilarating fixes for adrenalin junkies.

The graphics are some of the best you will see out there and it marries sumptuously with the super slick movement across the brilliant terrains and superb gunplay.

A new emphasis on teamwork is welcome, too, but some of the maps just had me feeling claustrophobic.

That brings me back to the feeling that more could have been done to truly elevate BV to triple A status. War Stories – another feature that has been brought back – feels half-cocked, too.

Single-player campaigns have a heavy reliance on stealth which, as you will recall from the top of the review, is so not what BV is all about. The story and storytelling, though, are excellent so once again there’s that feeling of ‘If only they’d done this or that’.

That said, Grand Operations alone means BV is worth every penny and there’s plenty of enjoyment to be had outside of that, too. A feeling of ‘what if ’ lingers, but the game stays true to the franchise and there’s lots more content on the way as part of its game-as-a-service initiative and at no extra cost, too.