Battlefield 1

 

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Battlefield was never really known for its single player but still they're fun high budget triple A campaigns with state of the art modern graphics and polish and the main competition for Call of duty so worth checking out.

This time in Battlefield 1 the campaign is separated off into six short different mini-stories where each one you play a different character. These little episodes only last about 30 minutes to an hour each, and while the characters are decent and suit the role of drawing you in, you never stick around long enough to really get any real development of them as any sort of plot device or narrative. The story (or lack thereof) is just some typical situations six different soldiers would encounter.

Three or four of these campaign episodes take place mostly inside vehicles, be it airplanes or tanks. This alone is kind of a negative for me as its not my preferred gameplay I just want boots on ground action shooting. So right off the bat basically half the game is already dissatisfying for me personally. While these vehicle sections are fine, and done as good as they can be, its just not as engaging as first person ground combat. At least during the tank mission its premised in such a way where you get to feel like you really are crammed up in a tank with some guys and they must become your best friends you get that sense of actually living out of this tank the way the cut scenes and narrative weaves its self.

Something thats odd is the pacing of the campaign. It starts you on an overview map of all the 6 different episodes, in numeral order. So if you play it starting from Mission 1 up to 6, oddly enough the first few missions are inside vehicles. So right out of the gate 2 or 3 hours in you've already spent most of the time driving or flying around which I found an awkward way to start the game off.

The moments and missions where its primarily gun combat are pretty good. The movement in particular feels fantastic and its great to jump and sprint and duck and pop out of cover all over the place the movement mechanics and controls in general feel very good and polished. Theres lots of different guns to find as well with all sorts of crates everywhere to always discover new weapons or attachments. Since it takes place in WW1 its a breath of fresh air to use these old archaic weapons its a lot of things like bolt action rifles and semi auto carbines, funny enough I thought ww1 didnt have that many machine guns but theres quite a few to choose from and all the weapons are quite satisfying to use with good impact hit markers with a chunky sound when you connect and the marker turns red when its a kill which makes the gameplay feel satisfying and full of weight. A lot of the guns have really punchy sound effects too. You have the mechanic of spamming the Q button to tag enemies which gives them an outline and you can see them through walls, which is a little cheap and classic symptom of modern gaming.

Probably the best thing about this game which makes it superior to many call of duty campaigns is the fact that during missions theres rarely if ever any NPC which you have to slowly follow around and do exactly what he says. Theres no waiting around for NPCS to do their scripts every 20 seconds, walking around in extremely linear movements waiting for your NPC commander like on COD etc. Most of the objectives have you in a huge enviorment where the game just tells you to "Do X" and you run around to approach and do it however you please. Usually you just go into an area and on the minimap theres a big circle and you just have to search the area to find the objective. Its mostly a good thing, but its also sort of negative in that compared to COD there isn't as many crazy scripted things that happen and most objectives feel repetitive and the same even though the game is so short.

Theres 3 difficulties and on the 2nd one it feels just right. You can die really quick if youre not being careful but its also not super easy

Really the worst problem is that half of the campaign is in vehicles or that one mission where you're a guy in a giant suit of armor where you walk around like a human tank carrying a machine gun mowing down waves of enemies, that was kind of odd. All I wanted was more typical soldier missions, but they're too limited here. Out of the 5 hours spent playing the campaign maybe only 2 of them were really truly doing the typical WW1 soldier combat. Just when the game starts to feel really good and the campaign picks up, giving you more diverse locations such as the desert and even a taste of an 'open world' where it gives you 3 locations to capture at will, and then just like that its over. Theres no coherent narrative or story to wrap it up, it just kind of says some tidbits about WW1 and the soldiers involved and thats it.
The campaign feels like a tutorial for the multiplayer mode more than anything, just trying to introduce as many mechanics as it can as fast as possible to prepare you for MP.

The game could of been twice as long and in the extended parts just had way more in the trenches boots on ground combat, but it doesn't. Its a 5 hour long game and its sad to say its too short because the mechanics and controls, graphics and atmosphere are all an amazing framework but it ultimately just feels like a missed opportunity because of how short it is and how half of it is spent in vehicles

 

6/10