One may think that the term ‘4’ would imply that the new Battlefield continues from where its predecessor, Battlefield 3 (BF3), left off – wrong! In their attempts to make the campaign more exciting than in BF3, DICE scrapped the previous storyline and started with something totally fresh and in this quest, made the campaign worse!
Off to a bad start: Battlefield 4 (BF4) starts off with a rather “in your face” scenario and the player gets a chance to get to know the game’s three main protagonists; Recker, Irish and PAC. For the first few missions I felt very excited to see how the story actually unfolds. This same feeling kept on going till chapter 7, only to realize that it was actually the last and final mission… Great!
Compared to BF3, story-wise, you never feel close or attached to any particular character, something BF3 in certain missions really excelled in. Same thing goes to the difficulty setting for those who are dedicated gamers; one tends to play a game on the toughest setting available to enhance their gaming experience. In BF4 playing on either setting simply makes no difference whatsoever, as the AI is so lame that one actually considers whether to beat the entire campaign with just the pistol, to make it a bit more challenging.
The Icing: Having said that the above points are immediately thrown right out of the window when it comes to graphics, game physics, environmental and sound effects. In all of the aforesaid points, that is where the Frostbite 3 engine come to live as the quality is second to none.
In certain missions (where a lot is going around you; be it a typhoon, compartment fire or even actual mayhem on the battlefield), I was bewildered with how crisp and vibrant the setting was – DICE definitely take top honors in that aspect! DICE have really upped their game when it comes to facial detail and characteristics, top notch quality work to say the least. Same can be said on the light setting whenever you are crawling through a dark tunnel and sunlight protrudes through cracks in the wall, or the way sunlight glares off the weapon you are currently wielding.
For its multiplayer experience, once again Battlefield 4 owns the business in this regard. Thanks to the huge leap forward in next-gen consoles, gamers can now enjoy 64 player matches and the variety of new game mods introduced is really good fun and exciting. Furthermore, DICE’ notorious grenade cooking function have once again been omitted. Whilst players still can’t use this function, at least on Multiplayer players have a wide variety of grenades at their disposal including time deferred and impact ‘nades. Still, not what players actually wanted but it’s better than nothing… I guess!
Another great addition to the multiplayer experience is the fact that when faced with a frontal knife attack, a brief 2.5 second cut-scene initiates whereby the defending player can counterattack this assault and kill their opponent with the same knife he is wielding. Cool!
On a separate note, at the very beginning of the final credits I find it very respectful that DICE mentioned one of their previous team members, Kjell Reutersw