BATTLEFIELD 4 [2013] STEAM PC REVIEW

🎮   GREAT   🎮

The positive:

💗 State-of-the-art gunplay, ballistics, and animations

💗 Visceral combat and mature tone

💗 Strong focus on amazing characters, conflict, and drama

💗 Stellar presentation & Stunning visuals

💗 Amazing soundtrack and audio design

💗 Top tier acting, MOCAP, and dialogue

💗 Weak story about marines in China still does the job

The negative:

👎 Too many crashes, bugs, and technical problems at launch

👎 A fundamentally flawed plot, with plenty of dumb stuff.

👎 The checkpoint system is unforgiving, creating repetitive encounters

👎 There are some questionable mission design choices

👎 The campaign is really short but given the formula, I think it's for the best.

👎 Hit markers and points for killing enemies always remind you that you are playing an arcade videogame, removing any feeling of immersion the player might have. Good thing there is a console command that disables all visual noise.

DICE has crafted my favorite Battlefield campaign!!! despite having a weak plot, the strong character drama and the many amazing set pieces always carry me into an experience that fully takes advantage of the FROSTBITE engine capabilities, propelling the supreme graphics, responsive gunplay featuring amazing ballistics & recoil,  character animation, environmental destruction, and vehicular combat into an action-packed emotional story that I keep coming back to play over and over again.

FROSTBITE III

The evolution of the Frostbite game engine is breathtaking. It takes environmental destruction to a whole new level. DICE has been selling this feature in its pitch to gamers since the debut of Battlefield: Bad Company in 2008 with the original Frostbite engine. But when things break apart now, they don’t look as blocky and fake. Walls crumble much more realistically. The U.S.S. Valkyrie, an assault aircraft carrier, becomes a major battleground as the ship is ripped to shreds via combat with the Chinese. 

When a tank punches through a wall, it looks more realistic. You can fire a tank gun at a concrete structure and make it collapse on top of the enemy. That kind of advanced graphics and physics technology enhances the gameplay by giving you new options as a player. It isn’t just eye candy. It’s an integral part of the game. 

Frostbite delivers supreme graphics that look amazing even now 10 years after the game's launch. There are plenty of memorable moments in which the environment highlights the campaign. It amazes to me how much intricacy is involved in bringing images of destruction to us in our video games. The sound of bullets whizzing by and seeing puffs of dirt and dust pop up to obscure your vision is a common experience in Battlefield 4. And it adds to the immersion and realism, making you feel what it might be like to be in a real battle. 

STRONG CHARACTERS

The story will likely surprise you in the end. But there’s one thing consistent about the way the tale unfolds. You discover new things about yourself and the characters in your squad based on the tough choices that they make. The unit is held together not just by discipline but by their faith in their comrades and their ability to trust — or not trust — fellow soldiers. The plot of the story takes twists and turns. The best thing I can say about it is that it isn’t as hands-down ridiculous as the plot of Call of Duty: Ghosts. But the consistent theme that recurs during different parts of the plot is whether you’re going to make the right choice under pressure and either save or doom your comrades in arms.

+

I finished the single-player campaign in about seven hours. It wasn’t particularly difficult, but I could have stretched it out more if I played it on a harder setting. It could have used more in-depth cutscenes. One annoyance is that some of these have a lot of dialogue, but you don’t see the actual characters talking. Rather, you see the image of an aircraft carrier sailing on the seas during a voiceover. That’s not very movie like. I would have gladly sat through more cutscenes to get a better flavor for the story’s nuances. In that sense, Battlefield 4 leaves you wanting a lot more story than it provides.

CONCLUSION

The first-person shooter wars have been an endless treadmill for the teams making the Battlefield and Call of Duty. It’s nice to see that a smarter approach to making a game, in this case by the EA DICE team, really pays off in a better experience for the player. EA could have tried to match Call of Duty by issuing a new game every year. But by taking extra care and publishing this game two years after the last game, the result is better quality. There are still some advantages that Call of Duty has over Battlefield when it comes to variety and adrenaline combat. But Battlefield 4 has gone a long way toward closing the gap, and it’s a better overall game.

I was fully prepared to rate this game much higher Call of Duty: Ghosts, which I rated at 80. But the words from EA’s own top brass is an acknowledgement of the opportunity they have lost as a result of the Battlefield 4 multiplayer problems.

DICE chief Karl Magnus-Troedsson wrote, “I am less proud to see that the game has experienced some turbulence during the launch period. While some platforms have had only minor problems, others have had more than their fair share of issues. Resolving the launch issues is our #1 priority. In fact, we are so serious that we have the entire team working to stabilize the game and we will not move on to other projects until we are sure that Battlefield 4 meets – and exceeds – your expectations. It is the right thing to do.”

EA’s new CEO, Andrew Wilson, also wrote, “We have had our challenges with stability issues on Battlefield 4, and the DICE team is 100 percent focused on understanding and resolving the problems that some players have been having. We won’t rest until we get things fixed, so here are two things we’re committed to doing while we work to get it right: 1) all players will get a Double XP bonus and a cool new piece of game content as a way of saying thanks for your patience, and 2) you’ll get open and transparent communication with updates from us around the clock via the Battlefield 4 Control Room.”