LOVED IT: Solid visuals, campaign filled with tour de force moments, fantastic maps fuel exhilarating multiplayer
HATED IT: Current-gen limitations feel noticeable, story doesn’t quite wow
GRAB IT IF: You enjoy the Battlefield and Call of Duty franchises and don’t plan to buy a next-gen console
The first shot in the annual military-themed shooter war has been fired. And yes, it hits its mark.
Get ready for Battlefield 4. The latest game in EA’s stellar war shooter franchise is developer DICE’s strongest effort yet, shining for one last time on current-generation consoles. From the dynamic campaign to the multiplayer that you could easily play for years, every part of this shooter is well-crafted.
The game shows light signs of age on current-gen consoles, so if you’re saving up for an Xbox One or PlayStation 4, save your money. But for at least one more year, there’s oodles of fun to be had with the console that’s sitting in your living room right now.
DICE squeezes every last bit of graphical juice out of the aging Xbox 360 this time around, delivering one more fantastic. This is the best-looking, most detailed military shooter to date, even if you won’t spend much time appreciating any of it.
The game is simply that action-packed. The campaign is your typical military-themed fare, filled with throwaway military jargon dialogue, but there are a few memorable moments, too. This is a gritty campaign, but it gives you little time to digest anything, moving from massive theater of war to set piece to set piece to theater of war again.
The campaign’s battle arenas are all fantastic, offering something for every brand of gamer, and multiple methods of approach. It’s here that the campaign is at its best, letting you experiment as a shooter and delivering few boring moments. Things bog down in tunnels and pathways, but these more basic moments wind up a worthy reprieve from the pulse-pounding action that they break up. All in all, it’s a fun experience.
Still, it pales in comparison to the multiplayer action, which is what you’re likely buying this game for anyway. New bits are added and old sections are honed, and the end result is sublime and addictive. Characters are as customizable as ever, and everything moves at a steady framerate.
Each multiplayer map is huge and diverse, making it inviting for the vehicular combat that’s long been a trademark of this series, and each vehicle handles brilliantly.
But each area feels far more dynamic. Level-changing moments abound. In one area, you can blow a levee, instantly turning a land-based battle into a naval war. In another, a downed becomes rubble in a cataclysmic collapse that’s as fun to watch as it is to battle.
The smaller moments of destruction augment those massive ones. Battlefield’s environments have long been meant to be destroyed, and DICE takes things to another level here. Levels are constantly changing, walls are being blown apart, instantly erasing cover in realistic and exciting ways.
Battlefield 4 offers a terrific new mode to its standard suite of multiplayer fun, too. Obliteration has two teams battling for bombs, in an effort to destroy three key enemy spots. There are few predictable patterns in these battles, and the key skirmishes happen all over the board, as one team chases another for the bomb of the moment. It’s an excellent new multiplayer addition, one that makes brilliant use of Battlefield’s many splendid vehicles. Holdovers such as Team Deathmatch and Conquest help round out the package.
The limits of current-gen become noticeable within multiplayer action, though. On the Xbox 360, you can get a max of 24 players into battle, and the large maps definitely seem suited to far larger skirmishes. You’ll have plenty of fun on the 360 or the PlayStation 3, but it’s easy to see where more intriguing tactics could take place in large battles on the PC or next-gen consoles.
Still, Battlefield 4 is far from a consolation prize for anyone who’s sticking it out on the Xbox 360 and PS3 for a little bit longer.
It’s a solid reminder that the present of console gaming is still just fine, even if everyone’s ready for the future.
Reviewed on Xbox 360
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