Battlefield 1 Review

Entrenched gameplay?
World War 1 has always been seen as ‘too hard’ for games – both in terms of the gameplay (trench warfare) and the sheer loss of life being difficult to replicate when you normally play as the hero. Can DICE pull off what has previously been seen as the impossible with “Battlefield 1“?

Story:

Battlefield 1 certainly starts in the strongest possible way, with a mandatory single-player prologue that sets the scene incredibly. You start defending a huge German offensive, and quickly, you’ll find yourself over-run and out of ammo, crouching behind what little cover remains. It’s poignant, carefully done, and really impactful – I can’t remember last time I played such a memorable opening. It’s a shame then that the rest of the campaign, played from the perspectives of 5 different soldiers in five different theatres of war, doesn’t live up to the intro.

There’s a great mix of gameplay, from stealth missions to tank assaults and a battle on-top a zeppelin, but with the exception of a couple of sections you feel too much the hero, and the gameplay feels like it’s been tailored to avoid the trench warfare that World War One is so well known for.

Gameplay:

The gunplay also still favours automatic weapons, which were hardly de rigour for the period. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that EA and DICE were somewhat afraid that going all the way back to bolt-action rifles would be seen as slowing down the pace too much, especially as other shooters go more and more into future tech, featuring increasingly bombastic set pieces.

The campaign is certainly mixed, but it’s also non-stop. I’d really be interested to see what DICE could do in genuinely simulating trench warfare respectfully. I think it could have worked – squads would often have a heavy or machine gunner with them, so it could even have worked with you fulfilling that role to ensure you had an automatic weapon. Given Battlefield multiplayer has you dying all the time, and give the way the campaign starts, some kind of token-based war of attrition probably could have been pulled off too.

Regardless, modern tastes have been catered too. Vehicles and planes handle in a very arcade fashion, and beyond a couple of fabricated parts of the campaign, are certainly more reliable than their hundred-year old counterparts. Understandably though, it’s been done to keep the gameplay ‘relevant’, and it certainly plays well, with tight controls and well-balanced weapons in both single player and online modes.

There are a couple of small issues. The 5 mini-campaigns are pretty short, and I got through them all in about 6 hours, and there’s little reason to go back to them unless you’re an achievement hunter. Some of the achievements are pretty glitchy too, so I certainly wouldn’t rely on them unlocking. I certainly had some issues.