Battlefield 4 is a greatest hits album of DICE’s multiplayer first-person shooter legacy. It retains the defining DNA of Battlefield 1942, re-adopts Battlefield 2’s brilliant Commander mode, and exaggerates the destruction of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, all while embracing the realism, class reorganization, and gorgeous graphics of Battlefield 3. Most of the time, Battlefield’s unpredictable, vehicular-based competitive combat is predictably excellent. What I didn’t anticipate was DICE getting in its own way.
What we've never seen before in a Battlefield game is the drastic, and often inconsistent way Battlefield 4 forces its two massive 32-player teams to adjust to evolving environmental conditions. A dam bursts, crushing everything below with metric tonnes of rubble and floods. Half a hotel disintegrates, exposing a control point and depriving snipers of a valuable perch. Large-scale destruction like this changes the fundamental layout of an area, forcing combatants to react intelligently and change their strategies and loadouts on the fly. Even after the magic and surprise is gone, teams always need to be prepared for how they’ll react when a crumbled tower keeps their tanks out of enemy territory. Coming out on top because your new strategy adapts to and harnesses the new level design is even more satisfying than the XP and armory unlocks you earn along the way.
That said, not every instance of awe-inspiring devastation is as excellent as these. Often, triggering the event takes minutes of work, and the result is sometimes superfluous, feeling more like DICE’s obligation to include it in every map rather than something that achieves anything of value. A smashed satellite at the center of a map becomes a minor inconvenience for vehicles, for example. A toppled tower actually makes it irritating to navigate an underground area, and manually detonating underground explosives from a terminal takes you away from the action in one of the biggest maps. Most offensive of all, a flooding town’s rising water levels significantly inhibits mobility – and is especially frustrating if you’re in a fierce tug-of-war for a base-busting bomb in the terrific new Obliteration mode.
If you're smart about it, you can take advantage of most maps’ effects, though – including some of the less magnificent, more subtle things. Diminished visibility as a typhoon assaults an island might mean changing your favorite red-dot sight for something that sees in the dark. Hunting bomb carriers as the sun rises means they’re increasingly vulnerable as the match goes on – the faster they arm control points early on, the easier their lives will be later.
In addition to those major destruction events, DICE has rediscovered a major factor that defines Battlefield’s greatness among other modern military shooters: finally, for the first time since Bad Company 2, teams can tear down most simple structures. Knocking out supports to topple houses and collapse roads isn’t quite as exciting as a skyscraper sinking into a bay, but it’s great for keeping enemies out of troublesome spots or creating a crawl space to hide in. One of my favorite maps – Golmud Railway, where DICE’s designers take expert advantage of its enormous scale, several scattered control points, and aerial warfare – has a mobile control point in the form of a train. Fighting for control is an entertaining, mobile struggle.
More than anything, and despite its new features, Battlefield 4 most closely resembles Battlefield 3, if only for the similar feel of its physical, scary weapons. Accounting for bullet drop as a sniper – which involves more mental math now thanks to adjustable zero-targeting ranges – remains one of the most fulfilling things about Battlefield’s skill-based gunplay. Elsewhere, one of the smallest departures is the most significant, at least for knife-fighters. Stealth attacks from behind, as usual, guarantee a new set of dog tags for your knife-kill collection. Stabbing at someone from the front, however, gives them a brief opportunity to reverse the attack. Counter-kills are an incredibly satisfying way to put down someone who wasn’t careful enough to wait for you to turn your back, and an interesting new tactical layer to what used to be a panic button.
Where Battlefield 4 most brilliantly distances Battlefield 3 is in its map design. The best Battlefield maps are challenging and satisfying, demanding you take advantage of everything at your disposal, and Battlefield 4 does this extremely well.
Screaming across the terrain in the bouncy new off-road buggy is a blast, but its vulnerability may lead you to choose a tank instead. But even its rear is vulnerable to infantry rockets. Battlefield’s interesting relationship between infantry and vehicles goes deeper here, with additional means to take down enemies, whether you’re immobilizing vehicles or filling them with a team to attack in force. The soldiers in that ride will likely have a more varied array of gear than ever, too, because character classes and vehicles have more extensive customization options in Battlefield 4. Recon is no longer limited to the sniper/shotgunner role, allowing him to equip a mid-range DMR to do some actual recon. Classes are defined by gadgets rather than guns, and it permits a more aggressive play style for unit types previously restricted by their loadout options. Much like Battlefield 4’s gameplay, its customization is more liberated than ever.
Terrific level design is responsible for a lot of what makes this work well, and I’d wager that a good chunk of Battlefield 4’s maps will live as classics. Everything is, as always, engineered around Battlefield’s territory-control Conquest mode. Hainan Resort, with its destructible hotel centerpiece and terrific mix of air/ground/sea combat options, is Wake Island-levels of outstanding. Awesome opportunities exist for every class, every pilot, every aggressive paratrooper to pull off an unbelievable kill or anxiety-inducing control point capture.
It's not the only excellent one. The Rogue Transmission map gives planes plenty of breathing room, and ATVs can avoid aerial vehicles using underground passageways. It’s a map that demands a sense of spatial awareness and having a reliable, coordinated squad. It’s also one of Battlefield’s best-in-class vehicular balancing acts – vulnerable four-wheelers can still escape tanks, which in turn have a great, unobstructed view for clearing the air of choppers and jets.
Not every map works great with every mode, though. The thrill of punching through enemy lines, destroying control points, and proceeding to the next seems less strategic than ever in some Rush maps. Paracel Storm, for example, funnels attackers into punishing bottlenecks dominated by defenders. In others, predatory offense can feel like desperate brute force, particularly in matches with lots of players. Obliteration maps with water are the most troublesome – the mode’s bomb resets if it ends up in the drink, leading to chaotic confusion and frustrating losses.
Domination is a fast and focused Conquest variant with scaled-down maps and infantry-only fighting, which is a nice change of pace from the contemplative exploration of the open-ended Battlefield maps. In that sense, it’s closer to Call of Duty than Battlefield, for better or worse. Likewise, Defuse mode is a shameless Counter-Strike clone with a Battlefield twist. Planting a bomb behind enemy lines without respawning is even scarier when someone punches a hole through a wall with a rocket. Explosives and exposure don’t break it, mercifully, since the complex maps have so many routes to escape or flank foes. Operation Locker, a tight-quarters prison with winding hallways and plenty of places to flank enemies, always has me looking over my shoulder, and will find a dedicated Domination/Defuse audience, no doubt.
Commander Mode brings out the best in Battlefield 4. When one player on each team steps away from their guns to issue orders from a top-down tactical screen to 31 teammates, amazing things can happen. It's hard to believe that participating war in a hands-off capacity can be this satisfying! Coordinated Commanders who work well with their squads will find themselves steamrolling enemies who can’t.
The symbiotic relationship between soldier and Commander creates cyclical reward that enables new strategies in Conquest, Rush, and Obliteration, if you choose to use it. Commanders who send reinforcements to a suppressed squad, or send enemy-spotting UAVs overhead of hotspots, will earn the trust of a team. Squads who capture specialized control points earn additional attack options for their leader to deploy, such as a missile strike. Like in Battlefield 2, Commander Mode will change the way serious players play a Battlefield game. It is, more so than the sometimes-awesome evolution of landscapes, a reliably interesting feature that DICE should never let go of again.
Also difficult to fathom is how Battlefield 4’s campaign uses so much to accomplish so little.
You might've seen the first 17-minute video that DICE released of Battlefield 4 gameplay, featuring a run through the first story mission: a frantic escape sequence in Azerbaijan. It’s a spectacular showcase of Frostbite 3 engine’s incredible technical capabilities, DICE’s skillful ability to build tension, and Battlefield’s prowess as a flexible sandbox shooter. It is also emblematic of Battlefield 4’s complete inability to restrain itself.
Its campaign is an obnoxious assault of explosions, blood, profanity, and anger wrapped in an apparent parody of a first-person shooter. In five hours, Battlefield 4 hits on almost every predictable cliché expected: Tank mission, boat mission, stealth mission, jailbreak, sewers, sudden but inevitable betrayal, dastardly Russians, defying orders, and, of course, a torture sequence. Retreading thoroughly charted territory isn’t exciting here, and Battlefield 4 regularly squanders or underutilizes its fragmented strengths in designing those levels.
It introduces squad commands, allowing you to order teammates to attack, but it’s just that simple. Point, allies attack, and then you move on. Why aren’t they shooting at enemies like this in the first place? Level design is increasingly constrained as the campaign proceeds, and corridors and other tight spaces leave little room for options, team play, and the flexibility that we see flaunted in earlier, larger encounters. Spaces seem to shrink over time, and verticality is tossed aside in favor of forward-facing firefights.
I’ll give it this: Battlefield 4’s single-player never quite sinks to the same level as Battlefield 3’s oppressive linearity, follow-the-leader structure, and borderline absence of interaction. It's also very pretty, and the stellar lighting, particle, physical, and environmental effects are impressive across the vibrant, visually diverse settings. But it’s a surface-level success where there isn’t much depth.
Leveraging that realism, Battlefield 4 aims for an evocative, emotional experience, and utterly fails. I count its disjointed story among the least emotionally affecting experiences I’ve had with a game (that actually tried for one). Any plea for plausibility or depth dies when a bodycount milestone earns you a headshot bonus, weapon unlock, or gold medal pop-up. Between its unwillingness to put primary characters at serious risk and a meaningless moral-choice finale, Battlefield 4 pulls almost every emotional punch.
Meanwhile, the plot has too many moving parts and not enough time to give them each due credit. It’s unsure whether to focus on the suffering of your squad or the geopolitical gibberish. Writing is not Battlefield 4’s strong suit. Sometimes it fails to explain narrative progression clearly. Other times it’s awkward, out of place, and embarrassing. One of its most confusing story surprises with nonsensical blasé: “Things were f***ed. Then they were unf***ed.” When a secondary character doesn’t make it to the next scene, a squadmate pointlessly notes that the “dude is dead.” My personal favorite: “If you’ve survived a nuclear explosion like I have” is the actual start to a sentence someone says.
Honestly, it feels like something is missing here. A gaping “Two Days Later” hole introduces sudden changes in character behavior and an out-of-nowhere new setting and to-do list. It’s as if half a campaign and the whole of its humanity got lost along the way.
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