After putting in almost 10 hours of gameplay in the Battlefield 1 open beta, here are our early thoughts on the upcoming WWI-inspired shooter.
Arguably the most anticipated first-person shooter of 2016 is almost here, and lucky for us gamers, an open beta for Battlefield 1 was released on Wednesday (Tuesday for Battlefield Insiders). The Battlefield series is so beloved by the fan base because there isn’t another game out in the market that makes you feel like you’re actually in the middle of war.
The realism in almost every single Battlefield game is second to none, and with Battlefield 1, the developers have returned to their roots and delivered the game the fans have been longing for. The previous entry in the series, Battlefield Hardline, sort of strayed away from what made the other games so great. Hardline focused more on close quarter combat and heist gameplay. This doesn’t mean that it was a bad game by any means, but it was different enough to mean it wasn’t accepted by many people.
Fans love the big maps, the variety of weapons, the ability to use tanks, airplanes and many other vehicles, and with Battlefield 1, which puts you right into where it all started with World War I, we can do exactly that.
In the open beta, players are able to play on one map and two modes: the Sinai Desert map and the Conquest and Rush modes.
In Conquest, there are various flags across the map that you can capture, and the more flags your team captures, the more points you get. In Rush, players start on a portion of the map and are either on offense or defense. On offense, you have point A and point B and must plant the explosives at both points in order to advance to the next portion of the map. Once you’ve done this three times, you win. On defense, you must defend those points at all costs, and can end the game rather quickly if you don’t let the attacking team advance.
There isn’t much to judge on the features in the beta, considering that there’s only one map and two modes that are available. There’s also a limited amount of guns. But the core gameplay is extremely fun. Sinai Desert is huge, and there are many places to set up and play to your liking. As a sniper, you can set up on a cliff and pick people off from a distance, or you can get right into the middle of the action with a machine gun and test your luck. There are also many vehicles that can be utilized however you want.
Everything is very fun to use, but I do have minor complaints about certain things they can fix. For example, vehicles sometimes seem very overpowered, and in the beta, there really isn’t a means of destroying them quickly. You have to dedicate a lot of your time to destroying the vehicles, and it can become very stressful. Obviously, this is only in the beta since the full game will include many new weapons and a variety of ways to go about this.
Another minor complaint is the parachute. In other Battlefield games, you can easily jump off of buildings and other higher platforms with security since you can deploy your parachute and land safely on the ground. Although you can do this in Battlefield 1, the parachute option doesn’t become available until you almost hit the ground, which is also extremely stressful. This can lead to you dying due to fall damage, and it also resorts to you spamming the parachute button without it always working. Hopefully, the developers fix this in the game’s full build.
The biggest complaint so far involves the classes that are available. Each class doesn’t seem unique compared to past games in the series. The one that stands out the most is the medic class. The medic class is practically useless because, for one, nobody really uses it, so expecting a heal from one of your teammates is unlikely. Also, the class just seems like every other class other than a different weapon. Classes are meant to be different and each cater to a specific role that you want to play on your team. It seems that they’ve strayed away from that a bit.
These seem like minor issues and not huge problems that can’t be fixed. Hopefully, the developers patch these things up before release so we can enjoy the full experience to the best of our ability.
Overall, the beta for Battlefield 1 is extremely enjoyable, and it will be an anxious wait for the full game on October 21, 2016.