Battlefield 6 Review

DISCLAIMER: At the time of writing, Battlefield 6’s Portal mode had some backend issues and thus was not available for review. There were a couple of activities provided that were built using it, however, they were very cookie-cutter and did not feel properly indicative or representative of what this mode truly has to offer. Please keep this in mind when reading the review, as it does mean that a portion of the game was unable to be reviewed.

Multiplayer first-person shooters have been in a dire spot as of late. Long gone are the golden days of Call of Duty, replaced with a cynical, hollow shell of what was once a series deserving of its popularity. 343 Industries/Halo Studios, alongside Microsoft, has managed a fantastic job of running the Halo IP into the ground, and Titanfall has fallen dormant after EA did it dirty by releasing it between two giants—Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 1—doomed to survive only as a battle royale. Developer DICE has struggled with many of its releases of late, too, with both Star Wars Battlefront entries being a mess, and Battlefield 2042 being an unmitigated disaster out of the gate. However, undeterred by their mistakes, DICE has returned with Battlefield 6, an incredibly strong entry into the series that seeks to learn from the mistakes of its predecessor.

I’m going to be completely honest with you here: if you are coming to Battlefield 6 expecting a fantastic story, you should look elsewhere. You are placed in the shoes of Dagger 1-3, a Special Operations Force unit who takes on dangerous missions during a period of war and instability. NATO’s power has been undermined by a rogue band of power-hungry terrorists known as Pax Armata. They were once relatively peaceful, but have since waged war on the world and its people. That’s more or less the crux of the story. All the finer details best serve as the set dressing for the various engagements and missions you will find yourself in. Narratively, the game is a whole lot of nothing. To make matters worse, even though the game’s story isn’t much, it also leaves on a cliffhanger that does nothing to answer the questions that players would have at the end of the campaign. You’ll end up coming away as the credits roll thinking, “Wait, that’s it?” I understand it’s a little weird to criticise the storytelling of a series that is no longer known for great storytelling, but it’s something that needs to be pointed out nonetheless.

While the campaign’s story leaves a lot to be desired, actually playing it is quite fun. Nothing groundbreaking, but it does a pretty solid job of familiarising the player with the various functions of Battlefield 6’s classes. The game indirectly gives you opportunities to blow up vehicles, snipe enemies, repair a tank, and revive teammates. On top of that, I found myself enjoying all the missions, even the vehicle-based ones, which normally are not my forte, as I typically enjoy the gunplay of the Battlefield games far too much. However, this campaign struck a great balance between on-foot infantry gameplay, and vehicle-based destruction and chaos. What was also nice to see was that, even on the highest difficulty (Hardcore), the game never felt oppressively difficult. It’s a fine line that a lot of shooters have to tread their higher difficulty levels, and ultimately it’s quite common for them to stumble, but I never felt that way when I played through the game’s campaign on Hardcore difficulty. I can see myself going back to the campaign on the odd occasion just to get the stellar experience of Battlefield 6’s gunplay without the stress or pressure of the game’s multiplayer. The balance and variety coalesce into an exhilarating and fun campaign that serves as a stress-free shooting environment as well as a platform to expose the players to the game’s nuances and mechanics.

The campaign was also host to the bugs I encountered during my time playing the game. While it is not riddled with bugs, it’s clear that the multiplayer received most of DICE’s attention for crushing bugs and polish, leaving the campaign with the occasional glaring mistake or bug. The bugs were relatively minor, but a cutscene’s audio was completely out of sync, and another cutscene featured binoculars that weren’t anywhere near the character’s hands, resulting in a bizarre-looking scene. My last grievance with the campaign is that, in order to enter the campaign, the game must close itself and effectively launch a new client with the missions loaded. This makes the main menu feel cumbersome. I understand that DICE wanted the installation of the game to be modular, but rather than give the player the choice of whether to launch into the campaign or into the multiplayer, players are forced into the latter if they wish to engage with the former.

Moving onto the multiplayer, it has been a long time since I properly played a multiplayer FPS game. In fact, Battlefield 3 might be the last time I was truly hooked on a multiplayer shooter, and Battlefield 6 is clearly aiming to buck this trend. Obviously, my time away from the genre has left my skills incredibly lacking, being not much better than my ability to beat the Cuphead tutorial, but I had such a blast playing the game that I did not have a care in the world. Battlefield does a great job of levelling the playing field through its vehicles and classes, and this very point of design is exactly what allowed me to enjoy playing the game. All the game modes I played were fun, and I also found quite a lot of enjoyment from the maps as well. I haven’t been this eager to play a multiplayer shooter in a very long time, but the chaos and shenanigans possible in Battlefield 6 pull me in.

I played with all the classes, and my favourite is by far the support class, as it was in the older games. I’ve always been someone who enjoys playing support in games (I love being a healer in MMOs). The game does change things up by allowing anyone to revive their teammates. Even after spending hours and hours with this new mechanic in the full version of the game, I am still not sold on how support functions when compared to older titles, but it is still a fun class nonetheless. I did link up with some old friends at WellPlayed, spending some time with their reviewer, Adam Ryan. He showed me a brilliant use of the Assault Class’ signature ladder gadget: slowly and meticulously positioning the character to deploy a ladder down an already perfectly functional flight of stairs. I like to call it “descending with style”.

My biggest issue with the multiplayer side of things is the fact that the game’s menus for multiplayer, and the main menu in general, are incredibly clunky and cumbersome. I don’t know what it is about modern AAA games, but it appears that clear, cohesive UI/UX is lost art in this industry. It turns this game from something incredibly approachable to a game that can feel confusing and frustrating when trying to negotiate its menus.

The last thing to note is how gorgeous this game is, and it doesn’t even feel like the performance comes at a huge cost to the visuals. It does need to be noted that the game will sometimes crank your settings higher than it should, relying on Frame Generation to make up for the performance shortfall, but even then it was the best-feeling and best-looking implementation of Frame Generation I have ever experienced. I still prefer to run with Frame Generation off, bringing down some of my settings to something a little more reasonable. But the fact that my PC was able to maintain mostly above 60 FPS with everything cranked and without Frame Generation is pretty great to see!