Welcome back to another “early impression,” this time on the Battlefield V beta. For those who don’t know, Battlefield V is the next installment in the Battlefield franchise set in a WWII setting. While having a lot of drama over the actual historical setting, let’s get down to the meat of the game and see if it’s actually worth playing.
Copied from the Battlefield Wiki: http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/Battlefield_V
I must apologize in advance, I actually don’t have screenshots of my own to post. I was too busy playing the game and enjoying it, I totally forgot I was writing this impression. I have borrowed a few screens and will credit the owner appropriately, my apologies!
With the beta we got a glimpse of what’s to come with multiplayer. We were given a grand operation with 2 days worth of play and conquest. There was a Shock Troop event going on, but all it entailed as playing grand operations and conquest modes to unlock a reward for the game once it’s released. So lets jump into grand operations. In the beta we were given Narvik as the grand operation, set with Airborne on the Allied side. I’m going to be brutally honest with this, Day one sucks for the Allies. The map is set up for the Axis (Germans) to win Day 1. You’ve got plenty of AAA batteries to jump in and blast away at the planes carrying the troops in. What’s worse, is once you do get to the ground, you have a large portion of land to cross to obtain a bomb, and then get it back to the objective. It’s extremely difficult. For the Axis it’s all fun, on the Allied team I really did not enjoy it. The good news is, is even if you lose the first day as the Allies, the map progresses into Day 2, so it’s still a victory for some reason.
Copied from Twitch streamer Stodeh: https://www.twitch.tv/Stodeh
Day 2 starts like a normal match. You’ve got a set of objectives you must take to push the map further backwards into the Axis’ side of the map and open up new objectives. With Day 2 comes vehicles. Airplanes and tanks both to enjoy, though set on a hefty respawn timer. These vehicles don’t come up often, and once they do someone is always sitting there spamming the key to get it. The good news is a squad leader can call in a tank to spawn using his leader points. Though you better be ready to get into it, because it spawns like a regular vehicle and anyone can spawn on it. Day two is where the real fun begins. Not only do you have to worry about taking the objectives, now you have to worry about pesky tanks. A cool feature of this mode is once you take an objective, any enemies left alive are displayed at the top of the screen as a number. It will tell you “3 enemies left” and you have to kill them to secure that sector. This makes it a little more challenging than simply rushing the objective and taking it to progress the map. Unfortunately Day 3 was not present in the beta. After you complete Day 2, it starts back over again on Day 1, with a majority of players swapping to the Axis side to avoid the hell that is Airborne.
Copied from the Battlefield Wiki: http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/Battlefield_V
The good news is Conquest is nothing like that. While Airborne on Narvik can be an actual pain in the ass, Conquest had a different map, and let me tell you it was fun. We got to play through the city of Rotterdam, most buildings destructible in some way, with plenty of vantage points for snipers and pure ambushes alike. Here is where the game really shines in my opinion. Rotterdam is split into two sections via a river/canal system. There are three or four bridges that separate the sides, all of which can be barricaded. Tank traps can be placed on each side of the bridge to prevent tanks from coming in. I honestly had no success in destroying them, I’d assume you’d have to use the C4 to get through, but blasting it with the tank did no good, maybe I didn’t shoot enough? This, however, adds a all new feature to the game and actually changes the dynamic hugely. Preventing tanks from getting to one side of the map means you can essentially blockade the tanks in and destroy them from higher vantage points, allowing you to more easily deal with the armored vehicles. Let me point out that the armored vehicles, especially the Tiger tank, are nothing but killing machines. I racked up a 47 kill streak in that sucker, and it wasn’t hard. Lucky for me the enemy team did not deploy those tank traps!
Copied from the Battlefield Wiki: http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/Battlefield_V
Talking about deploying barricades and tank traps, anyone can do it. Any Infantry soldier can make use of the deployable structures located in static positions around the map. What’s more, you actually get a good amount of score points for doing so. While many seemed to ignore them, thinking possibly only the engineers could do it (as I did at first), this can be a huge game changer for one side or the other.
Copied from Twitch streamer Stodeh: https://www.twitch.tv/Stodeh
All in all I think the game is on track to be a great game. It brings back the feeling that BF3 brought to the game for me. I absolutely hated Battlefield 1, I hated the mechanics they brought in and basically made it a re-skinned version of Battlefront. It felt more of a straight console port than anything to me. Battlefield V however is feeling really good. It feels like it was made for the PC, and it is optimized as well for controls and graphics. While we have yet to see the battle royal mode hands on, the rest of the game feels like it will be one of the best in the series to date. For those who were unable to play the beta, I’m sorry. All I can say is November isn’t too far away now, look forward to a great game!
