BF1

What’s this? video games again? well it’s not just ANY video game it’s the soon to be released (unless like me you got early access) new Battlefield game.  Battlefield 1

If you’re a BF fan you’ve probably already ordered it from a CD key site and this is a pointless post but I’m going to talk anyway.  I’m playing it on the PC btw since I’m not 13 years old

I started playing BF1 a few days back having gotten early access to it via a voucher for an upgrade.  So unlike YOU people I’ve had a hearstart. Anyhoe the big question you’ll have is… Is it any good.  yes, it’s VERY good, it’s better than BF4.  The setting is magnificent (WW1).  It’s varied, the graphics are magnificent and structures are more susceptible to destruction.  Driving a tank through a building is sublime.  The one thing I would say is it requires a bit more horsepower than BF4.  On high settings I found it chugged a bit on certain maps which contained a large amount of buildings.

It IS to a certain extent the same again as BF4 or maybe a BF4.5 but it’s good fun and we didn’t expect anything radical.  A couple of things I really liked were how the Zeppelin crashed.  OK you’ve probably seen the videos on this where one side gets control of a Zeppelin and rains hell down on the enemy below (the equivalent of the gunship in BF4).  When it takes enough damage the whole thing comes down Hindenburg style. Unlike BF4 where all of these big terrain crashes are on rails and more importantly static.  The crash happens where ever it got shot down and it comes down realistically littering the area with smouldering wreckage and lots of smoke.

The aeroplanes are a throwback to BF1942, slower and once again with bombs but not as overpowered as they were in BF2.  There’s a slow recharge of bombs rather than a nip home to rearm mechanic.  There’s a mixtures of 1, 2 and 3 seater planes.  No helicopters.

Spawning is pure BF4 and you get to pick vehicles at the start if they’re available.  I was concerned they’d go the stupid route of Star Wars Battlefront where you have to pick up a token to get access.   There is a bit of this where you can get access to special characters like Flamethrower man and Heavy Infantry with Heavy Machine gun.

There’s a few other game types in there and a very interesting looking campaign mode where you play a game over a range of maps.  A lovely feature I saw was where you could pick a full server and whilst queuing to join it browse other game servers in case something else took your fancy

It’s early days yet the game hasn’t been released to the hoi polloi yet so the underpopulated servers will fill up soon. If you’re wondering if you did the right thing preordering it.  I’m sure you did, it’s more BF they don’t appear to have messed it up yet.

Huzzah!

Vic