SPLICED GAMING /
REVIEW / BATTLEFIELD 4
ISSUE 02
PLATFORMS
360 / PC / PS3 / PS4 / XBO
GENRE
FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER
MULTIPLAYER
64 players
DEVELOPER
EA DICE
PUBLISHER
ELECTRONIC ARTS
AGE RATING
18
WEBSITE www.battlefield.com
by Dane Remendes
Battlefield 4
Guns, explosions and war, with some neat
new tricks thrown in for good measure
T
immediately presented the most dynamic, most
explosive, most alive multiplayer battleground
ever created. And it was spectacular.
Now, just two years later, Battlefield 4
hopes to spark that same captivating feeling
with all of its shiny new-ness and a range of
iterative improvements, as well as a number
of eye-catching enhancements like the
much-marketed evolving maps offered up by
Levolution. At first glance, the series’ fourth
numbered entry comes dangerously close to
looking like nothing more than an expansion
to its predecessor – but there’s enough fresh
content here to ensure that it feels like a
necessary upgrade.
Before we delve into the juiciness of the
expanded multiplayer suite, there’s the obligatory
single-player campaign that needs to be dealt with
first. Simply put, it’s entirely unnecessary for BF4’s
solo mode to exist at all. Graciously,
it delivers a more worthwhile
The increased focus on
narrative experience than BF3’s
naval combat has had some
hollow campaign did, but that’s not
welcome side-effects.
really saying much. It’s a me-too
Players can now draw their
affair that does its best to keep up
sidearm while swimming
with the competition, but it’s just
so that they’re not totally
not enough to circumvent the fact
helpless when out for a swim.
that I’ve had enough of the sort of
You’re also now able to dive
heavily scripted modern military
below the surface to quickly
FPS crap that’s on offer here.
hide from enemies.
here’s nothing else out there that’s
quite like Battlefield. Since its
World War II-themed inception
with Battlefield 1942, the series
has repeatedly dominated
its particular subset of the multiplayer FPS
genre with each successive release. Many
have attempted to mimic its trademark style
(with varying degrees of success; Star Wars:
Battlefront immediately springs to mind as
one of the better ones), but there is only one
Battlefield, and it’s always stood proudly as the
go-to game for those looking for large-scale
multiplayer devastation. When Battlefield 3 was
released in 2011, the six-year wait between it and
Battlefield 2 was entirely justified the moment
players stepped onto one of its many sprawling,
chaotically beautiful battlefields and realised
that they’d just entered something special. It
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