So this past weekend gamers, young and old, got a chance to try out the Battlefield V BETA; a game that has already had its fair share of controversy for various reasons. I, for one, did not care about the controversy and was only focused on the gameplay aspect of it, since Battlefield 1 is one of my favourite FPS games of all time and I wondered how DICE would improve on it. So when the BETA was launched I finally had a chance to find this out for myself and the results are mostly positive.
The BETA came with two (or three, correct me if I’m wrong) game modes: the classic Conquest mode and Grand Operations mode, which made it’s debut in Battlefield 1. I mostly played Conquest mode because that was the most populated mode during the BETA. There was also a mode called Tides of War, which gave you special objectives to complete and which game mode you had to play in order to complete it. Once completing the objective you get a special reward, like XP or coins that you can use to buy cosmetic items.
The gameplay feels very similar to Battlefield 1, albeit a bit of fine tuning here and there; like better gun control and the ability to shoot while crawling back at the same time (I sometimes had to remind myself that this was Battlefield V and not Battlefield 1). Although I never played it, I could see that the look and feel of the game also drew some inspiration from Star Wars Battlefront II.
Now I know that this was a BETA and that the game is still a work in progress, but there were some gripes I had with the game. Firstly, the amount of ammo each weapon carries is too low, especially with the assault rifles and SMGs. Because of this, the game forces you to either get resupplied by a support unit or pick up ammo by one of the ammo caches scattered around the map. The second issue I (and many others) had was the chat feature and what constituted as “bad language”. Words like “DLC” (which is laughable) and “Nazi” instantly get censored. I would understand why “Nazi” would get censored, but come on, it’s a World War II game! On that point, I found it a weird creative decision to not use the Nazi flag for the Germans and instead use an old German flag pre-dating to WWI (correct me if I’m wrong). Apart from weird creative decisions, the BETA also included things that you would expect from any BETA: bugs, glitches and lots of lag.
Overall, while I was impressed with what I saw in the BETA, this did not equate to a Day 1 purchase for me. The game has a lot of potential to succeed where Battlefield 1 left off, but they will need to work hard and long to fix some of the issues that plagued the BETA (I don’t want this game to suffer the same way Battlefield 4 did at launch). The only wildcard left to be revealed, though, is Battlefield’s attempt at Battle Royale called Firestorm, but we’ll learn more about that later in the year. Hopefully things will look up for this game when it eventually releases, but for now, I have to say that Call of Duty Black Ops 4 holds the lead.
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