The Battlefield series is definitely popular, second only to Call of Duty in terms of online shooters. In fact, Battlefield 4 took last year’s Call of Duty: Ghosts head on, though perhaps felt rushed to market, with a slew of bugs and glitches post-release.
That didn’t stop people from playing online, and it still seems like a very active shooter. I’ve personally never played it, but the aerial and vehicular gameplay makes it seem like a larger scale war.
And with Battlefield 4, EA brought something new to the multiplayer arena: maps which would change when a Levolution event was triggered. From a large skyscraper falling to flooded maps and other weather conditions, it felt bigger than Ghosts’ similar changes in gameplay.
The single player seems to have been forgotten about rather quickly, but that’s a given where online is the clear focus. It felt quite different however with its larger maps rather than linear corridors to fight through, making a nice sense of freedom.
In our review, Stefan described how the single player felt as though it was “held together by duct tape and elastic bands” with a “lacklustre” script and “one dimensional” characterisation.
But when he talked about the multiplayer, he had much more praise to give. He summed it all up with:
Gamers have always been rather vocal when traditionally single player franchises add a multiplayer game, worrying about the diversion of resources. Battlefield 4 goes in the opposite direction, with a single player which feels tacked on purely to show off some of the online map locales.
But the multiplayer is the life and soul of the game, and lives up to and improves upon what Battlefield 3 had to offer. There’s greater variety of vehicles, maps which push off into new and interesting directions with changeable elements thanks to Levolution.
So, what did you think of the game? Did the multiplayer and Levolution elements make up for the poor single player campaign?
As per usual, let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. Simply leave a paragraph or so with your general opinion, and then end it with a Buy It, Bargain Bin It, Rent It or Avoid It rating on the end. Get your comments in by Sunday, and we’ll try to include them in next week’s verdict round-up.
yiddo
I own the PS4 version of the game and if I’m being honest, avoid it.
Sure, I have the OCCASIONAL game that is problem free, but the majority of the time it is a piss poor experience that I’m astounded made it past QA. A major, AAA shooter that is being sold to millions, and they STILL haven’t fixed some of the biggest problems. Absolutely disgraceful. They released a damn broken product and it’s still broken. The reviews failed to mention this also, as alot of them were in tested environments (don’t know about TSA), thus leading to what is in my eyes a false score – as the consumer experience ended up vastly difference.
It is troubling in my eyes that a franchise as huge as this can be released absolutely broken to fuck on one platform, but still doesn’t receive a shitload of flack for it. It’s a bad and worrying sign. I still have my copy, why? Because I still hold a shed of hope that they will fix this shit covered diamond so that I can finally enjoy what is (from the problem free games I’ve played) one of the best multiplayer experiences I’ve ever played.
This doesn’t even bring to light the problem of single player saves just randomly disappearing. What the actual fuck? Even the patch hasn’t fixed this. My save (and many other peoples also) just keep disappearing. Truly shameful.
The actual game itself is good, but you just cannot brush aside these problems especially if you are looking to get it on PS4. For that reason, I say avoid it until the game is definitely fixed – which I’m starting to doubt will ever happen. Need to pump out dem expansions, DLC and shortcut packs. Shaking my damn fucking head.
So yeah, in short. Avoid it like the plague.
minerwilly
Been playing online for almost 2 months now , haven’t experienced any issues . Brilliant game and easily the best the PS4 has to offer. I upgraded from the PS3 disc and it wasn’t too shabby on PS3 either.
gazzagb
Avoid It.
From what I’ve (briefly) played, it can’t really be described as anything but broken. I’d much rather recommend someone pick up Battlefield 3 or one of the Bad Companies, especially go for the BC’s if you’re looking for a good story.