Overview
Battlefield 1 is the newest addition to the Battlefield franchise developed by DICE and published by EA. Recently the beta version of the game was made publicly available and contains a single playable map, 4 playable classes with 3 special pickup classes dotted around the map.
Only a single map was available during the beta.
Only a single map was available during the beta.
This is only the beta and everything is subject to change, the build played only contained a few of the weapons and gadgets available. Issues I experienced may be fixed my the release.
Classes
The 4 main classes within the game are Assault, Medic, Support and Scout, there are also 3 elite classes and 2 vehicle classes which you can only use if you spawn into one of the vehicles.
The medic plays a slightly different role to other battlefield games, the medic no longer has assault rifles and now uses single fire rifles with some having automatic variants, the medic can also revive teammates with the syringe and can heal them with the medic box and health packs.
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Screenshots included are from the closed alpha version of the game, the classes and loadout screen have not been changed since then. |
The support has access to the light machine guns alongside tripwire bombs and the ammo box/pack. The support has had quite the change since Battlefield 4 and now the light machine guns get more accurate as you fire, this makes the support fill the role of suppression because as long as you keep firing you have pin point accuracy. Just like the medic you can throw a homing ammo pack by pressing Q on a player that needs ammo.
The assault utilises weapons such as SMG's and shotguns and is all around a close range class, the assault has the biggest arsenal for dealing with vehicles including dynamite and anti-tank grenades. This class dominates in close quarters and could be considered one of the more kill orientated classes with less things that help teammates directly and more things that can be used for killing both vehicles and infantry with ease. In my personal opinion the assault class has some of the easiest guns to use in the current build simply due to the fact that the fire rates are so high that anyone in front of you melts away.
And finally, the scout, this class is a sniper that uses long range rifles along with gadgets that can be used to spot the enemy team. Previous Battlefields have a much slower bullet speed that BF1, this makes the life of a sniper much easier with bullet drop only really becoming an issue at extreme ranges.
There are also 3 elite classes, these are the gunner, flamethrower and tank hunter, these classes are on the map as pickups and use a light machine-gun flamethrower and anti-tank sniper rifle respectively, these units take a lot more shots to kill and are all over dominant also requiring a decent level of teamwork to kill.
Gameplay
The Battlefield franchise has always had extremely solid gameplay and Battlefield 1 is no exception. To me the guns all felt extremely powerful and satisfying to use which is a definite improvement since Bf4 but also feels extremely similar to Battlefield Hardlines weaponry wherein every gun has recoil that corresponds to what you expect with a gun of its calibre and size unlike BF4 where you could have an absolutely massive LMG which has basically no recoil.
First person shooter wise the gameplay is very simple but also comes along with Battlefields "all out warfare" so there is the planes and tanks going around exploding.
There is also the addition of the bayonet charge, this gives classes with less close range abilities some way to fight back, it even instakills the special units making the bayonet an extremely useful weapon.
There is also the new mechanic of repairing vehicles whilst inside them, although I think this is nice for planes it sort of makes tanks invincible if they hide behind a rock for a few seconds and heal back to full.
The addition of the behemoth and dynamic weather effects really do suit the game, random sandstorms really switched up the engadgement range of most gunfights and the behemoth was extremely strong and teams to use it to comeback quite easily.
Vehicles
Speaking of the behemoth, the train was the behemoth available on the map, its basically a train with a load of guns and some guy drives it honking the horn, its devastating and it only awarded to the team who is losing by a large margin, this is a really nice comeback mechanic.
Theres honestly not much to say about the other vehicles, they all feel pretty much the same to bf4 apart from the planes and the horse.
The planes feel much slower and you have much less control than previous titles due to the fact that your no longer in a jet but in a biplane.
The tanks seem a little overpowered in the fact that you could be working together with squadmates to kill a tank and the tank just turns around and wipes you out with no issue, at first i thought it was because it was a beta nobody bothered to kill the tanks, but after playing in the tank it seems pretty simple to go 30 kills to one or two deaths.
Horses give you a sword and rifle to use and seem a bit like a suicidal taxi, if you can stay alive, you can get around really fast and sometimes you can pick up a load of kills, but the horses seem inconsistent with the roadkills and sword kills sometimes you get a kill you dont expect and other times you go straight through them and do no damage.
Issues
Medic feels slightly lacklustre in comparison to the other classes with the weapons being quite difficult to use and the fact that the revive symbol does not come up by default, this makes reviving people infinitely more difficult along with the fact that the rifle mounted grenade is simply more fun to use and far more rewarding and trying to stab the ground to revive someone.
The support and medic also have no real reason to use the ammo/medic box with how effective the small packs are in comparison.
The sword hitbox on the horse also feels way off, sometimes you can get someone form 20 metres away and another time you can sit there swinging and get nothing.
Another gripe I have is that no normal class can repair vehicles meaning that part of teamplay is completely gone and this makes a lot of the vehicles disposable.
The pacing on the one map available during the beta was a bit off too, there was this random objective in the middle of nowhere that took about a minute or 2 to walk over which really messed with the flow of the game.
I also noticed times where i would be shooting someone and i would get stuff like "enemy hit 140" and after dying they would die after a few seconds and i would be credited with the kill.
There were multiple bugs in the beta with things like certain clothes of soldiers orbiting players for no reason, animation bugs and the incredible annoying vaulting bug where you would vault over a wall then be reset back to where you were, I tested this with friends with multiple machines and internets and i can safely say its the game.
There was also the massive issue of some servers giving me more fps than others. I would join one server and have 10fps then switch and have 100. I was the only one to have this issue out of my friends but I am the only one with a GTX 1080 which may have caused the issues with the lack of drivers.
Verdict
Although the game is yet to be released from what I have played and seen, this looks like a solid addition to the battlefield franchise, but I do have my doubts, I cant exactly put my finger on it, but something just feels off when playing, the phrase I could assign to this game is "cautiously optimistic".
Game played on pc.
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