My first theater of war with the Battlefield series was 2004’s Battlefield Vietnam, and since then, I have dabbled in the series, enjoying the chaotic, massive skirmishes that only DICE’s series can offer. Having experimented with different gameplay changes—including free-to-play, futuristic, and others—finding varied amounts of success, Battlefield 6 is upon us and feels like a return to the series’ roots. Despite the performance hiccups I ran into, this latest outing reminded me of those late nights squadding up with friends, even if my reaction time isn’t quite what it used to be.
Coming as no surprise, Battlefield 6 is a visual spectacle full of giant explosions, realistic war-ravaged arenas, tons of guns, and, making its dramatic return, destructible buildings. With smoke and rubble strewn all around, one look and it’s easy to tell that this game is a package that will test even the beefiest of PCs if you hope to shoot those rockets in 4K and hit high frame rates. Even then, peak performance isn’t a guarantee—at least not yet. Despite my machine being rather solid, with a 4080 Super, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, and 128GB of RAM, I frequently contended with CPU spikes that made my gameplay stutter, even though my CPU wasn’t even close to being maxed out. The stuttering was far more prevalent in single-player for some odd reason and would require me to bump down my settings to low if I wanted anything close to a smooth gameplay experience.
Considering that Battlefield 6 will likely be supported for a good number of years yet, like any of these sorts of titles, patches will continue to roll out, and things will stabilize. That said, it didn’t really help me out now, and the stuttering and occasional crashes resulted in my computer restarting itself. One particularly nasty episode of this resulted in my campaign progress being wiped out. Thankfully, this only happened after I had beaten it and was replaying it to try and earn a reward, because had it occurred during my initial playthrough, I would not have picked it back up to finish.
Playing through Battlefield’s campaign will take you roughly eight or so hours, but unfortunately, what I got was hours spent shooting through identical-looking enemies, with underwhelming and frankly generic military shooter fodder. Over the course of its nine missions, you fill the boots of Dagger 1-3, a special operations unit from NATO, as you struggle to take out and put the kibosh on the private military group Pax Armata, which is currently being a thorn in the world’s side.
Told via flashbacks, you see various events around Battlefield’s world where Dagger had been deployed and are tasked with “travel to X spot, survive or blow something up, travel to Y spot, and repeat,” all while shooting the same-looking Pax troops, with set-piece moments sprinkled throughout. Scenes where I was driving a truck in pursuit of a hijacked subway train are neat ways Battlefield can showcase its gorgeous visuals.
I don’t think a campaign inside a game like Battlefield is a bad idea; in fact, I think it could be an incredibly powerful tool to help teach new players the nuances of the title. Why couldn’t there have been a level where you have to learn how to pilot jets or helicopters in a safe environment, free of ridicule or grief, as you learn? Give me a stage where I have to keep a tank alive as an engineer using my repair tool, or as the squad’s medic that has to make a daring dash across a battlefield with my defibrillators to revive someone. At the VERY least, considering you are requiring me to stay connected online to play this SQUAD-BASED shooter, they could have at least let me play through the campaign cooperatively with friends. Instead of being a useful learning tool that could double as an exciting campaign, what I got was a handful of characters I don’t care about, with a story that feels uninspired and serves no point outside of unlocking a couple of cosmetics for completionists. And as harsh as it may sound, at least it can be uninstalled, saving you space on the hard drive.
That all being said, let’s be real for a second—a vast majority of folks, myself included, don’t get Battlefield games for their story but for their multiplayer. Many of the series’ entries are exclusively multiplayer even. Luckily, from the matches I have played so far of Battlefield 6’s eight different game types across the nine maps available at launch, I have been having a great time. Running through the smoking oil fields of the Operation Firestorm map to try and hold a capture point or fending off waves of enemies in the streets of Manhattan frequently left me on the edge of my seat.
During the review period, most of the games I played had a majority of their spots filled with bots, with varying amounts of other humans mixed in. The bots never came even remotely close to the skill of other human players, but I have to say, I sort of like the bots, too. I will openly admit that I am at the age where my reflexes aren’t really getting any better, so I appreciated being able to feel like I could contribute more to a game by taking out the bots alongside the occasional real player. I wouldn’t be against options to perhaps increase the smarts of the bots so they aren’t quite so stupid, but I appreciate them nonetheless, and the forgiveness they provided me as I learned new loadouts and guns.
Battlefield 6 retains the class system that was revived with Battlefield 2042, but now classes aren’t restricted to specific weapons and instead can equip anything. This open-weapon concept is interesting, but I found it detracts somewhat from what makes each class unique. Thankfully, a subset of modes referred to as “Closed Weapons” provides a more classic approach, locking classes to their specialty arms: Assault with assault rifles, Engineers with SMGs, Recon with their sniper rifles, and Support with all of their machine guns. I appreciate being able to have the option to keep the classes more specialized as its own mode option, offering players a more classic Battlefield feel while also moving the series forward. I’m always down for more options and player choice in my games.
There is one massive feature that was unfortunately unavailable during the pre-release review period, and that is the big Portal mode. This special mode, which will function like a super Forge mode, will allow creators to build custom maps and more, so I wasn’t able to mess around and see what all it will offer. To be fair, even if it had been available, the true depth and power of Portal won’t be seen for some time yet, once it launches. Griffball wasn’t made in a day, after all, either.
With the exception of the campaign, Battlefield 6 has all the makings of a splendid shooter that I can’t wait to play with my group of friends and relive our bygone days of youth, when we would stay up until dawn playing together—even if nowadays we’ll only stay up until maybe 11 p.m. That said, my time with Battlefield 6 has so far been spent in a bubble, and even with all the bones of a great online shooter, it doesn’t feel right to assign a score yet before getting an idea of how vital things like server stability and performance are, saying nothing of having no time to explore Portal yet. So consider this a review in progress. I have faith that DICE will patch away the performance issues I had and that the community will deliver on Portal’s potential. If they do, I don’t see why Battlefield 6 won’t go down as one of the best of the series. Regardless, right now I can’t wait to squad up with my friends, shoot back a couple of beers as we take out some enemy squads, and scream like children as we get overwhelmed by players vastly better than us in this beautiful chaos.
