Battlefield 6 is upon us, ushering in what may very well be the entry followers have been ready for. With multiplayer, the return of Portal, and a marketing campaign, this would be the full shebang at launch. Nevertheless, throughout our evaluate course of, unpopulated servers meant we solely encountered bot-filled lobbies, which isn’t fairly how we need to expertise the multiplayer.
As a substitute, our evaluate in progress will concentrate on the marketing campaign, which is a globe-trotting motion extravaganza that’ll span roughly six hours. Throughout 9 full missions, you’ll take down baddies, blow up loads of autos, and perhaps even elevate hell in a tank.
The marketing campaign for higher and for worse, is your normal assortment of navy fantasy, the place your tough and tumble squad should face insurmountable odds to take down a worldwide risk. That risk is Pax Armata, an infinite non-public militia hellbent on taking down the bureaucratic world.
With some well-directed cutscenes, the Battlefield 6 marketing campaign does take itself just a little too significantly. It’s enjoying with concepts of world treason and political espionage, with just a little an excessive amount of name-dropping and political mumbo jumbo.
We loved some features of the narrative, like a mysterious beef between your squad captain and the Scottish monologuing villain Kincaid. Nevertheless, it was simple to get misplaced as characters engaged in some smarmy prattle about their theories and the place the final mission went all incorrect.
And, from a structural perspective, it dons a back-and-forth method, as we weave from a present-day maintain up with a excessive political determine to the primary Dagger 1-3 squad, and the varied missions that led as much as this occasion, switching characters within the course of. It feels just a little stilted, and finally, we kind of clocked out. Simply inform us the place we’re going and what to shoot.
Fortunately, that a part of the marketing campaign is definitely fairly good. The sport spans the globe, from the tight alleys of Cairo to the townhouse-laden streets of Brooklyn. We favored that every mission had its personal little aptitude, whether or not these had been sniping missions, stealthy segments, or all-out motion, and missions by no means dragged on too lengthy both.
There isn’t a lot mechanically there, and it lacks that sense of place that you simply’d perhaps even get from a earlier Battlefield marketing campaign, like Dangerous Firm 2. Its missions do really feel like window dressing then, however at the least in that regard, they’ve accomplished their job. We loved destroying the entrance face of a Brooklyn townhouse, and we felt cool as we lined up our shot nestled within the mountains of Tajikistan.
Gunfights throughout its marketing campaign spotlight simply how pin-perfect the capturing feels right here. Motion is tight, weapons really feel snappy, and it appears incredible within the course of. We cherished sliding into cowl with the double faucet of Circle, as we slapped one other magazine into our rifle and commenced popping headshots whereas dipping out and in of canopy. The weapons particularly have an actual oomph to them due to DualSense controller haptics and adaptive triggers, and the bombastic whip and crack of its sound design.
We performed the sport on the PS5 Professional utilizing the Balanced mode, which goals for the next body price while specializing in greater constancy. We discovered this mode to be fairly good, with brilliant-looking vistas, manic destruction, and a pleasant stage of constancy on character fashions.
It wasn’t all excellent, nevertheless, as transitions between gameplay and first-person cinematics had been fairly buggy. Our character may very well be awkwardly dragged throughout an space to meet up with a scene, and generally, even interactions with sure gadgets or doorways wanted to proceed may very well be a bit finicky.
The sport additionally utilises a combination of in-game first-person cutscenes and pre-rendered cinematics, the latter of which had been of starkly decrease high quality and body price. They stood out like a sore thumb.
Moreover, the marketing campaign is speckled with small technical quirks. None of which actually took us out of the sport, however perhaps the monitoring on a personality throughout motion wasn’t fairly proper, otherwise you fired your distant controller missiles just a little too shortly after the final one, so that you needed to strive once more. It’s all to say that the marketing campaign doesn’t fairly have the technical polish you’d discover in one thing like Name of Obligation.
Conclusion
Battlefield 6 isn’t value shopping for for its marketing campaign alone — though we suspect nobody’s actually doing that anyway. For us, it’s a pleasant starter whereas we’re ready for the primary meal. It showcases how nice the gunplay feels and the way good the sport appears as a complete. But it surely’s not breaking any boundaries from a story, mechanical, or immersive perspective. Did we take pleasure in our time with it? Sure, in a flip your mind off form of means. Will we keep in mind it by the point we’re deep within the trenches of the multiplayer? In all probability not.
However, as talked about, that is solely part of the Battlefield 6 expertise. As soon as servers go reside with actual gamers, and we get some critical periods out within the subject, we’ll replace our evaluate and rating the sport accordingly.
