Battlefield 1

The Battlefield formula focused on large-scale clashes and goal achievement is more intense and spectacular than ever by choosing to cover the period of WW1. The single player campaign in Battlefield 1 features a short but astonishing collection of “human-sized” scenarios that brilliantly shed light on key military technologies of the time.

Its exhilarating multiplayer mode, which capitalizes heavily on the weaponry potential of the era, brings its share of subtle changes that make the clashes balanced and strategic, even in the midst of the characteristic chaos that makes Battlefield a major franchise of the world. genre FPS.

The Battlefield franchise hasn't really been known for the quality of its single player campaign in recent years, but the one offered by Battlefield 1 represents a welcome change of pace. The way in which each scenario skilfully juggles charm and tragedy makes it possible to humanize with calm and restraint this terrible conflict and its representatives. While its simplistic goals keep it from becoming the momentous saga it could be, the emphasis on Battlefield's most significant elements - like capturing objectives and motorized battles - makes it a great introduction to the mechanics of the mode. multiplayer.

Rather than being limited to a single character and a single location, Battlefield 1's approach (like thumbnails spread over a planisphere) allows it to tackle under-explored events that contributed to making this first world conflict so nightmarish. Its short prologue and five "War Tales", each lasting between 30 minutes and 1 hour, took me from the muddy battlefields of the Western Front to the scorching deserts of North Africa. Due to its many chronological and geographical leaps, the campaign never dwells on the complex political context of the Great War, but its effective narration keeps it from slipping into superficiality - these slices of warlike life prefer to tell us stories to human size rather than inflicting a bombastic history lesson on us, and they do so with devastating grace and power.

Storm of Steel, the mission serving as the prologue, portrays the war with tragic honesty. You play in turn different soldiers of the 369th American Infantry Regiment, made up almost exclusively of African Americans called "Harlem Hellfighters" by the German soldiers because of their courage and their unwavering determination. I especially enjoyed discovering the historical significance of these soldiers (mostly African-American and Puerto Rican) so early in the adventure, but I would have preferred to discover their seldom-told stories in the course of 'a real scripted mission centered on one of them.

As you and your loyal Hellfighters desperately try to push back the German forces, death is never far away, and it is all on purpose. Sometimes your death is forced when you resist longer than the script hoped for, but that's all part of the plan and makes this intro particularly poignant. While the Storm of Steel mission is roughly akin to an effective tutorial that introduces you to basic Battlefield mechanics - how to shoot, reposition, or reload - its grim reminders highlighting the terrible toll of this planetary conflict set a tragic tone. .

It's a heartbreaking campaign - perhaps not the apocalyptic horror this Great War deserves, but a fine attempt that breaks free from the warlike and patriotic clichés that undermine more modern conflict-centric games. This doesn't mean that heroism and excitement are missing, however - rest assured they are there. Battlefield manages to capture the essence of war values without adding more, and each of these “little” stories turns out to be grandiose.

Sluggish start

Into Mud and Blood, the title's first scripted mission, is by far the least interesting when it comes to its characters, and the much higher quality of the following missions made me wonder why DICE had chosen it to launch. truly hostilities. The answer probably lies in his most familiar approach - you play Daniel Edwards, an inexperienced young soldier from an English Mark V unit, and attempt to push through the German lines all the way to Cambrai.

It's not so much that the story is bad, but Edwards is such a bland character as the mission given to him. Capturing various points en route to Cambrai is obviously a nice introduction to Conquest mode (one of the most popular multi-mode in the Battlefield franchise) and the game mechanics associated with tanks, but which remains rather shy when it comes to narrative possibilities. .

Edwards is the perfect shot of the young recruit. The latter struggles to operate the capricious tank Mark V and ultimately proves to be the handyman when it comes to completing the mission: spot enemy camps on foot, fight against infantry and FT. -17 while his tank, Black Bess, gets repaired, before finally facing waves of vehicles in the middle of a devastated train station. This does not mean that these tank fights are boring, however - the last section of the train station is undoubtedly the highlight of this first mission.

This thrilling battle sometimes forced me to spare my capricious Mark V between two assaults, in order to go out to repair it with a key (faster alternative but also much more risky than the simple fact of putting the machine cover to repair it from inside), and zigzag between enemy vehicles for a better chance of hitting the less armored parts of their tanks (located at the rear).

The bugs present during this first mission prove to be even more puzzling than its sluggish plot, but this state of affairs fortunately does not concern the rest of the campaign. During my first game session, I spent nearly 15 minutes combing a deserted battlefield in order to trigger some event allowing me to access the next scene.

I actually noticed that an enemy tank got stuck in a trench at the edge of the level, which had the effect of crashing the mission script. Finally, another short passage inviting you to control a carrier pigeon (meant to represent a breath of fresh air amid the horrors of war), turned into a sadly comedic scene, due to its ill-adapted controls and of its camera and collision concerns (I had the good fortune to go through the textures of a building).

Highlights

Originally I thought the passage allowing you to control a carrier pigeon was a disguised way to introduce you to handling biplanes, but it actually happens a little later, during the explosive second mission, titled Des Amis High Placed, which excels in both gameplay and storytelling. This is a level filled with highlights. You spend most of the mission in the air, playing an intrepid American pilot who infiltrated the British Royal Flying Corps just to have fun and have the opportunity to take the controls of the Bristol F2 (a legendary biplane fighter ). Taking control of a biplane in Battlefield 1, solo or multiplayer, turns out to be a liberating experience. These slice through the air with fluidity and are controlled with ease and precision.

As our American troublemaker shared his escapades with his innocent British co-pilot, I crossed the air while shooting down the German fighters, luring them at full speed close to the huge airships blocking the sky, before diving upwards to see them crash , while taking the time to bombard the air defenses.

High Placed Friends is also excellent when you land your biplane and leave the dogfights to cross the rugged terrain behind enemy lines on foot. I approached this section in different ways, first focusing on stealth by doing melee kills through the trenches, before finally firing on all cylinders. Each level of the single player campaign is large and relatively open to offer you different ways to approach an obstacle, and focused enough to guide you without limiting your freedom. The stealth approach is effective thanks to the possibility of throwing casings to distract enemies, but also because of a not very shrewd AI that lets you sow death without risk of being spotted.

As for the frontal approach: Ammo is extremely limited but weapon crates plentiful, and you can always pick up weapons from the spoils of your enemies. This approach is obviously the best. The Battlefield formula is not really focused on stealth, and having the chance to experience the typical weapons of the Great War (among which we also find the first machine guns or the simple but effective bolt-action rifles) and to evolve my strategy depending on what I could pick up while surveying enemy encampments turned out to be an even more satisfying experience.

This brief, stealthy foray through the trenches, those veritable muddy "graveyards" filled with smoking Mark V tanks, bodies, torn trees and barbed wire, made No Man's Land a disturbing halt after the explosive aerial battles that preceded it. , and Battlefield 1 handles these types of transitions elegantly. While other military FPSs turn battlefield horror into a fun experience, Battlefield wisely uses storytelling to balance things out.

The following levels also preserve this balance in different ways. The scenario putting you in the shoes of an elite Italian soldier braving an enemy fortress to save his brother takes for example the form of a measured tale and told with sadness by a father to his daughter. In the last (probably the most surprising) level, you play as a Bedouin rebel who fights alongside Lawrence of Arabia to break free from the yoke of the Ottoman Empire. Each featured character fights for personal reasons far less than those that decide the fate of a war, and these human-sized stories resonate with an echo as magnificent as they are heartbreaking.

Overall, Battlefield 1's single-player campaign feels like an effective collection of adventures filled with memorable moments, but the main focus of this campaign is to familiarize you with the vehicles, classes, and weapons you'll be using in its - much more addicting. - multiplayer component.

Go to page 2 for our review on Battlefield 1 multiplayer

At the beginning of October we already had the opportunity to play Battlefield 1 extensively at a test event in Sweden. Then came the Origin Access phase with limited content and, on October 18, the start was finally made for all buyers of the early enlister version. Since then we have been gambling almost continuously. And yet we are itching in our fingers at this moment to let this test be a test, to fire up Origin and to plunge into battle again. But why is that? Let's get to the bottom of the matter in our final test verdict on the multiplayer shooter!

Battlefield, how do you keep your balance?

One of the biggest question marks at the moment of our preliminary test was still about balance. Because Battlefield 1 weaves a complex network of different classes, vehicles, maps and game modes. Accordingly, a lot of systems have to interlock fairly in order to enable a frustration-free gaming experience.

Battlefield 1 does this very well for the most part. All classes make their contribution to the team's success - if you play them correctly. When half a squad is made up of snipers banging around on the edge of the map, that is human error and not a problem of the game. Battlefield 1 even does everything to ensure that the players use the soldier classes correctly by rewarding appropriate actions (resuscitation, uncovering enemies, supplying players with ammunition) with an extremely high number of points. Team play is actively promoted with the same system.

The vehicles also blend in perfectly with the gaming experience. Tanks are strong, but not invincible. The same goes for the mighty Behemoths. In order to dismantle an armored train, a zeppelin or a battleship, the entire team needs a coordinated effort. Then the spook is over very quickly.

Lots of space on the maps

The maps often had an overarching problem in the past battlefields: nasty bottlenecks where the teams rubbed each other with grenades and rockets. The maps in Battlefield 1 have the right answer ready: "Walk around the outside!" Almost every nasty meat grinder (the community nickname for these places) can be bypassed on the large maps.

This expanse generally offers snipers a great field of fire (hence the previously mentioned sniper flood), but the map designers have cleverly created walls, trenches or other structures in whose protection we can sneak into the back of the enemy.

There are still some nasty spots, but mostly they can be defused with a little brainpower. At a flag point in Operation mode on the Monte Grappa map, for example, the defenders like to hide in a bunker system to which there are only two narrow entrances. Instead of storming through the doors over and over again, the attackers can also simply occupy the ridge above the bunker and take the flag point from there.

Most likely the balance is still limping in rush mode. Some telegraph poles are placed very inaccessible and can therefore be defended relatively easily. The only thing that helps is to attack both targets simultaneously if possible so as not to let the defenders calm down.

In Operations, the attacking team also has a tough nut to crack, but that doesn't detract from the fun we have in this great mode at any time. We also experienced almost unhindered marches by the attackers as well as games that got stuck in the first sector. A lot depends on good teamwork.

Before we get to technology, we have to say a few words about sound. In our big battlefield analysis, we and esports professionals confirmed that the Battlefield 1 beta had a surround sound mix that could be improved. Compared to its predecessor, opponents are much more difficult to locate based on their step noises. Little has changed in the release version. Anyone who sits alone in the bunker in order to take a flag point can only guess with great difficulty from noises from which direction an enemy is approaching.

On the other hand, this situation is the exception in Battlefield 1. As a rule, we are on the battlefield, tanks rumble past us, double-deckers rattle in the sky, machine gun fire tears up the air - and we cannot help but be amazed. The general sound quality is great. For e-athletes who are on the move with a few players on smaller maps, the fact that they are difficult to locate may be a problem, but for the average gamer this is hardly of any consequence in Battlefield. That's why we don't devalue Battlefield 1 for sound mixing.

The quantity makes the poison

We could go on with this list for quite a while. Taken alone, none of these bugs significantly affect the gaming experience. However, in terms of frequency and sum, the problems are annoying. So we're downgrading Battlefield 1 by two points until Dice fixes these bugs.

However, we made a conscious decision to give Battlefield 1 no less than 90 points even with the devaluation . Because the intensity, atmosphere and tension of the multiplayer battles marks nothing more and nothing less than a new genre milestone. Anyone who has a thing for multiplayer shooters simply has to experience it.

Now the "how" time has come! How varied and balanced are the nine multiplayer maps? Which game modes can we love? How stable is the technology? And how do we find the single player campaign captivating?

To find out, we've been playing Battlefield 1 almost continuously since the start of the Origin Access pre-release version. With the test samples provided to us and during our visit to Dice, we were able to experience the campaign completely and try out every game mode at least randomly on all cards. That is not enough to really answer all questions finally and to assign a final rating (more on this in the extra box), but it is for a first well-founded and extensive conclusion.

An intense start

Battlefield 1 begins differently than any previous Battlefield. Immediately after the first game start we find ourselves on the western front of the First World War. With a gun in hand and a simple mission: hold the line - at all costs. This is followed by around 15 minutes of desperate slaughter. We mow down rows of opponents who run in front of our guns. Several times we die ourselves and seamlessly switch to the body of another fighter. First a simple soldier, then a machine gunner, later the gunner of a Mark V tank. We see the same carnage everywhere.

This prologue is the beginning of a single player campaign that we have never seen before in a battlefield . Instead of a closed story, we play five war stories between 45 and 120 minutes long in any order and without an overarching story arc. Only the keynote, which is already struck by the introduction, remains the same: Dice wants to show the chaos of the First World War from the perspective of the common soldier. We are not a super fighter sent from theater of war to theater of war. Instead, we experience the individual fates of various people who played their part in this war.

Unfortunately, this exciting idea is only beginning to be implemented. We rarely experience real goosebumps, and always when Battlefield 1 dares to be different. For example, when we are suddenly torn out of the fray in the middle of a mission and guide a carrier pigeon across the battlefield to soothing music to deliver a deadly order. This contrast is so strong that it really touches us. Even in the cutscenes, Battlefield 1 manages to convey emotions again and again thanks to the excellent facial expressions of the characters.

But only play Rambo

But these are only exceptions. Most of the time we shoot our way through clumsy hordes of stupid AI enemies. It makes little difference whether we are driving a tank, an airplane or walking. Hey, we're the all-round World War II Rambo again.

This becomes particularly clear in the Italian episode »Avanti Savoia!«, Which playfully and in its narrative represents the bottom of the quintet. As a member of an elite unit, we shoot down hundreds of Austro-Hungarian soldiers, armored in a kind of knight's armor, only to then man a single anti-aircraft gun and clean a whole squad of Gotha bombers and their escorts from the sky. Oh, and of course we finally single-handedly conquered a well-fortified Alpine fortress. A task on which an entire Italian army unit failed.

How much Dice designed the campaign for the mainstream market , despite all the good intentions, can also be seen from the fact that we do not experience a single mission on the part of the Central Powers. Especially if you want to deal critically and respectfully with the treated epoch, as Dice has fully emphasized, it would be obvious to look at the war from both sides of the front. But this opportunity remains unused.

Instead of really making an impression, the five war stories are just your average fireworks display. Not more but also not less. They don't harm Battlefield 1, so they don't have a negative impact on our test score outside of our scope rating. Because let's be honest: Nobody buys a Battlefield because of their campaign. Battlefield 1 has to score with its multiplayer mode. And - so much in advance - Battlefield 1 scores with its multiplayer mode. Hell yeah!

Battlefield is not Verdun

Dice only changes the recipe for success in the series in nuances. The four soldier classes this time are assault soldiers (assault), medic (medic), supplier (support) and scout (scout). Those in the know may miss the engineer. Its most important tasks (destroying and repairing vehicles) were divided between the storm soldier and the supplier. With its rocket gun and anti-tank grenades, the Assault is well equipped for fighting tanks, and the support team can pack a wrench on request and become a mechanic.

While the skills of the assault soldier, medic and supplier complement each other perfectly, the Scout is aimed more at loners. Only with his flare pistol, which automatically marks enemies, can he really make himself useful in a team. All other gadgets like the trip mine or the sniper shield help him to make himself comfortable with his sniper rifle in a remote corner of the map.

Stay inside if there's a fire!

Some specialists complement the class quartet in Battlefield 1. Players who jump into the game directly in vehicles and airplanes in Battlefield 1 automatically become tank drivers or pilots. This has the advantage that you can repair your vehicle from the comfort of your driver's seat. But if they are forced to leave their wheels behind, they are less armed than the standard classes. This clever system effectively motivates players to man their vehicle to the bitter end and not to leave it on the battlefield at the first opportunity, as in its predecessors.

During the first trial phase, we still often see drivers leaving their slightly damaged tank in a panic, but that should go away when they realize how valuable the tanks have become in Battlefield 1. Anyone who lets one or even several vehicles be looted from the enemy in rush mode can also sign the unconditional surrender.

The tanks have become rarer and more powerful at the same time and therefore have a greater influence on the course of a game. One reason for this is that the tanks can withstand more than they used to. While in Battlefield 4 a single engineer could blow up a tank with just a few rear hits from his rocket launcher, it now takes several assault players who work well together. In addition, we can no longer approach the vehicles so easily to place explosives or mines. The large A7V tanks are defended by their crew of six at the same time in all directions.

Finally, a few words about the new spawn system for vehicles, with which Battlefield 1 has already been compared to the "casual shooter" Star Wars: Battlefront in the community. Tanks and planes are no longer ready on the battlefield. Instead, we select them from the re-entry menu so that we can get in directly at the wheel. This is how Dice prevents annoying spawn camping. In contrast to Battlefront, where we get tie-fighters or AT-STs by collecting randomly appearing items, Battlefield 1 clearly communicates how many vehicles or aircraft are available at a flag point. We think it's a much better system.

Pigeon shooting

Similar to the classes, Dice remains true to its predecessors in terms of game modes. The Battlefield classics Conquest and Rush are on board as well as Domination and Team Deathmatch for fast action in between. The war pigeon mode also takes on the latter notch. Two teams have to get hold of a dovecote, then retreat to a quiet place to compose a message and then drop a carrier pigeon outdoors. The highlight: We have the chance to shoot down the enemy pigeon for a few seconds. So we can turn a lap that we thought was lost at the last second. The mode is a nice addition, but certainly not a new classic.

The Behemoths play an important role in Operations and are also used in Conquest mode. As soon as one team is clearly superior to the other, one of these huge vehicles comes to the aid of the losers. The zeppelin, the battleship and the armored train are all powerful weapons that noticeably change the balance of a game with one blow, but without being overpowering. A well-organized team will crush even the fat behemoths. According to our first impressions, Dice actually seems to have hit the "sweet spot": Both in Conquest mode and in Operations, all of our test games were an equally swaying and exciting struggle with a very close end. Hopefully this good impression will also be confirmed on public servers.

Shooting in the ballroom

A large part of the fascination of the new game mode comes from the nine varied maps. For example, in Operation “To Hell” on the “War in the Ballroom” map, we first fight for a French château and then advance into the “Forest of the Argonne”. While the first map still offers open terrain for our tanks to advance, the fight in the forest turns into a slaughter between infantrymen. And all in just one match!

The other maps lead us to the rugged heights of the Alps, where tanks rumble on narrow trails to the front, sometimes into the muddy trenches of the western front, into the shot-up Amiens or into the vast Arabian desert.

But our favorite remains the Argonne Forest. In contrast to Metro or Operation Locker, pure infantry combat does not degenerate into a peculiar meat grinder. The forest area is spacious enough to bypass nasty bottlenecks. At the same time, we are suddenly faced with an enemy in the winding thicket of trees and bunkers. That's the way it has to be.

Levolution, i.e. the scripted destruction of entire areas , no longer exists in this form. Instead, we are now decomposing large parts of the maps very dynamically. Houses crumble under fire, shells blast deep furrows in the ground and wreckage of a destroyed Behemoth remains on the map. However, there are limits to destruction. Some ruined houses cannot be further demolished. Dice wants to ensure that the basic structure and the balancing of the maps is preserved. For tank drivers or gun crews, it is sometimes a nuisance when an enemy holed up behind the remains of an indestructible wall.

So far, we have not discovered a real total failure in the card selection. However, many extensive, open cards such as "Monte Grappa" or "On the Edge of the Reich" invite you to snip uninhibited. It is all the more important there to know secret routes and trenches.

At this point, we cannot make a final judgment about the balance of the rush mode. Our trial games were all pleasantly close. However, we have also identified some easily controllable bottlenecks. For example the tunnel on “Monte Grappa”, in which the defenders can hide a little too nasty for our taste. It is quite possible that Dice will have to improve this again.

Have you ever seen such a beautiful war?

Where we're pretty sure, however: Battlefield 1 deserves a first in the presentation. The battlefield panoramas that the Frostbite Engine regularly conjures up on the screen take our breath away again and again. In the campaign as well as in the multiplayer mode. It doesn't matter whether we're looking over the muddy trenches of the western front or the sandy dunes, it just looks great.

In addition, there are fine details such as the mud that adheres to our weapon and only disappears again after a bath in the water. Or the new aircraft damage model. If bullets tear our right wing apart, our biplane will tip over by itself. The dynamic weather system suddenly lets rain, fog or a sandstorm come in, which extremely restrict our visibility. A curse for snipers and pilots. Only the explosions sometimes look a bit flat and roughly resolved.

The lessons of the past

Players who played Battlefield 4 shortly after it was first released might shake their heads in disbelief at this point. Didn't we learn anything from the bugged release of the previous one? Yes we do. But apparently Dice has that too.

Yes, we discovered a few minor bugs. An AI tank got stuck in the same spot several times during the campaign. In addition, the cutscenes tend to get stuck for several seconds. But Dice got the really important construction sites under control. Above all, the network code, still a real problem in Battlefield 4, presents itself in the successor without any faults or blame.

However, there is still a big question mark about the stability of the servers, especially shortly after the release on October 21st. Are they really holding up to the onslaught or are the usual problems returning? We're more than excited and keep our fingers crossed so that you too can get an excellent impression of Battlefield 1 as we already have it.

Almost 20 years ago, when space shooters like Quake 2 and Dark Forces 2 reigned on the market, Steven Spielberg insisted, despite opposition from industry people, to create a game with an action set in the Second World War. The subsequent editions of the Medal of Honor published by Electronic Arts turned out to be a great success, starting a real flood of titles in these climates. Today, history has come full circle. Amid the huge number of shootings competing each year to present the most futuristic conflict, "Electronics" again come out in front of a game set in historical realities - this time World War I.

Battlefield 1 does not try to turn the known and liked gameplay scheme upside down, adapting it forcibly to the specifics of the positional war. Instead, it cleverly navigates around the final years of the depicted military operations, eagerly taking advantage of already existing military inventions. It still serves the series' sweep of a total battle on land, water and air, but efficiently transferred to the beginning of the 20th century. The first tanks, planes, machine guns, and above all, incredibly suggestive battlefields were enough to bring the expected freshness into the well-known game. With a pretty successful single player campaign, a strong emphasis on the history of World War I, and an amazing setting, "One" is the best Battlefield since Bad Company 2 !

War never changes

Are you fed up with futuristic exoskeletons, drones and all this infinite "advanced warfare"? Did you miss the shooters set during the Second World War? Battlefield 1 is for you. It's practically Medal of Honor: Allied Assault or Call of Duty 2 with graphics on the level of the Vanishing of Ethan Carter , but without Thompson, Garand and Normandy. Educational chats by a lector who introduces us to the course of well-known battles can even be found in multiplayer games, and moreover, we come across historical places, names, equipment and curiosities. On the other hand, people who are used mainly to modern warfare with Battlefield 3 and 4 will also feel at home here. The authors made sure that all the popular and convenient tools of extermination also appeared during the First World War. So we have the ubiquitous clatter of machine guns, attack planes, fast motorboats, portable mortars, and even "lenses" or sight collimators!

Exaggeration? Fantastic? Not completely. From a certain stage in history, armed conflicts have really not changed much, only perfecting the means of extermination, and it was during World War I that the war technique that accompanies soldiers to this day was born. Moreover, the creators mainly present the final period of this confrontation, when many inventions, in the form of unguided rockets fired from airplanes or a "dot" sight, actually existed. True, sometimes this Virtual War I may seem too dynamic or too chaotic, but fighting in the narrow streets of city ruins in the Battle of Amiens or on scorched earth in St. Quentin, we immediately feel that despite the familiar mechanisms, it's a completely different atmosphere. The majestic airship, bayonet charges, dirty trenches, biplane planes - all this makes it easy for us to move into the years 1914–1918 and to the moment when the era of maneuvering war and the domination of armored forces began.

It cannot be denied that the Swedish studio DICE not so much wanted, but even had to bend some facts from the history of the weapon and tactics to fit them into the realities of the Battlefield series. World War I looks a bit like the work of an archaeologist by Indiana Jones - not entirely real, but incredibly spectacular and addictive. After playing a few rounds online, we will quickly understand the motives of the authors. A group of sixty random people on the server has no chance to behave like an army, being one organism, blindly listening to its commander. Battlefield 1 is a Battlefield like its predecessors, and the battlefield is even more convincing than before - full of dirt, mud and blood. As in the title of the first mission of the story campaign.

The single does it!

Bad memories of the badly told stories in Battlefield 4 or Hardlin raised a lot of concerns about whether the authors would be up to the task this time and "make it", but it turned out that ... they did. The single-player campaign may not be as heart-touching as in Valiant Hearts and will not be remembered for long, but it must be admitted that it has its moments, and even a rather unusual plot twist, which will leave you a little stunned in one of the episodes.

Everything is arranged like a series in which each part tells about something else, constituting a short, closed story. We accompany a young tank driver from England, an impetuous pilot from Canada, a walker from Italy, a scout from Australia and a brave woman in the Arabian desert, each time watching really well-made cutscenes, although sometimes with too much pathos and predictable dialogues.

Cannon or a silenced weapon?

In addition to the well-realized concept of the war series, there is also the gameplay itself, in which the creators did not manage to avoid certain disadvantages . The artificial intelligence of the opponents is the most painful, or rather its complete lack. Enemy soldiers are ordinary puppets pushing against the barrel, just to delay our march through the map a bit. The impression is also returned that in the great war we are a lonely wolf with an army against us. Many times we feel doomed to our own strength, and if the entire unit starts the action - our companions turn out to be only an impersonal crowd, sometimes fighting somewhere in the background, which would not do anything without us.

We defeat a large part of each mission alone, and the authors justified it with more emphasis on ... stealth. There are disengaging alarms, traditional ranged alert indicators from yellow to red, and even Battlefield Hardline's distraction shells and silenced weapons. Playing Sam Fisher, although strongly suggested, is optional and you may as well decide to fight openly and use stationary cannons or any small arms set up everywhere. The announced inclusion of elements from the multiplayer game is limited to the occasional need to wait a moment at the flag and capture a point - just like in the conquest mode, but it is also worth paying attention to quite large levels with hidden collectibles, not resembling standard corridors. We always come across some alternative paths to reach the goal, and in one of the episodes we even decide on the order of implementation of several tasks.

"Only in Battlefield"

However, we do not buy Battlefield for the story campaign, but for multiplayer games that are played over the next years. Fighting dozens of battles in all modes and locations did not allow me to learn the secrets of each map or unlock all types of weapons, but it already gave some idea about the good and weak points of this installment of the series. Battlefield 1 is not too revolutionary - it's still the same dynamic BF with amazing "only in Battlefield " style actions where the medic kills half of the enemy team with a syringe and a horse standing in the palace lounge is killed after crashing into an airplane. It is also BF with its standard flaws - sometimes too much chaos, lack of teamwork of random teams or domination of snipers on the map.

After several hours of frags and death from a bullet out of nowhere, positive feelings prevail. Great maps, completely different tanks and planes, changeable weather, an amazing impression of an authentic battlefield vibrant with combat - these and other elements make up the unusual atmosphere of the whole and the breath of freshness expected so much, encouraging you to play the next rounds. The authors also attempted a few surprises, such as new gameplay modes and a changed Battlepack formula. These now only contain weapon cosmetics (skins of different "legendary" levels) and are awarded randomly at the end of the round. Although painting weapons did happen in those days, the "sophistication" of some designs is surprising. Using them, however, is completely optional.

Operation "Catch the pigeon"

As if in complete opposition to long and tactical operations is the second of the new modes, or " war pigeons". This is quite a strange variation on capture the flag . We look for randomly placed cages with pigeons, take over the bird and write a secret message with information about the location of enemy soldiers. We write not literally, of course, because everything is about standing still for some time and not attracting enemy fire. When we start running, "writing" slows down considerably, and we risk losing valuable prey. Finally, we still need to release the pigeon in the open and its safe flight to the target - after that, a hail of artillery shells falls on the positions of the revealed enemies. The mode as such is not particularly addictive, and everything focuses on the team protection of the "writing" companion, which is sometimes difficult among random players. However, it can be an interesting springboard for well-coordinated and communicating teams and after long and exhausting conquests, because here the round sometimes ends after six or seven minutes.

Epochal armament causes more mixed feelings. The behemoths are of course the most impressive! The sight of a burning airship is one of those moments that will make us remember Battlefield 1 for a long time. Their arrival, however, does not immediately herald the defeat of the opposing team - like any other vehicle, they require skill in piloting and accurate shooting. Airplanes remain a curiosity for some, but I must admit that if we have a pad next to the mouse and keyboard - it's worth giving aviation a chance. The period biplanes are quite fun to fly, and controlling them with a controller is not that difficult.

The tanks of that time and a novelty in the series - horses were also exceptional for the First World War. The latter somehow are not popular as a means of combat. A rushing soldier is always a standout target and usually dies quickly. But Tanki is different. Armor and a good driver guarantee survival for a long time and a lot of frags, and since there are probably a little less tanks than during the beta-tests, places in them are always at a price.

Not as terrible as dubbing is painted

Finally, I left a few technical notes, because Battlefield 1 is a model for other titles in this respect. By browsing the options, we will discover great freedom in adjusting the gameplay parameters to our preferences. We will not only decide on the presence of individual elements of the screen interface, their color or size, but also choose whether the nations should speak their native languages! Turkish or German-speaking Turks create a really great atmosphere and you don't necessarily need to know these languages to understand the signals on the battlefield. Add to this the extremely extensive observer mode with the ability to apply filters while recording the game, and the whole thing will start to resemble another film set from the mentioned Spielberg movie!

Polish dubbing in the fictional campaign was quite good. The success of Bad Company 2 will not be repeated, but the ears do not hurt too much, and it is worth noting that the original path does not captivate in many parts. Its strength lies in the fact that the English language sounds here with a large number of accents and it is certainly much more credible and authentic than the Polish language in the case of each nation. Another issue is the very controversial announcement that famous Youtubers will appear in the multiplayer mode. All voices and concerns about the corruption of the game turned out to be wrong. One is that they sound completely neutral, which is listened to much better than professional actors who usually strive for theatrical drama, and two - we can choose the aforementioned option of a national language for each nation.