Battlefield V BETA First Impressions

With the Battlefield V BETA nearing its end on September 11 at 3pm BST, it feels the right time to share my thoughts after experiencing it first hand and talking to fellow gamers on their experience during the weekend. As you’ve probably know Battlefield V’s release date was moved a month later instead of having it in October. Which I personally think is a great move on their part as they could spend more time in releasing the new mode “Grand Operations” on release than have it at a much later date.

As for the BETA itself, there are a couple things to look at. Assignments (ughh! School all over again) is what people would be familiar to as daily quests and challenges you can complete to earn a few credits which can be used for obtaining skins or visual customization parts for your company. Actual weapons, however, can only be obtained by leveling up a class be it a medic, assault, recon or support. With each class having their own set of unlockable weapons and equipment it just hinders what you can actually do to fully make a class your own. A medic with a sniper rifle has always been a dream of mine so I always… I mean always! Stick with snipers or find enemy snipers myself and grab their weapons once dead. But possibly one of the most annoying things I find in the BETA is reviving a fallen teammate would also, without fail, grab their weapons and force me to drop my current one.  Does it go in line with the other thing I hate, grabbing a vehicle and driving, grabbing a tank or snowmobile? No problem! Driving it? Damn, I almost lost my lunch with the shaky camera movements felt with every bump in the road. Leaving the vehicle? Well… not a pretty experience as well as I had to press so many buttons before I could finally get off the damn thing. And I’ve searched for visual cues which button to press in my screen but so far only the X button on my DualShock 4 controller can be visibly seen and that’s changing from driver to backseat hitchhiker lol!

But let’s talk gameplay or rather gun-play as I like to call it in my head. Aiming down on sights or simply walking with them can be a nuisance at first but you get used to being annoyed that something like this becomes natural. Some guns have this huge visual impairment that aiming down on the sights while camping on an objective point limits what you can see as it’s blocked with the gun’s body. And as a medic, I also find it annoying to hold the directional Up button to patch myself up which is something that can’t be done while running unless you claw your way with your finger, use the other hand or have an elite controller with back paddles assigned to the specific button. Sixty-four players, now that’s a lot to take in even for a map this size. This is the part where I say, “There is no I in teamwork but there is in suicide” and that’s pretty much what most players I’ve seen been doing… so as a team-based game, it can be very depressing to lose when you’re 0-500. (True story!)

The game itself is divided in two different modes, one of which is Conquest and the other is Grand Operations. Both sporting up to 64 players in a match, with Conquest’s goal to deplete the enemy tickets to zero and capturing points to unlock respawn areas as well as specific supply stations while Grand Operations takes you into a narrative of sorts with the attacking team dropping in from a plane to detonate enemy points and gain an advantage to the next day’s massacre where you go in capture points and push the enemy forces back to secure the win. Grand Operations is my mode of choice for its simple and straightforward approach that just about anyone can dive into as Conquest tends to be a bit more free making the team of 32 at times go in separately to secure points only to die from enemy defenders.

Graphics itself feels great but maybe too great! The Grand Operations map Arctic Fjord becomes a hell hole of blinding light if you’re aiming down from a house to the snowy field and at times a dark abyss when camping inside and waiting for enemies to breach in. Rotterdam, however, is a map filled with a lot of sniping spots which can prove useful for defenders and tight alleyways to set up fortifications. The players’ avatars themselves blend in a bit too well with the environment making it harder to find moving enemies as a sniper and that’s really not how I would rather play. And since it’s a BETA, standing corpses and floating guns as well as falling outside of the map is there for you to experience. Building fortifications, however, is a nice feature that makes the game feel more realistic and tactical which is always a plus rather than just having bullet spraying tactics. And speaking of bullets, there’s simply way too few ammo that you can store at any given time and you’re always forced to go in and out of supply stations once you’re running low or if you salvage ammo pouches from dead enemies.

All in all, the game itself needs more improvements before I can really say that it’s a game that I’d be proud to own or play. And speaking of which, who’s up for Blackout this Monday?