Battlefield 1 may be the most hyped release of 2016. After the past five or so years, the multiplayer first-person shooter genre — dominated by Battlefield and Call of Duty — has been driven to a more futuristic and advanced setting. This time, Battlefield 1 delivers with a rarely seen World War I shooter.
Continuing with their fresh material, Battlefield 1 adds a single player campaign, something that has been missing from the series, and it’s actually pretty good.
The whole campaign will take no more than a few hours to complete. Once you finish the opening missions, you will be presented with five different storylines to play through. Each storyline follows a unique character in a different part of the world, narrating their original perspectives on the war.
Through these storylines, you will be exposed to weaponry including planes, tanks, shocktroopers and the most fearsome weapon of all — pigeons.
Each storyline consists of three to five missions which are easily beatable in a quick play session. Instead of trying to cram every style of gameplay into a single narrative with a single super soldier character, Battlefield 1 separates each style of gameplay into its own individually packaged narrative.
The addition of a single player campaign is much appreciated, given that developers EA DICE didn’t have to include it. Let’s be honest: we’re all here for the multiplayer gameplay, so let’s get into it.
Multiplayer brings the familiar feel of a Battlefield game which I can only describe as balanced and chaotic. Battlefield 1 does a great job of transposing the previous games in the series to fit into a historically accurate loadout of less technologically advanced weaponry and gadgets.
The selection of weapons is more impactful than Battlefield 4, in which all weapons of the same type were similar. Battlefield 1 changes this with primary weapons in each class, making you choose between three or so types of firearms. For example, with the medic class, you can choose among assault rifle, sniper and close-range style of rifles. The weapon you choose will shape your specialization and playstyle.
By the same token, weapons offer little customization in terms of attachments and modifications. Everyone in the fight will be using more or less the same weapon, which I think is a great balancing tool, though some may not like the lack of customization.
Vehicle gameplay takes a different feel from Battlefield 4, where vehicles were mostly unhelpful. Whereas a single soldier in Battlefield 4 could take out a plane with a homing RPG, now in Battlefield 1 it requires a much more concentrated and collaborative effort to bring down the bombers and tanks, and an extra effort for the giant zeppelins.
If you’re a hardcore fan of shooters, you’ll love the ridiculous amount of customization and tweaks available to you. There must be at least five different sliders dedicated to look sensitivity alone. Personally, I am not one who changes the options, so I cannot speak in great detail about it, but just looking through the options menu I can tell there is an overwhelming amount of customization.
The only real problem I have with the game is that the maps are unimpressive. After the seven or so hours I have played online, I don’t see the maps staying interesting for much longer. However, this is not damning since the gameplay is just so fun, and the sound design and graphics are fantastic across the board, no surprise here though, as EA DICE has always graphically pushed video games forward.
At the end of the day, this game is just a stylistic change of the super successful Battlefield 4 with some differences here and there, and I mean that in a good way. If you have absolutely no interest in the World War I setting and are looking for more futuristic shooters, such as Call of Duty and Titanfall, you may not like this game. Outside of that, Battlefield 1 is the best first-person multiplayer shooter on the market, period.

Gallery • 3 Photos

Courtesy of EA DICE.