Battlefield 1 Beta Impressions

Somebody call for a Medic?

​Is it possible to love something, and hate it at the exact same time? Over Labor Day weekend, EA and DICE released an open demo of Battlefield 1, to let us get a taste of what's to come at the end of October. Is it any good? My impressions below...

I will start out by saying, that for the longest time I was team Call of Duty when it came to FPS. However, over the last few entries in the series, it has started to become stale for me, so I was in need to venture out. With the help of EA access, I began playing Battlefield 4 and Star Wars Battlefront, and after some time with both games, it now has me starting to appreciate the scale and large combat that DICE has to offer. 
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My impressions of the Open Beta are very similar to DICE’s Star Wars Battlefront. There are epic moments of all out warfare that you can’t help but to stop and appreciate. Whether it’s running across a sandstorm seeing planes fall from the sky, or seeing 30 people rush a point to capture, while the opposing team hunkers down with tanks and snipers. This kind of game play you will never experience in any other shooter, and you can’t help but commend them for it.

While COD keeps striving for futuristic settings and game play, I do find the change back to WWI a nice refresh. With the WWI settings, gone are the classic M4 and futuristic weapons, as we welcome back classic bolt action rifles.  Several of my early games I did struggle with these older guns, as the scopes and size of the map made it hard to hit people. Over time, as I leveled up, I found weapons that were easier to use and made the game a lot more enjoyable. The beta is limited to only a handful of weapons, so early on, players who are not used to shooters will no doubt have some trouble.
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Being a beta it’s hard to be too critical on something, since there will be obvious improvements, but the menu system has to be updated. The loading of post-game results always took a lot longer than it needed to, and the menu system itself can be hard to navigate. Like Battlefield 4, I don’t know why DICE does not let you customize classes outside of being in the game. ​

The best multiplayer moments were when Andrew and I were playing with another group of friends in a squad. With the large amount of players (64 in total), you can form a team of 5 and spawn on other fellow teammates during the game. This made going into tanks and planes much more exciting, since working as a team always helps in the thick of battle. Battlefield 1 offers many moments of laughter and “oh did you see that?!”, when playing with a group of friends.
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The COD player in me wanted to be a lone wolf and charge in battle by myself to take everyone on with my rifle in hand. Trying to do that is what left me with a frustrating experience. However, when I finally got together with some buddies, and we worked as a team, the game truly shined. ​

​The first person shooter market is going to be very tight this fall with Titanfall 2, Battlefield, and COD coming out all at the same time. At this moment, if I know that other friends are going to be playing this game, it may entice me to pick it up. However, for now, my winning bid is still on Titanfall 2 out of the three big FPS games this Fall.