Battlefield V - Review

Battlefield V is the next iteration in the series from DICE following on From Battlefield 1 (Yeah, I thought I was bad with numbers) the new Battlefield game has us now following on from 1 and now heading for World War 2.

There is a motto that I could put to Battlefield V and that is “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it!” The games base gameplay pretty much takes on from Battlefield 1, which was excellent and played very well. DICE has taken those mechanics and built on it in other ways, one way is by introducing reinforcements.

Reinforcements can be built at certain points (marked out by a hammer) to help you ‘reinforce’ a position, these come mainly in the form of sandbag walls, which can be good for temporary protection, but people can easily blow them up, so it’s always good to not stay in one place for too long (unless you’re capturing an objective).

War stories returns to Battlefield V and I have played through each of the 3 available (another one will be available on December 4^th) and I have to admit that I love the War Stories, I love how they tell the untold stories of the war, the ones that don’t get the recognition that they deserve, the fight by the resistance in Norway, a squad sent to Africa to take out weapons and supplies, and the French colonists from Cote d'Ivoire and other African republics that helped the French push back the Germans.

The game isn’t without its issues though, there are quite a few graphical faux pas within the game with items not loading in fully and not popping until partway through the match, which at times can leave bushes as a pixelated mess or buildings looking like they could need a new coat of paint. Personally, I didn’t have an issue with this, it didn’t affect the game for me and I was able to play online without any real hiccup.

Speaking of playing online, I have found the matchmaking quite weird, when just trying to find a match as me, it would take me seconds to find one, which is brilliant, however, if I was teaming up with someone from my company and partied up, we would sometimes have to leave the search after 2 mins and go back in to try and find a match, were it would take maybe another 60 to 90 seconds before getting into one, now I know it’s trying to find a lobby to fit us both in, but there were times when I would get into the game, and my friend would be sat in a queue waiting to get in, I just found it strange how the game struggled to accommodate the two of us, I wonder what it’s going to be like when my other friends get the game and we have around 4-6 of us in a party to find a game for, that will be interesting.

Another thing that I found with the game is that it is very barebones with various things either not displaying yet or have a ‘Coming [insert date]’ noticed on a greyed out tile. Tides of War in multiplayer isn’t available yet, only 3 of the 4 War stories are available with the 4^th coming in December. The usually suspects are there in conquest, Team Deathmatch, Frontlines and a few others, but that’s it. I have no doubt that this is going to be built on, especially with the promise of free updates and maps to come, so while it is barebones at the moment there will be more content to come.

It was also a bit disappointing that there are only 8 maps available within the game, on Conquest, Rush, Frontlines when you’re getting the bigger maps, it’s not so bad as the size of them are unbelievable, but when playing Team Deathmatch and on the smaller maps, they can get repetitive on long plays quite quickly. The maps are quite diverse, ranging from snow-capped mountains, to small French towns and Dutch cities, all of which have their charms.