Battlefield 6 Review

After a mixed reception to Battlefield 2142, EA went back to the drawing board to try to craft a game that fans of the series can be proud of. This resulted in a resoundingly positive reception to the game’s beta, but can that reception hold over to the release of the full game? Find out here in our Battlefield 6 review!

Presentation

Battlefield 6 looks amazing! I tried it on both a PS5 and the PS5 Pro. I was constantly being distracted by the massive explosions going on all around me, as someone crashes a jet into the ground or a tank blows up an ATV as it tries to speed by. The blasts are booming, especially with a good pair of headphones in 3D audio or a surround sound system. I distinctly remember the helicopter I was in falling out of the sky and crashing into a building. The top quarter of the building broke apart instantly, and I escaped with my parachute, watching the carnage in awe. The buildings break apart realistically. The pieces fall in front of your face, making it hard to see in an immersive way. Smoke creates a hazy atmosphere as you’re running to your next objective through all the chaos. Jets and helicopters woosh over your head as you hear the tracks of a tank roll by you. I feel like they nailed the perilous feeling of all-out warfare and the chaos that it brings.

Campaign

Story

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a Battlefield campaign. I was excited when I heard that they would be bringing that aspect back to this game. Sometimes you want to experience a story. This one revolves around a private military organization called Pax Armata, which is trying to destabilize global powers as NATO is on the brink of collapse. It’s a story of revenge from a soldier who was wronged, deciding to become the enemy, and I, quite frankly, didn’t care. There’s an overarching story about corruption behind the scenes, but it ends on a cliffhanger. It felt like the campaign was trying to sell you on a complex story that never really went anywhere, especially in a 4-6 hour runtime. I know people buy this game for multiplayer, but it would have been nice if some effort had been put into the story.

Variety of Missions

The missions in the campaign have you doing plenty of different things, but it feels more like you’re just funnelled from area to area. There was a mission where we had to take out some SAM turrets, one where we stormed a beach in tanks, and another where we were silently moving through a city in the dead of night. The variety is there, but the execution isn’t so great. More often than not, the mission is just to kill everyone on the screen and move to the next screen. Everything else feels like decoration or a quick button prompt. If you’re a part of an elite military unit, it should feel like you’re actually doing things those units would be doing. Allow me to choose whether to go in quietly or guns blazing. Let me instruct my team to flash bang a room before they breach the door. It’s the little things.

Run & Gun

The set pieces can be fun, like clearing a street with a turret on a vehicle, fighting through the debris of a bridge hit by a missile, or taking out a helicopter with an RPG. I didn’t feel all that engaged during my playthrough. It felt more like watching an episode of Battlefield 6 than playing through the most essential parts. It’s not a bad campaign. It’s just stuff we’ve seen a million times before, and I don’t feel like it played to a lot of the game’s strengths. It felt more Call of Duty than Battlefield, but with a less cohesive story. It’s just a little too much run-and-gun. When you can barely remember the character’s names, something is lacking. I might be overly pessimistic here, but I was genuinely surprised at how underwhelmed I was.

Multiplayer

Gameplay

Now on to the bread and butter of the game. If you’ve played classic Battlefield games, you’ll be right at home playing Battlefield 6. You’re plopped into the battlefield, and you have to take away objectives from your enemies. This can be done on foot, where you’re exchanging gunfire with other teams and capturing points while trying not to get sniped in the head. You can pop into a tank or ground vehicle and race to the next spot, then either hop out to capture the point or hold it with some rounds from the tank while someone on the outside repairs your vehicle. There’s even sky combat, where you can pilot a jet or helicopter and provide support to your teammates below. These pieces all fit together like a glove, and it’s essential to find your niche to help your team succeed. It’s not about how many kills you get, but about the actions that you take to move your team forward.

Classes

There are four classes to choose from in Battlefield 6. I found myself using the Assault class for the most part, pairing an assault rifle with a DMR for a bit of a longer-range option. It’s my all-around build. Sometimes I take out my Sniper with the Recon class that has a motion sensor in case the enemy tries to sneak up on me. The Support class is fun to play with, as it has deployable cover, supply crates, and a defibrillator to keep your teammates in the fight. Then there’s the Engineer, who blows everything up with mines and rockets. They can also repair vehicles. There’s a class for every type of player, and it ensures that, even if you aren’t getting 25 kills in a round.

You can use any weapons with any loadouts, but the game steers you to use class weapons by giving you bonus damage. SMGs seem particularly deadly in the game, while sniper rifles feel realistic with how the bullet drops at distance. It was fun to see how far I could hit someone, and I got particularly excited when I hit a target at 199 meters (which is probably easy stuff for most people) after failing most of my shots. That’s the fun of Battlefield, though. Even if you suck, it’s fun to experiment with weapons to see what you can do. I wish they were easier to unlock. Multi-tiered challenges make getting some of the better weapons a lot more difficult than it probably should be, especially if you’re more of a casual player.

Maps

The game launched with nine maps, with Liberation Peak being a standout for all the wrong reasons, with snipers everywhere. New Sobek City is really fun, with a lot of buildings and elevation. It becomes a chaotic mix of snipers, tanks, jets, and helicopters all in a pretty small space. There’s nothing like seeing half a building fall apart after a jet lays down a missile on some snipers at the top of a building. Mirak Valley is another of my favorites. You can play any way you’d like and find success with all of the different types of environments on that one map. Most of the maps are decent, and I can’t think of any that I would flat-out hate to play. Even Liberation Point isn’t so bad as long as your head is on a swivel. The destructibility means no two games are ever quite the same. Now we need some weather effects and water areas.

Game Modes

Battlefield 6 includes a nice selection of modes, with big-team battles like Breakthrough and Conquest among my favorites. These are intense 64-player battles where you’re advancing territory with limited lives against a team with unlimited lives or fighting to keep control of territory. Escalation is a new mode that has you taking control of points that decrease over time, which is equally as thrilling. If those aren’t your style, there are also close-quarters TDM and Domination modes that can fit your fancy. Recently, they’ve also added Redsec Battle Royale, which I’ve enjoyed because of the different missions you can do around the map to get weapons and vehicles. Gauntlet is the one that really surprised me, though. This is a mode with different objectives each round, and your goal is to make the cut-off each time until one team is left standing.

Final Thoughts

I tried to keep this one short, as I feel you could write five pages on this game. There’s so much nuance to it that every player will have a slightly different experience. Battlefield 6 is a tale of two games. The multiplayer is a fantastic experience that is even better with a group of friends, while the campaign really let me down. I’ve had so much fun exploring all the multiplayer modes and trying out tons of loadouts. I have fun whether I’m doing well or getting killed every five seconds. The campaign is average at best and shouldn’t be used as a reason to purchase this one. Still, the bulk of the package is the multiplayer, and I think that portion is a must-play and one of the most enjoyable shooters I’ve played in years. It’s a nice return to form for the Battlefield series.