Reviewed on PlayStation 5; available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC

Battlefield is one of those games that, once you play it, it’ll sit in your memory for ages. Few games on the market offer the experience the first-person shooter (FPS) franchise is known for: combined arms warfare — infantry and ground vehicles, naval vessels and aircraft — combined with very destructible in-game environments.

Between 2010 and 2020, Battlefield was the primary competitor to the now wayward juggernaut that is Call of Duty. If you wanted a high-budget military shooter, it was a pick between these two. I remember Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 well from 2011, and how the former’s multiplayer experience blew the latter’s out of the water.

Sadly, Battlefield lost its way in 2021 when EA released the abysmal Battlefield 2042. I remember playing the open beta shortly before its launch four years ago and I was greeted by more bugs than in a rainforest. Screen flickering, players’ parachutes not closing and thus giving away their position and another bug where bullets would not hit their targets. You read that correctly. Bullets not hitting their targets in a shooting game.

Fortunately, I did not play the full game at launch, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth as a fan of the series. The lack of competition from the Battlefield series rendered Activision, Call of Duty’s publisher, complacent and caused the series to stagnate in quality.

This year, EA and the studios behind Battlefield took these issues seriously and tried to craft an experience akin to the older games, which are beloved to this day. They succeeded.

Battlefield 6 is truly an explosive return to form for the once floundering franchise. The series’ signature environmental destruction, high graphical fidelity and incredible sound design return, along with highly refined gameplay, which I dare say is the best in its class.

Though not perfect, the game ticks the boxes for me and other gamers looking for a new multiplayer military shooter — fast-paced, immersive and intense gameplay where some level of team coordination is possible and memorable moments can be created all the time.

Intel coming in

One thing I must note is that, unlike most other high-budget AAA games, Battlefield (BF) Studios and a coalition of development teams — comprising DICE, Criterion, Ripple Effect, and Motive — were unusually transparent throughout the game’s production.

Their social media feeds were awash with posts containing in-game footage long before release. While it looked promising, gamers were sceptical, as we live in an age where buying a AAA game for $70 (at least Rs20,000 at launch) can mean you receive a product that is riddled with glitches and bugs, which the developers (halfheartedly) promise to fix. Glitches that make gameplay frustrating, or even affect the system you are playing on. We gamers have become very discerning with what we spend our money on.

Players were even incorporated into the development process to test the game through the Battlefield Labs programme. They were given access to various builds of the game during development to test the game and provide feedback.

“It is a space for play and exploration; an environment where we can test concepts and mechanics with our players before we release them publicly. Our community is at the heart of Battlefield; their feedback is crucial in helping us know what to prioritise, what to improve and what feels like an authentic Battlefield experience,” the studio says on their website.

Moreover, players’ complaints about other franchises, particularly Call of Duty’s skill-based matchmaking and ridiculous cosmetic character skins from cartoons like ‘Beavis and Butthead’ and ‘American Dad’, were taken on board.

Skill-based matchmaking is a system where players are put in matches against each other based on performance rather than on their Internet connection. If you play well in a couple of games, you can get matched against players of a far higher skill level and with a worse Internet connection, making the experience feel like a punishment for good players.

The press reported in the months leading up to release that there would be skill-based matchmaking, but the game would offer a server browser for players to get around it. Also, any cosmetic items would be congruent with the more grounded setting of the game.

During the beta in August, complaints were promptly resolved. I remember thinking about reporting the lack of an in-game compass, but the very next day, BF Studios announced that they had added it to the game.

Presentation

In its presentation, Battlefield 6 makes an incredible first impression. The graphics are of an extremely high fidelity, with very detailed environments and objects. Buildings have realistic-looking exteriors and interiors rendered with a great amount of detail. Interiors on some of the maps look like they have been lived in and used, adding realism to the levels.

On the maps set in New York City in particular, I liked how realistic they looked — on Empire State, a cafe looked like what I’d imagine a cafe in Brooklyn would look like: small and cosy and a nice place to sit in if it weren’t in a war zone. Moreover, on the same map, there is a museum exhibit with some nicely detailed sculptures that look like an actual gallery. You rarely feel like you’re fighting in an empty space here, unless you find yourself in a construction site in the game.

The same goes for the weapons and character models — guns bear small details such as serial numbers, markings and signs of wear around the edges and where the player character would grip them. This applies to the grip, the charging handle, the magazine well and any of the controls on the weapons. Weapon attachments are equally detailed.

The same applies to vehicles, which bear a remarkable amount of detail in terms of markings and wear and tear, especially for vehicles belonging to the game’s Nato faction.

Character uniforms have been rendered with magazine pouches, chemlights, ropes and other gear a soldier would typically carry, again in great detail. Faces in the pre-rendered cutscenes look photorealistic.

However, the character models during in-engine cutscenes in campaign mode can look a little off at times. In a cutscene during one of the campaign missions set in Gibraltar, the 3D model for the character Carter looked strange — the textures on his face were flat and there was no visible detail, looking more like a two-dimensional image than a physical 3D model of a human face. It might have been the lighting, but it just being there pulled me out of the immersion somewhat.

Despite that, in terms of graphics and visuals, the game is a match for its contemporaries and right at home in this generation. It’s also quite stable, with few framerate drops, despite multiple explosions and other effects being triggered on screen at once.

In terms of sound design, BF Studios should be given an award for their work. With headphones on, you’ll get the full effect, as not only does a gun sound beefy and powerful when firing, but you will also be able to hear the crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier and echoing through the environment. Spent cartridge casings will audibly clatter along the ground or whatever surface you are on.

I observed that this detail was present in every weapon in the game, not just rifles, but also with pistols. The muffled din and cracks of distant gunfire add to the atmosphere as the player runs from objective to objective.

Moreover, the sound of cocking a weapon is also well realised. Inserting a magazine and pulling back a weapon’s charging handle sounds like a real gun. This is good for immersion, as the player will feel more like they are using an actual firearm.

Similarly, vehicles sound incredible, particularly the fighter jets. That roar as they fly overhead or only a few metres off the ground is phenomenal, and the cannon sounds powerful, making dogfights all the more spectacular.

When booting up the game and hopping in for the first time, you’ll be met with incredible graphics and well-executed sound design. Sure, this is an expected standard of games released with current-generation hardware; nevertheless, it’s always welcome as it’s your first point of contact with the game.

Multiplayer

After the disastrous 2042, Battlefield fans now have an experience that is tactical, explosive and fast, but more importantly, they have one that is genuinely fun. Battlefield 6, like older titles in the franchise, is just a blast to play.

The gunplay is excellent; shots feel like they are hitting something and the audio cue for getting a headshot makes it feel more impactful. It’s also incredibly satisfying when you and your team rush to a match objective area with the game’s arsenal of weapons and gadgets, clear it out and then repel an assault by the enemy team. When you throw vehicles into the mix, the priority shifts to destroying them, forcing players to think on their feet to resolve this issue.

What I just described was the experience of playing 2013’s Battlefield 4 or 2015’s Battlefield 1 — this is not a criticism. Those games mastered this formula and offered players an experience that, despite being chaotic with destructible environments, forced players to think tactically and capture objectives, working as a team with one goal. Battlefield 6 does all of those things, so it stands out not only as one of the best games in the series but as an extremely solid game in general, like its aforementioned forebears.

The gunplay in Battlefield 6 has been refined from previous entries. Combined with the weapon sound design and the PlayStation 5 controller’s adaptive triggers, there is resistance when pulling them to fire a weapon. Bullets feel like they hit something and it is intensely satisfying landing a headshot on an enemy player; more so when they are 150 metres away or more in the game.

I’m really enjoying my experience so far.

One of the best new mechanics added to the game is being able to drag teammates behind cover and revive them, which can not only get a friendly player back on their feet but it ensures you are less exposed to enemy fire. This is something that needs to be in more games, such as when playing Warzone with friends. If one of them goes down in the open, there is no way to drag them to safety. They can crawl, but its very slow and you’re both exposed to enemy players. The speed you drag downed teammates at is fast, and you need to think about whether or not there is cover nearby to complete the revive.

However, while you can move teammates out of fire, you are stuck in an animation with a timer before your character administers an injection to the downed player. I have not found a way to administer this manually. This would make things far easier, especially if you are not playing the support class, which has a defibrillator as part of its equipment. Despite this oversight, its a great addition and one I reckon will be copied in other games going forward. Starting with Call of Duty in 2026.

If backed against the wall, blow it up

With current generation graphics technology, the game’s signature environmental destruction is better than ever. Facades of buildings will collapse, with the game’s Frostbite engine rendering chunks of concrete, rock and floorboards with surprising detail. Those chunks fall in very smooth animations and all of this happens at a stable framerate. It can create some truly cinematic moments for the player, both here and in single player. You could climb to the top of a building and bring down a helicopter, only for it to fall into a building which collapses in a cascade of concrete and steel. I shot down that helicopter, and it felt like an action movie.

Destroying buildings serves a tactical purpose as well: if an enemy player is holed up in a building, taking potshots at you and your team, rather than storm the building, bring it down on their head.

Granted, it’s a little too easy to make this happen — two shots with a rocket launcher are enough to bring down the facade of a two-storey building in the game. Not only is it immersion-breaking, but it also makes the cover of a building’s interior a risk for the player to use. But it’s a risk worth taking in my opinion, especially for the cinematic appeal of watching the screen shake and the floor crumble as your character plummets to the level below.

Fire when ready

The skill gap is adequate and the game feels grounded in some semblance of realism. While the gunplay is satisfying, as mentioned earlier, it requires skill to master. When engaging a moving target, you need to lead your shots by anticipating where your target is moving and firing just ahead of them. This varies with weaponry, distance and even what you’re firing at.

It’s not a unique mechanic, but it’s present to a greater extent here than in Call of Duty, which is the game’s main competition.

When using a sniper rifle at long distances, you not only need to lead your shots, but also take into account how much your bullets will drop and their travel time. While this may be difficult, the satisfaction of learning this system and mastering it is completely worth it. It’s also a good test of your knowledge of the maps and positioning (the enemy’s and yours).

Vehicles are a good example of this, especially if you’re targeting aircraft with an unguided rocket launcher. Since they move faster, you need to predict where they will move and shoot accordingly, taking the time in which your RPG will launch and travel to its target into account. I’ve done this several times now and audibly yelled out in excitement.

It feels heavy, less so than Call of Duty with the game’s movement mechanics, where players can slide along the ground and jump around like a rocket-propelled kangaroo.

You run like you’re weighed down with equipment, which you are, considering that you can equip a primary weapon like an assault rifle or sniper rifle, a sidearm, two operator gadgets, one grenade and a melee weapon. BF Studios has made running feel heavy; you feel like it is taking time to reach one of the objectives in-game. This is more noticeable on larger maps like Operation Firestorm or New Sobek City, while on smaller maps like Manhattan Bridge, because of the more cramped environment, you can cover distances very quickly.

The lay of the land

Battlefield has historically had larger multiplayer maps (levels) than its contemporaries to accommodate both a large number of players (64 total) and vehicles within the same match. The game does have smaller maps for infantry-focused matches, but these are not simplified maps like in Call of Duty, which are restricted to three lanes for players to move through and a maximum of one storey for vertical combat.

All maps have a variety of angles of engagement, angles of approach and verticality — you can engage people both on the ground and atop buildings at varying heights. There are also more than three defined lanes for players to move through, with main roads, back alleys and connected interiors for them to move through to reach their objective. This makes the environment very engaging to deal with. IT’s confusing at first, but within a few games, you start to learn the maps and where to move. In doing so, you also learn the best ways to move without getting engaged or attacked by the enemy.

With the bigger maps — Operation Firestorm, Mirak Valley and Liberation Peak — there are extremely long sightlines for snipers, as well as smaller areas for players to engage in close-quarters. Coupled with all available vehicles in the game, this offers experiences that are epic in scale, chaotic and good fun, more so if grouped up with friends. Buildings will fall apart, you’ll be dodging sniper and tank fire while trying to run and hold one of the objectives on the map. You might eschew using a loud, heavy vehicle to proceed on foot and minimise your presence to avoid drawing unwanted attention. It’s one of those experiences you have to play once in your life.

Granted, being shot by a sniper you could not see because they either blended into the environment too well or were hundreds of metres away is frustrating, but that prompts you to move through cover, find alternative routes or directly engage them; all of these help you become a better player.

The maps here are gorgeous, with the player fighting with backdrops like the pyramids of Giza, mountains in Tajikistan or the Manhattan Bridge. It feels like you’re engaged in a war happening on multiple continents. There are not that many in the game right now, but with Season One launching on October 28 and more content on the way, I am looking forward to what the studio will come up with next.

A touch of class

BF Studios also brought back the series’ renowned class system, where players will choose a character specialised in performing certain tasks and filling specific roles. The assault class focuses on breaching buildings and heading straight for objectives; engineers (my favourite) focus on destroying enemy vehicles and repairing friendly ones; support players focus on supplying teammates with ammo and reviving downed players; and recon is the default sniper class, who can tag enemies for your team just by aiming at them and can “paint” enemy vehicles with a laser designator for easier targeting by man-portable anti vehicle weapons, tanks or aircraft.

Unlike 2042, Battlefield 6 does not have an operator system, where certain class abilities are tied to specific characters from the game’s lore. Instead, you can customise individual loadouts depending on the role you wish to play. For my engineer class, I have separate loadouts for anti-tank and anti-aircraft gameplay. This offers a lot more freedom to the player and allows them to take a play style they like and hone it, becoming a valuable asset for a team.

Similarly, each class has two training paths, offering the player active and passive bonuses such as a faster reload speed for class-specific weapons, more damage against armoured vehicles than other classes and reducing the noise made by the player’s footsteps. Having these options offers players a more diverse set of equipment to work with, allowing them to perform certain roles within a squad.

Some players will pick classes without considering the needs of the team; however, this is less of a problem with the game and more of an issue with people who play it.

I should note that all of the above is better experienced with a group of friends, as they are more likely to pay attention to playing the game and you can experience some of the “Battlefield moments” together. The other night, a friend and I were roleplaying as a sniper-spotter team: he would take shots at targets while I would use the laser designator (which doubles as a pair of binoculars) to call out targets, locations and distances. It felt like we were playing the opening scene of the 2007 movie Shooter, where one man snipes and the other spots targets.

Alternatively, it could be you and a squad of friends travelling around in a helicopter as gunners, or as a pilot and wingman taking to the skies. My four-man squad at one point began clearing rooms in a fully coordinated manoeuvre, like an actual tactical team. We role-played as soldiers over the voice chat as well, with callsigns and everything. It was genuinely good fun.

Not fast, very furious

Vehicular combat, a critical part of the series, is ever-present here. There’s a small variety of them present: infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), main battle tanks, mobile anti-aircraft tanks, jeeps, attack and transport helicopters and fighter and attack jets. Having a friendly tank move on an objective truly is a force multiplier, as a charge by a vehicle surrounded by infantry will overwhelm an enemy position. IFVs and tanks can also blow apart buildings in spectacular fashion.

Controls for driving ground vehicles are intuitive and simple, except for the jeeps; tanks, IFVs and mobile anti-air guns are driven by pushing the left thumbstick on your controller. The vehicles are mostly responsive to the players’ inputs, but when trying to reverse after crashing into a wall, it’s awkward to control, especially when your vehicle turret is facing in a different direction. Although is also more likely a skill issue than a problem with the game.

Heavier vehicles like tanks can crush map objects like barricades and cars by driving over them, not only making the player feel powerful when driving, but also clearing a path for other players.

However, even though you are certainly more powerful in a vehicle, you’re not invincible. Tanks and IFVs can be destroyed easily by enemy engineers hiding in the environment, landmines, which are VERY easy to miss, and other enemy ground and air vehicles.

Not only is the player challenged by infantry combat, but they are also challenged with handling a vehicle and using it effectively. These vehicles take up to 90 seconds to reappear once destroyed, so you need to make your time in them count. It’s certainly fun to drive a main battle tank around, but more so when you learn how to operate these through practice and can use them to do some serious damage to the enemy team.

Ground vehicles are solid and I enjoy driving the IFV in particular due to his higher speed and capacity for targeting infantry (its literally in its name). When surrounded by friendly Engineers who repair your vehicle, battling other players who are on foot or in ground vehicles is a blast. Much like the tank I blew up the other night.

Highway to the danger zone

While the ground vehicles are powerful and feel good to control, aircraft are equally powerful, but the controls are VERY awkward, especially for helicopters.

Flying the fighter and attack jets is a truly fun experience: you take off from a runway and either dogfight with enemy jets or choppers, or you can strafe enemies along the ground. Shooting down a plane in a dogfight is satisfying and rewarding, given the skill required to chase an enemy aircraft and timing its movement with that of your plane’s nose.

However, by default, jets are controlled using the thumbsticks for throttle, pitch (whether your plane’s nose goes up or down), yaw (lateral movement) and roll (rolling from side to side), which can be somewhat awkward to control if you’re a completely new player to the series and are just jumping in. I had to change my control scheme for jets after watching a YouTube tutorial to find a suitable alternative. This has helped, as I can now stay airborne and shoot down enemies, instead of doing just one of those things.

The helicopters are MUCH, much worse. The default controls are the same: throttle, pitch, yaw and roll are mapped to the thumbsticks, but there is one big difference: helicopters do not fly like aeroplanes.

Increasing the throttle will make a chopper ascend; pitching the nose down while you do this will enable you to move forward. But if you apply too much control in either direction, the vehicle will nosedive or spin out of control. This is far before even engaging enemies; it can happen upon takeoff. There are built-in assists for the helicopters, but in my experience, these make everything worse. Since they are such a pain to control, it’s incredibly off-putting, considering how effective they are for combatting infantry and destroying enemy vehicles.

Should you go and buy it (which you absolutely should), watch a tutorial on how to use the air vehicles and rewind the section on helicopters. TheTacticalBrit made the one I used. Thank me later.

Not a perfect experience

This is a truly incredible experience and very much worth paying the full price of admission, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out a couple of issues.

The biggest complaint I have is the pace of progression in multiplayer: the rate at which you unlock things in the game. It took me a week to reach the in-game level of 22, even when playing at least three hours at a time. I still have yet to unlock a vast majority of equipment and weapon attachments two weeks after release. This is not counting items unlocked through completing challenges or the game’s “assignments” — a series of challenges where you can unlock new equipment for your class and new weapons.

For someone who has the time to sink into the game, like a student or someone who otherwise has the time on their hands, this is not going to be a problem. But for a working professional with barely any time to play, it is going to feel very slow to unlock and use all of the equipment the game has to offer, leaving a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out). They’ll see other players running about with higher-level gear and feel like they’re missing out. How do I know this? Because I am that working professional with very little time to play, who has experienced FOMO by seeing teammates and enemies toting high-level weapons.

BF Studios released a patch to speed up the progression — according to the developers, experience points (XP) gained from match completion and the daily bonus have been increased by 10 per cent and 40pc respectively.

“The XP needed to unlock the first 20 attachment ranks is being reduced, so you’ll start earning useful attachments almost twice as fast,” they added in a post on Reddit.

However, even with these changes, I feel that the progression is still a little bit too slow. However, I also feel that Battlefield 6 will have a longer lifespan than its competition, with years of developer support and content ahead. So the progression does not have to be as fast as Call of Duty, which releases a new game every year.

Connectivity is also an issue. One of my friends was kicked from the server and could not rejoin our game despite multiple attempts to re-invite him. There have also been several instances where players in your in-game party (or group) will not join matches even if you do. This forces the party to back out and start searching for a game all over again; at best, this is a minor inconvenience, at worst, it’s an inconvenience a billion-dollar company should have fixed during development.

One glitch that recurred during the two weeks I spent playing this game was that the scoreboards would either be stuck at zero or 1,000, with absolutely no change throughout the game. This has occurred not just when playing in a group with friends but also with random players online, who, in fact, also commented on this using the in-game chat.

Again, this is an issue that should have been resolved during development. I should not have to ask my friends or type a message into the in-game chat to ask what the score is. Hopefully, this will be resolved by the time Season One swings around later this week.

Additionally, when respawning (restarting after death), for some reason, the cursor on the in-game map will dart off to the side, which can be really frustrating when you want to get back into the match after your character gets killed. I also don’t believe it’s something that difficult to fix.

Despite these problems, the multiplayer experience is absolutely worth full price. It’s a refreshing return to what made the series great in the first place and has embraced its identity proudly. It’s got a wide variety of mechanics and equipment for players to engage with, combined with a grounded setting and a solid mix of infantry and vehicular combat. Put simply, every time I finish a game, I immediately want to play another one. And another and a few more after that. Because it’s genuinely good fun.

Campaign

Battlefield has historically failed to handle single-player campaigns well. Except the Bad Company spin-offs, the stories are dry and uninteresting with bland characters, but punctuated with set pieces and scripted events that look incredible.

Battlefield 6 is no exception. From the streets of Cairo to the Strait of Gibraltar, it’s a truly globetrotting adventure, much like what we used to get in the era of the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Short, linear and explosive single player modes.

By the standards of that time, this campaign would be considered quite good, but for a $70 game today, it falls quite flat. If you want to have fun, you need to enjoy it in the same way as the Fast and Furious movies: turn your brain off and enjoy the ride, but when you start asking questions, the plot starts to fall apart.

The vibe I got from this campaign was similar to old Call of Duty campaigns from before 2014, when they actually used to be quite grounded and quite realistic. It was a fairly simple experience — go here, blow up this enemy artillery here, the stakes now rise, repeat — yet they would find ways to make it exciting through set pieces like watching the Eiffel Tower get blown up, chasing terrorists through the London Underground or stopping the invasion of the US.

Those games did not have very open levels, and you were more or less directed down a single path. An objective marker would assign you a task, along with voice lines from a supporting character, and you would be on your way. Simple.

Much like those games, Battlefield 6 offers linear levels — though they are slightly more open due to a bigger play area, but you’re still headed down a defined direction — and similar objectives: go from point A to point B and either blow something up, collect something or defend your position. Rinse, shoot, repeat. Once again, dead simple.

Another negative I’ve come across is that this game needs to be always online. And this is a problem because I’d be playing single player and because my Internet connection was lost, it basically stopped the game with an error message saying it is attempting to reconnect. If it doesn’t connect, I guess I can’t play then. This is becoming a very annoying trend in high-budget AAA games where you need an internet connection for any and all modes, even if you’re just playing single player.

For a multiplayer game is this is understandable, but I’m not even playing multiplayer at the moment. I’m just playing the campaign, with nobody else joining me and no need to have a constant Internet connection. At the end of the day, it’s unnecessary.

It gets worse the further you go

I won’t spoil the story here, but what I will say is that it’s pretty generic — a big group of bad guys threatening the West with some sort of superweapon. We’ve seen this done to death now.

The premise sounds interesting, though: in 2028, Nato is on the brink of collapse after the assassination of its Secretary General. The assassination is claimed by a private military company called Pax Armata. I’m fond of these sorts of stories, how a non-state actor is able to take on the power of a nation-state, particularly if it’s a private company. It gets interesting as more and more information is fed to the audience about the bad guys, revealing what they have been truly planning and how it can create high stakes.

However, Pax comes out of nowhere as they’ve never made any appearances in the series previously. They have somehow been able to launch attacks in most of continental Europe without explanation. At the start of the campaign, they just appear out of thin air.

Early on, this raises a lot of questions, such as what even is Pax Armata? Where do these guys get their funding from? Why have they not appeared in any other games in the series?

Some of these questions are answered at the end. Without spoiling it, Pax’s origins lie with one of the friendly characters. But there’s no buildup in how this is explained: no incriminating intel found in the missions, nor any shifty behaviour from the aforementioned character. It’s all revealed in a series of cutscenes right at the end.

A dagger with a blunt edge

In this campaign, you play as a member of Dagger 1-3, a four-member team from the US Marine Raiders unit. The squad is made up of four characters: Staff Sergeant Cliff Lopez and three playable characters: Gunnery Sergeant Dylan Murphy, Master Sergeant Haz Carter and Staff Sergeant Simone “Gecko” Espina. The squad is later joined by the mysterious Lucas Hemlock, who the developers clearly created by drawing inspiration from the character Ghost from Call of Duty’s Modern Warfare series.

The characters serve as your introduction to the multiplayer class system. For example, Murphy is an engineer who can use anti-tank weapons, and Gecko is a sniper, so she’s the recon class. Their roles are expanded through the squad orders the player can issue: recon (Gecko) will tag enemies in the environment with red marks; support (Lopez) will toss a smoke grenade to obscure enemy vision, while the engineer (Murphy) can attack a target with heavy weapons and assault (Carter) can throw a grenade at a designated target

If this was supposed to tutorialise each class’s role, it did not work. You can pick up any weapon and use any gadget or piece of equipment as any character, stripping each class of what makes it unique.

Moreover, the four main characters are just not captivating, except for Lopez, who serves as Dagger 1-3’s comic relief and, for some reason, is not one of the playable characters. The rest are just generic military tough guys. I had to look up their names for this review, that’s how little I remembered them.

There’s also no real villain until the aforementioned last couple of cutscenes. The one the game gives you is a stereotypical madman, right up until the heavy-handed twist at the end.

Standout moments

The first Gibraltar mission is visually spectacular. You begin with a halo jump before transitioning to providing sniper support for a British special forces team. When you’re on the ground, this is something that really reminds me of all Call of Duty campaigns: just spectacle mixed in with hard-hitting gameplay.

There’s another standout mission in the form of a night raid in Cairo. You have to approach a mansion under the cover of darkness without alerting enemy forces or bystanders. The aesthetic, tinted green by night vision goggles, is very cool. The level then transitions to a close-quarters battle in a house where you can find a shotgun with incendiary rounds. As you make your escape, the level ends with your team getting chased by Pax and having to go one-on-one with an attack helicopter. Along with the two Gibraltar missions and the mission ‘No Sleep’, these have to be my favourite moments from the campaign.

Overall, I was not impressed by the single-player mode, but then I was not expecting much. Battlefield has always played second fiddle to Call of Duty when it comes to single-player modes, so this was not a surprise.

Still, I would not pay for this campaign at full price. It’s not only short but leaves you feeling a bit unfulfilled. But then, if you’re buying Battlefield, it’s for the multiplayer and not the campaign. If there’s any reason to play it, it’s to unlock all of the cosmetic items that can be used in multiplayer.

The verdict

7/7 — stop reading this and go buy it

Battlefield 6 is a return to form for a franchise that many had thought had gone the way of the dodo. EA and BF Studios have provided a high-budget and explosive entry to the series, which takes what it’s known for — destructible levels, precise gunplay and memorable moments in multiplayer — and refines and perfects it. Gameplay feels familiar as a fan of the series, with it bringing back memories of Battlefield 4 all the way back in 2013, but the destructible environments and hard-hitting gunplay, coupled with the ability to helm military vehicles, will also appeal to new players. Though it is a bit of a learning curve for them, it’s one worth sticking with.

There are some issues with connection, rejoining games and with the user interface, but once you’re in game, these slowly fade from memory as you chase down an objective surrounded by teammates with tanks rolling alongside and fighter planes roaring overhead. It’s cinematic and epic, more so than its competitors.

The combined arms experience has returned and is well and truly ready to reclaim its crown as the king of military shooters. Go and buy it.