Battlefield 4, due to release on October 29, will make its beta available to all on October 4. The previous Battlefield had some issues and took some hits in the war for FPS supremacy. After seeing the Beta Overview video, Dice might be in a good spot to recover lost ground.
America fought China in the Korean War. In 1950, the Chinese had just finished a civil war and World War 2 before that. Their economy and government were in disarray. It was freezing cold and the soldiers – many of them conscripts – ate a riceball a day if lucky. They didn’t have much fire-power, or training, or morale, but they still jacked up the Americans pretty bad. And now, thanks to Battlefield 4, America has invaded a China that is an economic and military super-power. Awesome!
We’re thrown into middle of Shanghai on a beauty of a sunny day (all the Shanghai smog seemed to have cleared up). There’s smoke, explosions, gunfire…a chaotic mess, exactly what an urban battle would look like. There will be ten multiplayer maps, but only the Siege of Shanghai will be available for beta. The towering TV station in center of town plays a key role. The climactic moment of the video is when the entire tower is brought down, a scene which one can’t help comparing to a crappy time in American history, and one I’m sure someone somewhere will say something about at some point.
But it’s still pretty cool to see in a game. The narrator explains that the tower can be brought down if it’s too difficult to take it. Then why not just blow it up to begin with? I don’t see how easy it would be to take a well-defended tower. How many points of entry can there be? Drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or lose half a million allied soldiers invading Japan? Not a difficult decision.
There are four classes of soldiers. Support provides heavy fire and replenishes ammo. Engineer fixes and blows up vehicles. Recon snipes. Assault heals and revives.
Spawn puts you in the thick of things, either next to your men in battle or on an empty spot in a vehicle.
There are two game types. In Conquest, you have to take key points and kill bad guys in order to cause the enemy’s to bleed its tickets to zilch. Domination is similar but infantry only.
Blowing up buildings is the highlight. Either take them down to achieve your objective, or blast a hole in the ceiling ‘cause the elevator isn’t working. Or just blow them up just to blow them up. That’s urban warfare at its finest.