A long time ago, US citizens used to have these things called jobs, and they prevented us from playing our beloved videogames. During that time, when you got home from work, you’d sit back and play whatever you’re playing recently. If you were daring, you might play TWO videogames back and forth.
Except I have five. I’ve divided my time between The Division 2, Doom Eternal, Forza Horizon 4, Battlefield V, and Fallout 76 Wastelanders.
I want to start by addressing Battlefield V, as something was announced that while writing this. Support for Battlefield V is getting dropped, it’s going to get a few more bits of additions but the final patch is on its way. Final. I’m not particularly mad, because well… I can just go play Star Wars Battlefront II instead. It’s been fixed, and it is essentially just an elaborate Star Wars mod for Battlefield. Anyway, both are massive online multiplayer first person shooter games.
The Division 2 was being sold for $3 a couple months ago. Wow, it’s almost like it was an omen. I start playing this game about a supervirus that wiped out millions of Americans and now… yeah. That thing. The Coof. What is it? It’s an Ubisoft game. That says it all. You are in Washington DC, and there’s a bunch of pins on the map. There’s busywork, unnecessary busywork, actual missions, and random faffing about. You know it’s actually rather soothing and therapeutic compared to the other games. It’s a third person multiplayer cover shooter with loot mechanics.
Doom Eternal, on the other hand, is NOT soothing. Accompanied by a soundtrack that can only be described as “the sounds of a chainsaw being transposed to metal” it’s an intense experience. DOOM 2016 started the franchises new first person frenetic kill-room experience. The sequel decided that it wasn’t hard enough and just tosses you to the wolves the moment you start the campaign. Just look at the new banner for this page! It’s balls to the wall action that will make you better at all other shooters.
Forza Horizon 4 takes a special place in my heart.
A free roam racing game with online elements made sure that there is so much shit to do, it’s almost too much. The map looks like an Ubisoft map with the amount of pins on it. Yet, I never got to spend enough time with the game because of review obligations to the page, but let me put I this way. I’ve played what has to be more than 60 total hours of gameplay, and I barely touched the infinite amount of campaigns and races it has. The live events soak up my time. Hell the game even has its own battle royale, no I’m not kidding, look it up.
Finally, we have the Wastelanders DLC update for Fallout 76. Congratulations Ubisoft, you made an extremely boring and empty survival FPS RPG into a slightly less empty version that’s still marginally boring. New content means new character, so I left my two existing characters off to the side. I haven’t touched them in more than a year. The experience is incrementally less boring, but it’s still boring. I spend more time at user camps fiddling with my gear than I do playing actual missions. I’m just glad the game space is getting over implementing survival into every game.
A lot of shooters sure, but they are all very different gameplay wise. And I can’t pick one to stick with because I want to play the others too. Also, I constantly press the wrong buttons in many games, especially Fallout 76, because every one of these has a different control scheme. I get by just fine.
If you’re wondering why I haven’t picked up Super Final Fantasy VII Remake Midgar Edition Deluxe Part One & Knuckles, it’s because I already have plenty to play. Five games on rotation alone, these don’t even count the backlogs of games I want to play. Do yourself a favor and have a look through the games you own. Get cracking at the ones you’ve been meaning to play.
Hate reading? The audio version can be found HERE.
Everyone has been upset over a particular mission. Nordlys depicts a woman and her mother opposing German troops who are transporting a nuclear compound known as hard water. This event actually took place under several men trying to sabotage the plans. All the complaining about misrepresenting history has made something clear. We now all know what really happened.
On the core, the game is still the essential battlefield experience. Chet is a relative newcomer to the series, he’s just not a hardcore fan. He may be missing something by not being a regular user. But, the rash of recent backlash and hate left him surprised. Now he feels like because the expectations were set so low, he liked it. That said, EA isn’t off the hook quite yet!
The past week or so, we were faced with some really good games. Like Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee. And probably Warriors Orochi 4, I guess. But you know what wasn’t great? Fallout 76 and Battlefield V, two big ticket games. Both were set to make a splash in the crazy release season that is November. But neither could achieve what the wanted. Fallout 76 was vastly undercut by it’s monotony and lack of direction. Battlefield V was just the same Battlefield as always with a new coat of paint. BFV also had it’s critics for its inaccurate portrayal of WW2 by people on the internet, but that’s the internet. Everybody hates everything on the internet. Besides that, both games got major BETA playtests from regular users. This is honestly a good step, allowing the actual PLAYERS some advanced look at the game instead of some journalist who intends to write a giant think piece. Both of these games have a huge focus on multiplayer. Fallout 76 is the first major multiplayer game for Bethesda and Battlefield V is a multiplayer game with a campaign tacked on. Only their campaign was even shorter AND less interesting.
Either way, we haven’t finished enough of either to give you a consensus. But… if you are absolutely dying to play an online shooter game, we have something interesting for you. We are going to compare the games using our review system. But instead of the score, we are going to say which game did it better! Let’s start, shall we?
Graphics
Battlefield V is flat out gorgeous, with heavily detailed maps and great lighting that really set the mood for a lot of maps. There are some glitches but it works for the most part. The smoke grenades set up some serious smoke particle FX. And the detail of the character faces is surprisingly detailed for a game that doesn’t have too much focus on what the player looks like. Fallout 76 looks… exactly like it did several years ago. Fallout 3 and New Vegas never looked that great. Fallout 4 didn’t look that great. Fallout 76? It’s markedly improved, sure. But does it look great? No way, it looks as trashy as its level design and full of all sorts of ugly textures. Several of the ugly textures have taken more than 20 seconds to pop in. Yikes.
Victor: Battlefield V
Story
Battlefield V is one of the many, many, many, many iterations of World War II presented in game form. Somehow, it managed to make history even more boring, despite trying to spice things up with some creative historical fiction. What you get here is a mere 3 stories, as opposed to 5 in the previous entry. It’s really hard to feel anything for these characters because you spend such a small amount of time with them. It ends up being boring. Fallout 76 is boredom incarnate. Using the gaming worlds least interesting way of telling stories, any thing plot related in the game is played out in VERY LENGTHY audio logs. They can’t be paused or fast forwarded. If you interact with your pip-boy and click the wrong thing, the tape will stop and you have to start it over. Other than that, you only other window into the events of the game are logs written on terminal screens. In old Fallout games, this was done for lore. In 76, they are main story points. Super lame. All the same, when it comes down to brass tacks, it would seems that Fallout 76 still has a better overall story. Having a ton of lore is better than a bog-standard WW2 plot.
Victor: Fallout 76
Audio
Battlefield V has all the standard sounds you’re used to hearing. The audio was on autopilot in this regard. Every single gun sounds like it did in every other game. You will not in any way be inspired by the sound design of the weapons, nor will you be interested in the orchestral OST. It’s there because it’s supposed to be there, not because it wants to do something engaging. Fallout 76 surprisingly has a decent OST going for it. The ambient music that plays while you’re wandering the world is noticeably better then previous versions. It’s actually notable and really adds to the mood of the game being very lonely and desolate. And if that doesn’t tickle your fancy, there’s always the old sock-hop records to keep things going. The fantasy weapons also have wonderful unique sounds.
Victor: Fallout 76
Gameplay
In Fallout 76, you are bombarded with nonstop activity. The game is always online, so that means no pause menu. If you want to look at the map, it’s realtime. If you need to sort your junk on your Pip-Boy, that is also real time. There is nowhere safe to be when you play this game. You absolutely will be bombarded by enemies at any and all opportunities, with very little time to rest and get a bearing on things. In Battlefield V, the campaign is atrocious. But the multi-player is on point. It weird, the game is so much better in multi than single. It makes you wish the they skipped the campaign, instead of Black Ops. Anyway, the game is direct and lets you “play it your way”, which is very important. Divided into four classes, you can spawn is as a specialist in Assault, Medic, Recon, and Support. Don’t let the names fool you, all of them are combat roles. It’s what you do with them that matters. Either way, BFV manages to be a great shooter while Fallout 76 stays wonky as ever.
Victor: Battlefield V
Fun
To put it simply, there’s an easy dichotomy here. Fallout 76 has a “make your own fun” approach to game design. If you want to have any fun, you want to team up and do fun stuff together with your friends. Otherwise it’s a drag. Battlefield is good at grouping you with interesting colleagues that you help out during the many combat modes. Even if you aren’t on voice chat, the game finds a way to make you feel connected with your squad. It’s admirable that it manages to gel so well with random strangers. Meeting random strangers in Fallout 76 are few and far between. They are also as underwhelming as ever.
Victor: Battlefield V
It is clear that the winner is Battlefield V with a victory spread of 3-2. We haven’t heard too much of the game in the blogosphere of gaming. But this may be because the game just… is fine. It’s not spectacular. It’s just fine. Despite early complaints, the bottom line is that BFV is a better experience than Fallout 76. If you need a brand new game to satisfy your itch for fast paced, online, multiplayer shooter action, you could do worse than picking up the latest Battlefield. Me? I got so bored during the campaign that I jumped into multi. I never do that. Not until this iteration. How surprising!
Another jam-packed October coming up on our wallets gamers but fear not the great folks at EA have our back. Or maybe they just have their best interests in mind. Who cares, however you look at it Battlefield V has been delayed.
Oskar Gabrielson, general manager at DICE, has said in an official blog post (no bogus crap) that Battlefield V has been delayed to November 20th. That’s right a nice little Thanksgiving shootout. Should be amazing.
The post kind of seems like they are crediting player feedback for the delay which means someone was listening. I just hope they were listening to the right complaints.
Sizzle reel has Sports, Battlefield, Sims, Anthem, Star Wars, and Esports footage.
They decided to use a holographic AR system to show off their games.
Andrea Rene opened the show, she emphasized that a lot of people would be playing games at the show.
Battlefield V
Oskar Gabrielson and Lars came on to talk about the gameplay customizations and innovations being done for the multiplayer.
Dive and smash thru windows, moveable weapon emplacements, more destructible environments, customize everything.
War Stories is back for the single player.
No loot boxes or premium passes confirmed and that daily content would be made.
They confirmed Battle Royale mode and got BOO’d live on stage, which was hilarious.
Ground Operations mode was featured and then they moved on a cinematic trailer, followed up by a tease for a story that would be revealed at the Microsoft press conference.
FIFA 19
A theatrical trailer was then shown for FIFA showing a famous footballer that I don’t know
Aaron McHardy hosted along with Lena to talk about the game while standing next to a bigass UEFA trophy.
It was announced that the story mode would pursue this cup and that as per usual, many new modes and features were added.
World cup mode confirmed as always.
They made a joke about England fans.
They announced that you could play the full game experience as a trial mode for free RIGHT NOW.
EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson showed up to talk about the game some more.
CEO
Wilson then showed off a project being worked on where you could stream EA games to practically any device using cloud computing technology.
Origin Access Premier: a new service was announced that appears to give you all the EA games as they come out, along with Vault access, launching later this summer.
A sizzle reel was shown off to advertise the new service.
Jedi: Fallen Order
Andrea showed up again, standing next to Vince Zampella from Respawn Entertainment.
He introduced Jedi: Fallen Order.
He was interviewed about the game but was constantly being very vague about it, except that it takes place between films 3-4.
He announced for Holiday of 2019.
Star Wars Battlefield II
Apologies were had with SWBF2’s disastrous launch with Dennis Brannvall.
Ewok Hunt was featured along with Han Solo DLC based on the film.
A new overhaul along with a new squad system and new starfighter mode were discussed, along with a multiplayer sandbox experience.
New content will include the beloved Clone Wars battles.
General Grievous and Obi-Wan Kenobi were introduced as new heroes along with Count Dooku and Anakin Skywalker.
He also said a new map would be the largest ever.
Unravel Two
Unraveled came back with a brand new trailer featuring little Yarnie getting lost at sea and losing his string. But that’s okay because he meets a blue buddy.
The lead dev came on to talk about it, speaking of optimism and togetherness, and that the game would have a major co-op focus.
A player game on stage for a “live” demo of the experience, this is the first time actual gameplay was shown. It may have actually been live because they messed up the footage for a few seconds.
Yarny gets chased by a chicken, and the gameplay showed that the two characters can fuse for fast sections.
Editor’s Note: This is the only trailer worth watching so far since you see actual gameplay and it looks like a remarkably improved experience and the specialized co-op games are becoming a new niche
The section was bookended with another story trailer that also showcased real game footage.
Oh… and it’s out today, the 9th of June. And somebody in the audience screamed, “oh my god.” That was fun.
They also talked about A Way Out afterward, which was fitting.
Sea of Solitude
A new indie game was shown off from Jo-Mei games, featuring another super shy indie dev geeking out at being on stage.
She talked about the theme of loneliness while discussing the mood of the game. The main character has turned into a monster and is trying to become human again.
The gameplay footage features a flooded world that you traverse by foot and by boat, featuring platforming and running, but not much else was shown.
NBA LIVE 19
NBA came out with a trailer focusing on the story campaign that features a ton of character customization.
Madden 19
Madden was actually shown off in the context of Kevin, an Esports champion of Madden with footage from several championships. He came on to talk about the game and a pro came on with him.
Madden 19 trailer came on. I can confirm it featured football.
Command and Conquer Rivals
A real-time strategy game where you have to launch a missile or something had a “live” match on the set before they announced the title of the game.
This is a touchscreen-based mobile game.
The pre-alpha can be played by Android owners starting now.
Afterward, a cinematic trailer was played, looking way more interesting than the actual game.
Anthem
Andrew Wilson came on again and rambled about stuff that was basically a thinly veiled apology for all the dumb stuff that EA did last year.
They paired up with a few advocate groups.
Anthem came on with an in-engine cinematic trailer, it was rather decent and made a lot of it look awfully cool.
Andrea came back on also, Casey Hudson, Mark Darrah and from the development team.
They all sat on chairs and turned the event into a question and answer session. Gameplay was shown as they talked about the game.
They emphasized that the game has a single player story focus with a ton of co-op features and that it’s not really designed to be an MMO.
Namedrop, the catalyst of the goings on in the planet is called the “Anthem of Creation”, and that it’s a bit of a post-apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by changes in wildlife and weather.
The world is constantly changing, where the game’s world and lore can change between gameplay sessions.
You are a mercenary that fights using the Exo suits called Javelins, you will fight an enemy faction trying to weaponize the monsters.
Four classes were introduced, the ranger, colossus, interceptor, and storm.
They talked about customization and said that the suits were fully customizable.
No loot boxes or advantage microtransactions, but cosmetic microtransactions were confirmed.
Teamwork is necessary for some missions and the multiplayer is built around fusing the experience with multi without interrupting the single-player experience.
A long gameplay demo was shown afterward and is easily worth watching. Fake microphone chatter was NOT employed. They showed an amended version of the full trailer.
February 22, 2019, was the release date for all platforms except Switch.
End of Showcase
After the show they recapped themselves, hey that’s my job!
They were going to start a live FIFA game tournament directly after, and then ending sizzle reel rolled.
TAKEAWAY: Anthem looks like the best Iron Man game we will ever get. I am absolutely non-excited for anything else. What did you like in the show? DROP THOSE COMMENTS IN.
In a move I think everyone can universally agree we weren’t expecting, the Battlefield V announcement brought some crazy plot twist. This year, for the first time in almost a decade Battlefield & Call of Duty are very different games. Outside of both being First Person Shooters, the majority of the ways the games will play out. I’ll do a full on comparison but for now let’s talk about whats going on.
First, and foremost, Battlefield V is coming to a home console, i.e. not the Switch, near you on October 19th, 2018.
That gives us all plenty of time to get ready. And get ready we need to because the guys at Dice are doing it big again. Contrary to popular ridiculous belief, single player campaigns are going no where and Battlefield is more proof. Much like the way the campaign played out in the recent Battlefield 1, Battlefield V will spotlight lesser known battles during WWII. The campaign will also feature stories about small rebel soldiers protecting their hometowns alongside the soldier stories.
A new game mode was announced and it’s not Battle Royale!
Combined Arms is a four player squad mode with infiltration missions. You and your team are paratroopers dropped to go in behind enemy lines, do some crazy missions, and be out without being detected. The nice thing is you can also play this alone. Yup, taking shots at the lack of campaign in Black Ops 4 still.
But there is still a Battle Royale, sort of. If you play Battlefield, congratulations, you may recognize a sweet little mode called Grand Operations. Well not really a game mode more like a match type. Anyway, if you’re familiar with Grand Operations incredible match types, you’re in for a crazy surprise. Instead of a full fledged mode, Grand Operations will now have an additional round called Last Stand. All remaining players fight till the one winner is left. The Battlefield spin; the more time you spend in squads the more ammo and health you get to pick up. So how long can you trust the people you’re with?
The final piece of big news from the announcement is the end of the premium pass. Going forward all major post release content will be available for free. Of course there will probably still be other paid DLC, we’ll have to wait and see.
There you have it folks. Battlefield , available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One on October 19th 2018. Pre-Order today to get access to the beta and other cool in game stuff.
