Now that we're over the E3 hump, Imogen and I thought we'd catch a break on this week's episode of the Ultimate Audio Bang. But no, the online shooters simply do not stop reloading. PUBG dropped a new map on its test servers, Warzone fixed its murder door, and Valorant's new agent sounds very overpowered.
]]>Pity the poor Battlefield 4 players of Boring, Oregon. Battlefield 2042's announcement caused an uptick in players in the US West server region, leading to long server queues for the eight-year-old FPS. The influx of players was large enough for EA to spin up more server capacity to help players get back to the game.
]]>Ever since EA announced that season passes were on the way out, they've been showering the (still very active) Battlefield 1 & Battlefield 4 communities with giveaways of premium-priced DLC, for those who haven't taken the plunge yet. Accompanying Battlefield 1's Summer Update (mostly balance tweaks and quality-of-life improvements, according to the patch notes) comes a triple giveaway. BF1 players can pick up the game's final expansion - Apocalypse - free, while BF4 players can snag the Naval Strike and China Rising DLC, all until August 7th.
]]>EA are retiring season passes for the Battlefield series starting with Battlefield V, and it seems that they're gradually making that change retroactive, at least in part. Today, owners of Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 4 who only have the base games can pick up the Turning Tides and Second Assault expansions respectively for the always-reasonable price of free, although you'll need to grab them via Origin.
]]>Battlefield V is practically upon us already, but its two immediate predecessors are still very well populated games. Still, thanks to their old focus on season passes, many players just stuck with the base games, a problem which EA have been rectifying lately with giveaways. Today, owners of Battlefield 1 can snag the In The Name Of The Tsar expansion for the game, while Battlefield 4 folks can get the Final Stand expansion, both completely free. Summer is coming, and looking at the frozen wastelands on offer, a trip to the Urals seems awfully tempting.
]]>Some soldiers of Battlefield 1 [official site] have stopped chucking grenades and sniping each other from across the map long enough to discover some pairs of mysterious headphones scattered around, which can be picked up by a single person during the fight. They then found that a jumbled morse code message would play if that person stood close to a radio station hidden somewhere on the map. What can it all mean? I’ll tell you: it means another elaborate Battlefield easter egg hunt has begun.
]]>All five DLC expansions for Battlefield 4 [official site] are now free. With Battlefield 1 coming out next month, DICE and Electronic Arts are letting everyone get properly tooled tooled up in the last proper Battlefield before it's time for shiny newness. It's nice for folks who are hankering for a bit of BF right now but hey, if BF1 proves disappointing this means you can always drop back to the full BF4 experience.
]]>Battlefield 1 [official site] will be this year's new game in EA's FPS series, set in World War One, earlier than ever before. I suppose this means that all the hilarious jokes people have made about "not playing Battlefield 2142 until they've played the previous 2141 games" were actually eerie predictions. All Battlefield games until this have been part of an incredibly ambitious plan to create over two thousand virtual wars. That's at least four millennia of games at this pace. Heck, the series started with its 1,942nd part - George Lucas can suck an egg. So! Yes, BF1, WW1, coming on October 21.
]]>At 9PM BTS/4PM ET, we'll find out whether the new Battlefield game is Battlefield 5, Battlefield: More Uncomfortable Police Brutality Allusions, or something else entirely. I'm wondering if it could be something a little science-fictional, in order to go toe-to-toe with what COD is up to. Also, wild speculation funtimes: the seconds-long teaser trailer below suggests that its Big Face Man is looking up at something enormous and maybe a little scary. Maybe a mech? We're overdue a return to 2142. Although the rest of the internet seems to think we're going back to 1942 at long last.
]]>Electronic Arts plan to announce this year's new Battlefield game on Friday, but before then are shaking hands with Battlefield players, kissing their babies, and blasting free DLC at them out of air cannons. The old Battlefield 4 multiplayer Dragon's Tooth DLC and cops & robbers spin-off Battlefield Hardline's multiplayer Robbery DLC are both free to keep forever if you grab 'em by next Tuesday, May 10th. More freebies are due over the next few months.
]]>If you like a lot of big-budget on your biscuit, join this club. Enormo-publisher EA just announced that its previously console-only Access service is now available on PC, as a bolt-on for its Origin game store. Pay a monthly Origin Access subscription fee of $4.99/€3.99/£3.99 and you'll get all-you-can-eat access to a (currently) small archive of recent EA titles. Perhaps more likely to flog subscriptions is that they include access to 'trials' of new releases five days before the full games go on sale, as well as 10% off Origin purchases. The walls around the garden just got taller.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Battlefield 4 is not the best Battlefield. But it is my favourite Battlefield for one reason - Obliteration mode.
]]>The temple, meandering river, and destructible bridges of Battlefield 2's Dragon Valley are returning in Battlefield 4 [official site] for free later this year, all gussied-up and reworked for BF4. The map's no secret - it hit the Community Test Environment months ago - but DICE have now announced it'll arrive as part of the free 'Legacy Operations' DLC alongside the game's holiday season update. They've also explained some of their changes while showing off how fancy it looks now in a wee trailer:
]]>What sort of level would you most like to see in a video game? DICE asked the whole Battlefield 4 [official site] community, and design by committee has produced a spooky jungle map where monkey virus research has gone wrong. That... sounds about what I'd expect.
Hardline may be the shiniest Battlefield around, but 2013's BF4 is still kicking. For folks more into army men then cops and robbers, an update is out today bringing a new map DICE made based around player feedback and votes: Operation Outbreak.
]]>It’s no surprise to see DICE continue to support Battlefield 4[official site]. If you compare its stats with those of the more recently released Battlefield Hardline, it’s clear BF4 is the PC owner’s Battlefield of choice. With the upgrades made in the upcoming Spring Patch, releasing “late May”, those players will probably be sticking around a while longer. With rebalanced weapons across the board, this could feel like an entirely new game.
]]>You like patches, kid? I couldn't help but notice you checking out my cool leather jacket. Yep, that's a Counter-Strike beta 5.2 patch. Best damn version, I say. And look, on my shoulder: CS beta 3.1. The last days of gun-running, that one. Hey, you've got a good eye kid! That is DotA Allstars v5.84c! Different times... Here, you'll like this: QTest. I was there, first night. You see a lot of folks wearing fakes nowadays, claiming they were there and warbling on about how this or that ruined the scene, but check the thread: it should be copper wire. Fakes miss that. Posers, they're the real problem.
Say, what's that you've got hidden away under your scarf? A Battlefield 4 Fall Update patch? Aw, don't sweat it. Everybody's gotta start somewhere, kid.
]]>Prepare for extreme explosiabangs! It's the fourth (of five) Battlefield 4 map packs, Dragon's Teeth. Continuing the narrative of a China-America conflict, the fighting has now reached the south of mainland Asia, putting the focus squarely on infantry combat in urban environments. Furthering the series mainstay of having everything best about C&C Generals present, there's a map where trains will destroy tanks that have been left on the tracks. Best. It's out now for "premium" members, while mere mortals must wait until July 29th. Trailer and details below for your honourable service to this great nation.
]]>Upon hearing EA claim that Battlefield will not succumb to annual sequelitis like Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, and their ilk, I was immediately reminded of that time it snapped up the domains for Battlefields 13-20. I'm not saying it's indicative of anything, just that I can't help but think of it, given the context. But yes, despite the fact that we're now on our second consecutive battleyear thanks to Battlefield Hardline, the series is apparently not an annual guarantee.
]]>"Lag!" you cry as the bullet zooops down your scope and through your virtual face. "Laaaaaag!" You're awful and everyone wants you to be quiet, but last week you might have elicited a modicum of sympathy in Battlefield 4 by grumbling about netcode, or at least recognition. Now you'll get only contempt. Maybe. Assuming a new fix actually works. Developers DICE yesterday rolled out a patch adding a 'High Frequency Bubble' option which should take a knife to the visible lag. One of DICE's test shows this cut in half, though of course things may be different in actual real games.
]]>Somewhere beneath all of Battlefield 4's glitches, server woes, and ceaseless controversy lies a very good game. Even back when it first launched, I jumped into a few matches that went off without a hitch, and I thought to myself, "Wow, there is a preposterous amount going on here and also I just murdered a man with a defibrillator." But it's like a "levolutionary" building with sickly hunks of concrete hanging from twisting threads of rebar - one small push, and everything comes crumbling down (unless there is a physics glitch). And now the latest not-so-great-looking mark on a very not-sterling record: EA and DICE have added microtransactions to Battlefield 4, a premium game that still hasn't seen a single price drop. But hey, at least they're optional.
]]>Battlefield 4 is kind of like Humpty Dumpty. It launched, pretty much immediately face-planted off its precarious perch, and all the king's horses and all the king's men still haven't managed to fully put poor ol' Humpty back together again. There's a good game in there somewhere, but lag and a smattering of related (and unrelated) issues threaten to drown it beneath the Megalodon-infested seas. So DICE has finally elected to bring out the big guns in the form of new server hardware. The question is, did it work?
]]>Many a cold night they spent together on the hunt for the beast, scanning the seas from watchtowers, wading in the surf, riding the waves, and diving down to the dark ocean's wrecks. Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. They'd never seen it, but they know it was there. Each secret uncovered brought them closer to the beast. They felt it in their bones. And then... it was upon them. They were snuffed out in an instant.
After many moons of searching, dedicated Battlefield 4 players have finally found a long-rumoured secret: a megalodon. Lurking in the seas of DLC multiplayer map Nansha Strike, the prehistoric mega-shark will rise and breach to devour the bold and foolish.
]]>"We are about to reveal a new game!" No Time To Explain dev/burgeoning indie publisher Alex Nichiporchik told me over Skype. Almost reflexively, I braced myself for an excited slurry spew about some crazy new platformer or a zany comedy adventure or an emotional tale that would rock me to my very core. "It's basically a fusion of Just Cause 2 and Battlefield 3," he proceeded to tell me. "...Oh," I replied, briefly mistaking a flock of birds fluttering by outside for a car tethered to a plane with a wildman surfing atop it, as I often do. "Go on." And so he did. Go below to find out about JetGetters' plane-jacking antics, its accompanying Kickstarter (because of course), how TinyBuild hopes to make dogfights more interesting, shifting levels, purposefully limited player counts, and why TinyBuild's not on board with free-to-play.
]]>I haven't played one second of Battlefield 4 (is it still all kinds of broken?), because I was taking a personal stand against Dice and EA's refusal to acknowledge how awesome Battlefield 2142 was. Specifically Titan Mode, where each side had a hovering carrier that could be boarded by launching yourself at it in your own personal missile. It was all fashooomgrawwwwwgnargle *headshot*, and it was the best thing Battlefield ever did do. Well, there's some good news if you've been part of my protest: the upcoming Naval Strike map pack (ugh!) will be paying homage to Titan Mode with Carrier Assault mode, though there's no mention of the personal missiles that made that mode so much fun.
]]>I recently attended the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas (which is not related to game developer DICE, actually), and there I interviewed the entire gaming industry. OK, that's not entirely true, largely because many D.I.C.E. attendees spontaneously break out into hives if anybody so much as mentions the word "indie." But still, I talked to a whole mess of people. I encountered EA chief creative officer Rich Hilleman on an award show red carpet, so time for chit-chat was brief. Given recent events, however, I had to ask: what's the deal with EA and hideously botched launches on games like Battlefield 4 and SimCity? And while Hilleman (very vaguely) promised change, I found his response more than a little upsetting. Read on and see what you think.
]]>It seems you're not the only ones who don't love EA. Law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP are pursuing action against the company for claims that Electronic Arts withheld information about the state of Battlefield 4 in order to artificially increase their share price. Now that the game is out, buggy and struggling commercially, Electronic Arts' share price has dipped. That makes investors not so happy also lawyers quite happy.
]]>I sure do love the fact that Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare is suffering an arbitrary delay on PC. Makes savoring each promotional morsel all the sweeter, yes indeed. Who needs dumb anchors like a release date and payoff when you can praise the heavens for every little crumb that tumbles your way instead? Wait, no, the other thing: ugggggggggggggggggggghhhhh.
Oh but Garden Warfare's Battlefield-inspired Gardens and Graveyards mode looks kinda neat I guess.
]]>Like Battlefield 3 before it, Battlefield 4's launch hasn't exactly been graceful. If our baseline metric for grace is a lithe, ethereally beautiful swan, then BF4 thus far has been said swan getting squashed into a writhing mass of meaty chunks by a thousand levolutions. Bugs, glitches, crashes - you name it, BF4 has grappled with it on PC and consoles. DICE, unsurprisingly, is aware that its flagship shootyblam has issues, and has - in the wake of new issues stemming from the China Rising DLC pack - dedicated its full developmental force to making the game, you know, work.
]]>Our coverage of Battlefield 4 got rather interrupted by the arrival of a baby. It happens. So in trying to catch up, I wanted to play through the single player campaign, see how it compared to COD: Ghosts'. Yeah. That would have been nice, wouldn't it. But then EA happened.
]]>Battlefield 4 has a story? Yes, it has a story. I'm not alone in forgetting that it would be coming with single-player, am I? It just doesn't seem to be the reason for people to play it. And now I'm thinking about it, I can't remember if the previous game even had a campaign*. So now I want to know: who plays the single-player bits of Battlefield games, and were you/are you excited about the fourth game's offline shootery? Actually, you should probably wait until watching the trailer before answering that, because it looks a bit crap.
]]>I remember back in the early '90s, when RPS came with two disks taped to the front and a sheet of stickers inside. Back then, when internet connections were slow, those disks were the best way to get the enormous patches that developers would release for games, and that made those updates a kind of curse. Why couldn't developers just get it right the first time?
Patches are now a good thing, but today I remembered that old taste of frustration: Battlefield 4 is removing the elevator catapults.
]]>I tend to just glom onto one mode in multiplayer games, which means when I'm playing other modes and maps*, and people are shouting at me to do the thing with the thing, all I hear is "Blah blah Craig is handsome and best blah". I just stick to what I know, because I don't need affirmation. Anyway, other people like variety in their games, and therefore demand modes for every occasion from the likes of DICE. Battlefield 4 will come out with seven game modes across ten maps, and I will now list them and give some commentary based on my previous experiences on the Battlefield.
]]>I'm more of a far-off admirer of Battlefield than someone with an active interest in it. I have my binoculars trained on it and I can tell it's beautiful, it's big, and it looks like a lot of fun. But I have Arma 3 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (I've been casually playing CS:GO with some friends for the past few evenings), and there's no more room for another shooter where I have to know things about the guns. For those of you who really want to play it, you'll be able to on October the 1st for free: that's when the open beta will allow everyone to hop on Conquest mode on the Siege of Shanghai map.
]]>Watching this video of Battlefield 4's multiplayer, as an EA producer views a huge battle for control of an island chain, reminded me of how I used to play Battlefield 2: I'd stay after work at PC Gamer, along with Tom Francis and the quietly brilliant Steve Williams. We'd load up a 64-man map on the LAN and mess about for a couple of hours. We'd be recording all this, then we'd watch it back, laughing at the demo. We were so cool. There's an element of this in this narrated live recording of DICE's 'Paracel Storm' map: the camera zooms around, taking stock of the mayhem as it happens, flowing like an unfettered war photographer. I'm not really bothered about the game, but I might just buy it for the spectator view.
]]>I suppose I should have got over finding that funny by now, but I really haven't. Anyway, the folks from EA/DICE are keen to talk about how the web-based game launcher system will be enabling your game functionality in the online infospace matrix we call The Big Hook Up for Battlefield 4. This next Battlefield game is, of course, out on October 29th, and I am looking forward to my inevitable descent into assault rifle sports for the following month.
But yes, Battlelog explained, below.
]]>Battlefield 4 is a game about stuff. Mainly - as with every Battlefield - multiplayer's the main event, but you wouldn't know it based on EA's marketing efforts. Campaign this, "real human story" that, the profound subtlety of giant explosions blah blah blah. There may not be any dogs (wait for the Canine Kill DLC, releasing exclusively on everything this fall), but it's hard not to see Battlefield's single-player as the little tin soldier that marches behind Call of Duty with saucer-eyes of admiration. This time, though? Well, at least some of Battlefield's setpieces look bigger. But the story? Er, if you put it in a room with synopses of every other military shooter, I probably couldn't tell the difference.
]]>I've figured out why developers and publishers make game engine trailers. Like the Wizard Of Oz, the game engine is responsible for what's going on behind the scenes. It is the giant, floating head that demands tribute. In this case, the tribute is four minutes of people talking about Frostbite 3 using terms like "Seamless Reality". It skips extolling how these grown men spend their days and nights attempting to make explosions more explodey, debris more chunky, and eyes more oculary. Such is the fragile ego of a game engine, if such a tribute is not made then Frostbite 3 would return to its burrow and gnaw off its own feet.
]]>Absolutely destructible scenery. And also a top-down commander mode. WUH OH. No, it's probably fine, it might work, in the way so proven by numerous other RTSFPS hybrids. And yes, E3 actually coughed up the multiplayer part of Battlefield, instead of waving scriptilinear doodads in our faces once again. The videoed offerings showed a blistering street-battle in Shanghai, with the commander mode being used to apply convenient artillery.
Dudes get shot! (Below.)
]]>I don't think it's a stretch to say Battlefield would be a very different game if it didn't have any guns. Perhaps you would instead aggressively point and yell at angry men until they realized you were even angrier, hurriedly stepping aside and saying, "Phew, I don't want to mess with that guy." Or maybe the series would simply be renamed "Field," and you'd be in charge of a) tending to grass and b) callously sweeping aside dead bodies, coping with their lingering, bottomless stares as you hurl them into mass graves. (Someone, make this.) Regardless, that's why EA's not tossing out guns any time soon. It is, however, taking the ones it already has and going home - far away from the license-holders and manufacturers who might feel entitled to a chunk of their change.
]]>EA are a company that thinks ahead. The Battlefield series may only be working on its 4th pure edition right now, but the publisher has just registered domains for www.battlefield13.com to www.battlefield20.com, ensuring that they're secure for at least the next few Christmasses.
But Rock, Paper, Shotgun is a company that thinks further ahead. RPS is a business that doesn't rely on such medium-to-long-term thinking. And so it is that we will be the first place for all your www.battlefield21.com news.
]]>RPS's own wayward ronin word master Cara Ellison, during a post-convention victory dinner, put it best: "GDC is where we first hear about all the stuff everyone will be talking about next year." Maybe it's a trend-setter, or maybe it's just a megaphone for gentle tickles of trends that are already in motion, but the point remains: GDC tends to be pretty indicative of where we're at. People often view E3 in that light, but the fact is, it's a dinosaur wreathed in fireworks, frilly undergarments, and little else. E3 is a projection. GDC has evolved into its opposite: introspection. We look inward, and then we discuss. And this year - thanks to things like the renewed prominence of PC gaming, a focus on indies, and the #1ReasonToBe talk - I came away quite optimistic. That warm feeling does not, however, come without some rather glaring caveats. Same-y looking "next-gen" games. The IGDA's insulting use of scantily clad dancers. A worrisome gulf between triple-A and indie. For each positive, there was an ugly negative.
This year's GDC in one word? Contradiction.
]]>Tonight EA lured us in to a darkened cinema, on the promise of news about the only-just-announced-even-though-everyone-knew-about-it-for-ages Battlefield 4. But while we knew it existed, we didn't know what it might contain. Um. Yeah, about that...
]]>On principle, I despise blink-and-you'll-miss-it brief, nearly information-free teasers. Unfortunately, they're also almost exclusively the chosen language of triple-A publishers these days - at least until they open the floodgates on enough footage to spoil the entire game a month before it comes out. I would, however, be remiss if I didn't mention that a) Battlefield 4 very clearly exists and b) year of the boat (the previously discussed year of the bow successor) sails ever onward, major franchises crashing against its monolithic hull like brittle kiddie pool waves. Watch both of the thus-far released (ugh, argh, grr, bleh) teasers after the break and pluck delicious, delicious proof from the pudding.
]]>EA's policy with sequelized franchises tends to mirror that of an over-excited puppy or me when I'm talking to anyone and an over-excited puppy prances into view: out of sight, out of mind. Servers quietly disappear, DLC dries up entirely, and empires (mostly of the sporting variety) crumble. DICE, however, swears the same fate won't befall Battlefield 3. It's going strong right now with Armored Kill, Aftermath, and Endgame still on the way, but apparently, their end won't signal the endgame of this game's endgame. Endgame!
]]>Just in case you thought I was pulling your leg/was a gullible tool when we posted about the apparent leak of Battlefield 4, EA have stopped pretending it didn't happen and officially 'fessed up. They've confirmed that, yes, people who pre-order Medal of Honor: Man Who Fights Wars will get priority access to the beta of the next Battlefield, and that's scheduled for 'Fall 2013.' Which I'd be willing to guess suggests a release date of October or November 2013, as has been EA and Activision manshoot tradition for many years now. But I might be wrong. I often am. Why, I was wrong about something only yesterday.
]]>That is a picture of my face at the precise moment I first read that there was probably going to be a sequel to a first-person shooter that sold millions of copies.
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