TheGameshark
Member
BC2 is the best overall battlefield game, but it's probably dead community wise on console. Best option atm for MP would probably be BF4.
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I Love Battlefield 1: Which Battlefield Should I Get Next?
- Thread starter Kevin Shields
- Start date
I have so many issues with BF1, but it is the Battlefield game I have played far and ahead more than any other in the series, so I have no idea how I would rank anything.
BF1 is the best game to play alone, but Battlefield 1942 is the best to play with friends. BF4 is the one that is best at doing both at the same time, but it lacks the quality-of-life improvements from BF1 and lacks the sandbox magic of BF1942 (although it's certainly better at it than BF1).
BF1 is the best game to play alone, but Battlefield 1942 is the best to play with friends. BF4 is the one that is best at doing both at the same time, but it lacks the quality-of-life improvements from BF1 and lacks the sandbox magic of BF1942 (although it's certainly better at it than BF1).
Kevin Shields
Member
Dr. Carroll
Banned
Battlefield: Hardline's campaign is excellent. I feel Hardline was an excellent game sabotaged by the Battlefield branding and shoe-horned in multiplayer that makes no sense within the narrative context of the game.
The game never refers to itself as "Battlefield", which is kinda telling. Every time you start/end and episode, it says, "Last/Next time on Hardline." Every instance is "Hardline", not "Battlefield: Hardline". The whole thing reeks, in my opinion, of Visceral making a police FPS with strong stealth elements and having EA jam the project into the Battlefield branding to sell more copies. The multiplayer simply doesn't fit. But they released the game using a brand with a fanbase that either doesn't care about singleplayer FPS games or actively resents them.
That said, good luck selling a semi-linear 7-8 hour singleplayer FPS game without an established brand to fall back on. That's the nature of the market, really. If they'd released the game as "HARDLINE", it probably would have sold Titanfall 2 numbers.
The game never refers to itself as "Battlefield", which is kinda telling. Every time you start/end and episode, it says, "Last/Next time on Hardline." Every instance is "Hardline", not "Battlefield: Hardline". The whole thing reeks, in my opinion, of Visceral making a police FPS with strong stealth elements and having EA jam the project into the Battlefield branding to sell more copies. The multiplayer simply doesn't fit. But they released the game using a brand with a fanbase that either doesn't care about singleplayer FPS games or actively resents them.
That said, good luck selling a semi-linear 7-8 hour singleplayer FPS game without an established brand to fall back on. That's the nature of the market, really. If they'd released the game as "HARDLINE", it probably would have sold Titanfall 2 numbers.
Dance Inferno
Unconfirmed Member
YES! Glad other people are realizing the glory that is Battlefield 1. Probably my favorite multiplayer shooter since Modern Warfare.
Kevin Shields
Member
Is this a common thought? I wouldn't mind a good sp and Battlefield multiplayer even if it's not best.
I'm gonna pull trigger on Battlefield 4 or Hardline.
P.S. the desert war story in BF1 was pretty fun.
Hip Hop
Member
Nothing.
I think going back is going backwards.
BF3- BF4 - Hardline weren't that good to me. And it was like playing the same game three times in a row, so little changed between them that you could hardly see a difference.
Battlefield 1 is the biggest change the series has seen in years, and for the better.
I'd say get Battlefront Bad Company 2 as it's my favorite in the series, but it hasn't held up well. Too old.
I think going back is going backwards.
BF3- BF4 - Hardline weren't that good to me. And it was like playing the same game three times in a row, so little changed between them that you could hardly see a difference.
Battlefield 1 is the biggest change the series has seen in years, and for the better.
I'd say get Battlefront Bad Company 2 as it's my favorite in the series, but it hasn't held up well. Too old.
The Faceless Master
Member
1943
Go with BF4.
Hardline's story is weak and it's multiplayer is a rehash of 4. Although BF4's story is practically nonexistent, it's multiplayer is still probably the most complete military-themed FPS in the market.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
Battlefield 4's story is excellent. I don't see how you can call it "practically nonexistent". It's probably the best work Jesse Stern has ever done. Certainly better than Modern Warfare and Titanfall 2. The opening sequence and ending are some of the best executed thematic foreshadowing in the FPS genre. So far as stories about courage and sacrifice go, it's one of the best in the FPS genre. Irish is a particularly interesting character -- how he cares more about enemy civilians than his fellow troops -- and the amount of hate he gets is something I personally chalk up to racism.
However, Hardline is kinda like a GTA game, writing-wise. It lacks the sharp punch of BF4. It's more concerned with trying to be a cop show.
It does however, have much better game mechanics. Battlefield 4 is a fairly standard story-driven FPS. Hardline's stealth mechanics and freedom of approach make it special.
Kevin Shields
Member
So Hardline has great gunplay and mechanics and a decent story for single player... IS the multiplayer atrocious or is it pretty solid?
Dr. Carroll
Banned
Never played much of the MP, so I can't say, I'm afraid. Opinions vary because it's different to the traditional Battlefield experience.
Honestly, I'd just stick with it. Only other one with an active base is going to be 4.
I know BC2, 42, and 2 have some still slumming along, but it's mostly going be a few 100 hundred people at peak times. This is as someone who hits up 42 every now and then for old time sakes.
I know BC2, 42, and 2 have some still slumming along, but it's mostly going be a few 100 hundred people at peak times. This is as someone who hits up 42 every now and then for old time sakes.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
Yea, if an active MP population is a concern for you, BF4 is definitely your best bet.
This description of BF4's story is actually absurd to me. A bland story filled with endless military jargon that lacks any sort of interesting plot or threat, it has no escalation of narrative and the forced sacrifice at the end came out of nowhere and was completely irrelevant to the outcome of the story; it was all just an excuse to kill off the character that annoyed you the most. The writing and dialogue was abysmal, all the characters glance at you three times more than they should in real life (obviously to make the player feel important or something), and although BF3's story was nothing more than an off-brand Jack Ryan novel, it was far more interesting and better written and executed than BF4's plot.
As for Hardline, it actually started out pretty good, but I never finished it; it's gameplay got really boring by the Everglades level, and it's storyline had not advanced enough by that point to seem like it was going anywhere interesting. The stealth stuff was pretty decent, and it was interesting how that entire game engine was recycled for BF1's campaign (due to the severe time constraints the development of that game's campaign was).
iRAWRasaurus
Banned
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
BF3 CQC is really similar to BF1.Übermatik;244094068 said:
Jeff Freecss
Member
It's a shame that you don't have XB1,or you can just subscribe EA Access for one month and play all the previous entries.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
I don't think you understood Battlefield 4 at all. (Very sorry if that comes across as condescending or insulting. I don't mean it that way.)
China is on the brink of starting a war because they believe a beloved politician has been murdered. How is that not a threat? A game about US soldiers behind enemy lines in Chinese territory has military jargon? What a shock!
What? Escalation of narrative? Battlefield 4 has a fairly similar narrative flow to Behind Enemy Lines. The ending did not come out of nowhere. It was foreshadowed in the excellent in media res opening sequence. It's a game about personal sacrifice. Irish is a character willing to sacrifice anything for his moral convictions. You see how much he loves the Chinese people -- the enemy -- when he's willing to violate the chain of command to rescue them. Hannah loves her country, but her love is a more... ingrained one. She's a Chinese spy.
Battlefield 4's climax is when the Chinese board your ship, and just when they're about to burst through the door, Jin Jié steps forward to greet the soldiers, who lay down their weapons at the sight of him. This whole war you've been fighting has been meaningless. But so long as the larger Chinese army believes Jin Jié is dead, the war will continue. That's why the sacrifice you make at the end of Battlefield 4 is significant. (Maybe this plot point went over some player's heads?) The Chinese army is going to destroy a ship full of Chinese civilians, and the believed dead Presidential candidate of China. The fact there are US soldiers on that ship is completely incidental. Which character is going to lay down their life for China? Will it be the black American soldier? Or will it be the Chinese spy? Or will it be neither? Will you refuse to sacrifice your squad for a ship full of people who are, technically, your enemies?
In fact, yea, I think this plot point DID go over some people's heads because I remember people complaining that destroying one ship didn't mean anything. They seemingly didn't understand why you were protecting that ship in the first place. BF4 isn't about MURICA and all that rubbish. It's about China, and the Chinese people.
It's not the game's fault if you found the very well written and extremely nuanced Irish and Hannah "annoying".
Have you never played an FPS game with a silent protagonist before? Like, ever? Characters crowd around the protagonist and frame their conversations around them, often in order to show off the facial animation to its best. This is a genre convention established by the Half-Life series.
Battlefield 3's story was a pretty decent retread of/homage to BLACK, but it lacked Battlefield 4's tight pacing and superb opening and ending.
I think knew and understood the story of BF4, I simply forgot anything that happened in a previous level by the time the next one loaded. The story simply doesn't work. Yes, it is a somewhat unique story for an FPS campaign, but it lacks crucial elements that make it a story that grabs people. It's not that the story went over people's heads, but rather that it wasn't interesting or compelling enough to matter.
I remember the opening sequence, with the car and helicopter and crashing into the sea. I remember rescuing the President and escaping off the roof. I remember meeting the guy from BF3 in the prison and escaping. I remember the ship and the two guys that were stuck underneath the floor. The story has moments, but they are moments that don't connect into a compelling narrative. It sets up an interesting conspiracy in the beginning with the rescue, but the rest of the campaign is you going from random place to place until you return to the ship again and pick a partner to die.
But that's not a good story because none of the characters are interesting. The black guy is completely flavorless, and the Asian lady seemed like an unpleasant person to be around with. There was also another guy with a beanie or something but he was whiny a lot. Why should I care about any of this? It has nothing to do with country, the story would be weak even if you changed the Chinese to Americans.
Meanwhile, with BF3 I can remember the guy who had a dinosaur toy but was killed by the villains, and it was actually sad when it happened. I remember the guy trying to stop the bomb in Paris, and being surprised at the twist at the end of his level. The protagonist in BF3 had a personality and had a story that called for a satisfying resolution. I got no resolution from BF4's story, while I had hoped the BF3 DLC would continue the plot for BF3.
Not that BF3 has a good story or anything, but BF4's story was a major downgrade.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
It sounds to me like you prefer games with "likeable" characters? Irish and Hannah are both unpleasant people, but they have reasons to be unpleasant. Battlefield 4's ending is absolutely perfect, thematically. It ties directly back to the game's opening. BF3 had a fairly stereotypical "stop the bad guy" ending, wheras Battlefield 4's ending is about stalling the Chinese army long enough that they can become aware that the entire war is based on a lie. The Chinese aren't the bad guys here. There is no meaningful victory that can be wrung from this situation. Everything you did in the campaign was pointless from a certain perspective, except that if Jin Jié survives, there is hope. I really like game endings with a note of "nothing you did mattered, except to bring you to this moment". The ending of Terminator 3 was fantastic for this very reason -- everything that happened in Terminator 1 and 2 was completely pointless. All that matters is that John Connor survives.
However, I respect that Battlefield 4 wasn't your cup of tea. This style of storytelling isn't for everyone. I will say that Battlefield 4 really would have benefited from a fourth ending where you could take the bomb yourself. Recker as a character was undermined by being a silent protagonist with no real agency in the story.
Hidden One
Member
Is Bad Company 2 still active? If so get that one.
-Stranger-
Junior Member
Anyone know if BF1943 is still active on 360?
not really. if you go back more than one battlefield there wont be many people playing. I would love a 1943 remake though.... or give us bad company 3.
Kevin Shields
Member
A remaster with all the old games would be superb for console owners. I think I'm gonna go Battlefield 4 to complement BF1 but I kind of want to take a break with it until tsar dlc comes out. Interested to judge single player as I've heard wildly different judgments about it.
iRAWRasaurus
Banned
I really want the next bf game to be set during ww2.
Markitron
Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
Tbh I thought it was just a glorified tutorial for the MP (which I suppose is the point), and it felt like half of it was stealth missions. Having smaller stories was a great idea but it just didn't deliver. There was one bit where I'm supposed to be desperately looking for my brother but I have to stop and capture a control point . Another level had you literally running back and forth either end of the map - it was just ridiculous.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
Battlefield 1 is a good demonstration of why allowing MP design tropes to bleed into singleplayer games is a bad idea. It felt so supremely inorganic to be driving your tank around and then have to "capture" a town by sitting on it. I have no idea what they were thinking.
It was a small step in the right direction.
The problem with BF1's single player was that it was a different videogame from the multiplayer game. Everything from how flying and repairing works, to how spotting works, to an entire stealth mechanic absent from multiplayer; the BF1 single player seems to be based on Hardline's single player engine instead of the multiplayer.
At it's core basic premise, it could have worked as a tutorial for the MP; but it completely fails at that when everything plays completely different and operates under completely different rules! For example, repairing a tank in SP is a completely different thing from MP, as in single player there is clear and useful differences in repair time between repairing inside a vehicle than outside (unlike in MP where it's almost identical, if it isn't identical); and the guys with the flamethrower get defeated in a very different matter from multiplayer, with in singleplayer they having clear weak spots but in MP it's just a buffed up regular player character. That's not to mention the plane using an entirely different flight model in SP than in MP too, to being able to use binoculars in SP but entirely absent from MP.
I would love to see a single player campaign actually play like multiplayer Battlefield, but it seems the SP and MP sides of DICE have different ideas on how their game should play. If only DICE would implement bots so that one could play the multiplayer game in single player, it would work so much better; heck, the implementation of bots could fill up empty servers (just like in Rocket League), which would instantly fix a major problem plaguing the game (especially it's Operations mode), empty servers.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
SP as a tutorial for MP is a terrible idea. What works in MP games does not work in SP games. The reason why Hardline is an excellent campaign and BF1 a not excellent campaign is because Hardline makes no attempt to play like its bizarre, arguably shoe-horned in multiplayer. Hardline's SP is all about stealth and detective scanning and arresting people, plus odd homages to RE5 and Far Cry 1.
Call of Duty does the same thing. The campaign for Infinite Warfare branches out into stuff like non-regenerating health and limb damage. It's a completely different game to its multiplayer, and trying to shape the SP to please MP fans is really a bad idea IMO. What MP fans want is not conducive to good SP FPS game design. Keep the two completely separate, IMO. Different teams, different gameplay styles, and never the twain shall meet.
Call of Duty's practice of having it's SP be so different from it's MP is a major problem of the series, with many people buying the game just for MP and never touching the SP, and vice versa. Why should Battlefield have that same problem? I'm not a developer at Visceral or DICE, and I have no idea if Hardline originated as it's standalone title that got the Battlefield multiplayer tacked into the disc; but that is definitely not an example for future Battlefields to follow.
If someone buys a Battlefield game, the single player game should play like....well....Battlefield. The single player of Battlefield should have everything the multiplayer has, from it's sandbox nature to tons of vehicles to open map design to objective play and more; it shouldn't play like a linear CoD game or a stealth game.
BF3 and BF4's single player did not play like the multiplayer because they wanted to chase the CoD campaigns, all the way to it's basic linear mechanics and encounter design; this was a bad thing because not only did it not play like anything Battlefield (you bought a Battlefield game, you should get a Battlefield game), if you wanted to play a map or game mode from multiplayer but there was no server running it, there was literally no way to play it.
I think the practice of making a single player game that is an entirely different product from the multiplayer is a very bad idea, a waste of resources, and an easy flaw for people to notice.
