Battlefield 5 – 2 Minute Review

Charging towards a known-enemy location after being killed and re-spawned numerous times, while dodging tank fire that’s tearing apart the building you’re making your way through is as exhilarating and enjoyable as it’s ever been. Thankfully, Battlefield 5 knows exactly what it’s fans expect; and gives them that and a whole lot more with this latest instalment, but there’s no denying that something seems ‘missing’.

The core moment-to-moment mechanics all remain the same, delivering the most polished gunplay the series has ever seen, but a few changes have been made to the set-up, including a fortification building element, whereby players with toolkits can add sandbags, camouflage netting and even gun emplacements to certain areas of the map. In this way, players can fortify a flag or other objective to harden it against the enemy.

As for modes, Conquest and other traditional match types are available, but Grand Operations (which was introduced in BF1 and has players moving from map to map in different scenarios) has seen a slight change; adding in a climactic round called ‘Final Stand’ that arms players with only their default weapon, limited ammo, and no respawns.

It’s good to note that a number of Battlefield 5‘s buzzed-about new modes (the evolving ‘Tides of War’, battle royale mode ‘Firestorm’, and four-player cooperative ‘Combined Arms’ mode) are all only launching in December and into 2019. And that’s not to say they’re not going to be great, just know that if you pick up Battlefield 5 around Christmas, most of those are still unplayable until a later time.

But, while most will pick up BF5 for the expansive multiplayer (as is always the case), there’s actually a really enjoyable single-player campaign to indulge in, cleverly exploring some war stories from the Special Boat Service in Northern Africa, the Norwegian resistance, and the Senegalese Tirailleurs, rather than retreading the ‘usual’ fair of WWII scenarios. It keeps things interesting and gives players some new terrain and environments to enjoy during the short but sweet campaign.

Battlefield 5 rests of its fast, frantic action that has made the series so beloved, but paying close attention to the hooks of why people love the game, adding in some new twists that make this entry a surging step forward for the series. We’ll just have to wait and see how the new modes evolve with the community, but there’s no doubt that EA and DICE have injected enough of a foundation to make Battlefield 5 to go-to for the foreseeable future.

Battlefield 5 is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC now.