I have been playing the Battlefield series since the very first one. I can’t even remember, off hand, whether that was Battlefield 1942 or Battlefield 1943, it’s been so damn long. The original was fun, but I remember it very distinctly being exactly the same game it’s always been: ineffective hand weapons fight against tanks and planes and stuff.

It’s been rehashed over and over again. Only the settings have changed. While there is some fair difference between the historic/future versions of the series and the more modern takes, which used to be enumerated 2, 3, and 4, but hey, don’t forget Bad Company 1 and 2. Those modern takes have more effective hand weapons, but are otherwise the same game, single player stuff aside.

Battlefield One was basically like the original 1942 version: you can just unload an entire clip into someone and it does nothing. Everyone ends up running around knifing each other all the time when they’re not in planes or tanks. Hell, the tanks and planes in BFOne were underpowered too.

Planes were over powered in the modern series… the 2, 3, 4 Bad Company…. this is confusing. I will call them the moderns. The historics will be One, 1942, 1943, Vietnam and 2142 for lack of anyplace else to put it. Anyway, tanks and planes were over powered in Modern. And rightly so, the games are based on sneaking and laying on your belly, shooting people from a loooong way away and coordinating with your teams to take out high priority targets, like that jet that keeps raking the building with missiles.

The two sets of games have long been disparate in their feels, and I’ve generally preferred the historics because they were generally more forgiving and bouncy, Vietnam and 2142 aside.

One thing both sets of games have completely in common, always have, and always will, however, is their buginess. I don’t know what DICE puts in their coffee. Maybe they mistreat their employees, but their code has always been a shambles, from a user perspective. Maybe it’s actually beautiful and orderly, but from the outside, these games ALWAYS hard crash. I remember them hard locking my machines for years, and only recently have they relegated their fail states to just crashing to desktop without any error messages.

So, there’s your painting, your backdrop, the stage against which I will now cast light upon Battlefield V as the absolute best Battlefield DICE has yet produced.

Why Battlefield V rules

The Battlefield series has always walked a fine line between realize and tanks firing their main guns into doods faces, and doods walking away. Realism versus fun. This is an OLD debate in game development, and one that I think is best summed up by the phrase: Realism versus authenticity.

Battlefield V is enormously fun, but it is also tremendously punishing and unforgiving. This is because it is authentic. It is, by no means, realistic. WWII did not feature doods jumping into tanks, driving up to the front lines, unloading on everyone with the main gun then scooting back out of range to repair the thing from inside, all solo.

WWII did not feature miracle cures in needles that could take a wounded soldier from dead to on his feet and fighting in 5 seconds. WWII did not feature German troups using M1 Garands and interchangable bullet calibers in every ammo package. WWII did not feature V1 rockets on-demand. WWII soldiers could not put Bazookas in their pockets. WWII did not feature airplanes that could reload bombs in midair. WWII did not feature the ability to conjure soldiers from thin air because you placed a radio on the ground.

I could go on and on, but I will stop here. I’m making a point I will cash in on later.

These things exist in the game because they make it more fun. It’s fun to carry around 2 disposable anti-tank rockets and a machine gun so you can change between them if you happen upon a tank. It’s fun to call in a V1 strike and blow everyone to hell. And it’s way more fun to play with a squad and spawn back onto the field next to your buddies when you die, rather than having to find them on a confusing and chaotic battlefield.

Battlefield V effectively combines the strengths of both the modern and historic series into something that is fun, not just something that is realistic, or something that is just the same as it always was. This is a game where cover matters significantly, like in the modern games. But this is also a game where you really do need to zerg together and charge that hill, like the historics.

It’s also a game with incredible sound design. Shell casings rattle around inside tanks. Explosions rattle you, you can tell if you are being shot at by the ricochets.

And, oh, that deformable terrain! It’s incredible! With everyone acting as an engineer and as a medic, the gameplay is even more fun and forgiving, despite there being plenty of times when you’ll spawn in and immediately die because a building exploded around you. This game creates the most intense WWII battle feeling I’ve ever encountered.

Flanking is huge. Suppressing fire is important. Smoke is one of the most powerful tools. Great pilots will go 50 and 0 K/D ratios, and it’s still fun. I love this game. It takes about 20 hours to get into and understand everything and learn the maps, but that’s about par for a Battlefield game.

You have to find the flank, and as you try, shit’s blowing up all around you, you can’t see anything, sometimes you end up right on top of the enemy, sometimes, you take them by surprise, sometimes they take you. It’s great.

Why Dipshits Hate Battlefield V

Here’s why I wrote this post. I wanted to give thanks to DICE for a great game because the community seems to fucking hate them. I know, DICE is not good at communicating, and EA will squeeze a nickle until a booger comes out of Jefferson’s nose, but the hate here is COMPLETELY unfair. Game development is hard.

This game has 17 maps, now. 19, but 2 are disabled for some reason. It has a ton of weapons and content, and it allows you to play as just about any race/ethnicity, and a female or male gender.

That last part absolutely infuriates the community. IT’s upset about lack of new content, and I get that, but hey, this is plenty, I think. They could do more, but they won’t. They have to make money. Give it a rest.

As to the gender thing. OMFGWTFBBQ. Anyone complaining about this is such a fucking Internet neckbeard, no-dick, pussy-fearing low-life, sexist, knuckle-dragger I just cannot even begin to address their idiocy. Remember all those things they did to make the game fun instead of realistic? One of those things happens to be making more inclusive avatars.

Maybe it ruins the fun for some, but those folks need to go play Red Orchestra 2 and come back after they’ve had a taste of a realistic FPS shooter. It’s a fun game, but it’s also the kind of game where newbies are basically cannon fodder for months and months at a time…

Battlefield V is a great game. Ignore all the hate you find online. It’s tremendous fun, the best friends-with-friends Battlefield yet, and they’re selling a bundle that comes with a buncha unlockable stuff. I know, I hate microtransactions and all that stuff too, but this game is good, now. Maybe it wasn’t before, and I would have hated grinding all the stuff, but I am getting my $50 or $60 or whatever worth out of it, definitely. You will too, as long as your brain wasn’t removed and replaced with gamer gate spaghetti and shitballs.

Oh, and after all of this, I stopped playing when someone showed me Hell Let Loose. Wish it had female player models, though.