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Battlefield 1 Review: DICE Create Their Best Ever With Impressive Take On WWI

Battlefield is a franchise that has always impressed me immensely. It's focus on huge scale online matches and utterly breathtaking graphical capabilities are impossible to not get something out of. That being said, there is something incomprehensible about it to me. It is the only first person shooter I feel genuinely terrible at, it's scale and pace of combat feeling incredibly off with my own sensibilities (more on that later). Add that alongside the mostly forgetable campaigns, and the series has just never stuck with me like it has its hardcore fans.

Battlefield 1 goes a long way to fixing these concerns. The game, which takes the series all the way back to WWI, is a true delight for the most part, and is one of the real surprises of the year.

Where better to start here than the game's hugest improvement? The campaign, or rather campaigns are excellent. The game is broken into 5 different distinct stories, all providing a snapshot for different goings on in the war to end all wars. This will take you from storming enemy lines in an unreliable tank, to nightmarish battlescapes in the Alps, to fighting alongside the fabled Lawrence in the Arabian deserts. What is so good about this is it really telegraphs the sense of scale of this War. It tries to really show just how big this conflict was. While the lack of a through-line story with just one character might hurt the dramatic beats a little, this scale of destruction is so powerful and gives so much information, this seems a great way to tell the story of this war in one place. It's certainly a better way then just focusing on one small pocket, or shoehorning one character a reason to go globetrotting.

I think the true reason this works so well though is because of the game's great tone approach to dealing with one of the biggest, most brutal act of human violence in our history. Despite the horrors of the conflict, it's often a little forgotten compared to the cataclysmic WWII. This is why Battlefield 1 works. It shows us these stories, these emerging technologies and the sheer vastness of the conflict. The stories each hit different beats, running a gamut of emotions from optimism, to sadness, to triumph, to adventure, to horror. While each story contains bits that seem unrealistic or embellished, this is why I like that they are called War Stories. These could be the fanciful retellings from the people who walked out the war and survived. While it might be ludicrous to see a man jump off the top of a zeppelin above Big Ben into the Thames and survive, these feel like the stories a great grandparent might tell you from their time in the war. Of course, the game glosses over a lot of the difficult subject matter, with even the sadder and more horrific moments lacking the weighty impact they perhaps should, but it doesn't feel disrespectful or misrepresentative. This is a collection of inspiring short stories from the conflict that actually tries to educate and entertain players with one of the most important historical periods in human history.

I would like to take a moment to point out the prologue of the game, which while short, comes together to create something really special. It's exhilerating and horrifying in equal measure, really hammering home some of the hopelessness these men experienced. As you are slaughtered and jump to another person to then only die again in a hopeless situation, it is a really beautiful bit of design tthat informs an emotional point. It's stellar work.

Another thing that is so important to point out here, is just how utterly breathtaking this game looks. This could be one of the best looking games ever put to disc. That sentence rang true in my assessment of Star Wars: Battlefront last year, and it is absolutely the case with DICE's newest. The studio, in my opinion, makes the most impressive looking AAA video games out there, and it utterly sings in Battlefield 1. I don't believe this is entirely down to pure processing power either. This comes in the art design with shining vistas, a pitch-perfect lighting system and the studio's use of colour to really punch emotions despite grounding the visual in the real world, all help to build the visual palette. When it comes to a powerhouse of impressive visuals, DICE have cemented themselves as king for now.

These graphics, quite astonishingly, transfer over to the multiplayer aspect of the game where the scale of battle only seems to get bigger. A lot of the maps are huge, as has been the case for many Battlefields, with planes, tanks and even horses littering the landscape as you fight against the enemy team. This is only helped by the bigger vehicles that are often trotted in throughout the games, such as an unstoppable Train, a dreadnaught battleship or even a massive zeppelin.There really is nothing in multiplayer gaming quite like seeing a burning behemoth blimp falling out of the sky and landing on a map, its remains laying where they fall. The sheer spectacle on display in an online match is in a league of its own..

… at least until you get into the flow of a match. Now, this is the part I have to be careful with here. As stated previously, Battlefield's multiplayer has never invited me in or caught as much as I've wanted it too. It's pace seems 'off' to me, with matches lasting huge 30 to 40 minute runs. This is compounded by the fact that if you aren't in tune with the playstyle, it can be an incredibly torrid time. With the maps so large, there is a lot of movement and running to be doing, and if you get yourself into a precarious situation, you will almost certainly die, and have to take quite some time waiting to respawn and geting back into position. It's a style of play that can be incredibly hard to penetrate for newcomers.

Now, of course, it should go without saying, this is an opinion expressed from my own experience with the series in which I struggle to compete in. If you love Battlefield's multiplayer, 1's will scratch that itch. In fact, for me, it feels like a beautiful iteration of it, especially with the gorgeous maps on display here (my personal favourite taking place in and near a decadent palace.) On top of that, despite being set nearly 100 years ago, DICE have done well to keep the action fun and rewarding. The guns feel as responsive to use as anything in any other current FPS series, so if you were worried about the 'history' getting in the way, you shouldn't be. While I could never get on with the series, and Battlefield 1 hasn't quite converted me, it's impossible to deny how impressive this experience is. Even if I can't compete, seeing the detail and scale of battle is more than enough to really make you appreciate the prowess on display.

Battlefield 1 is probably DICE's most impressive achievements to date. While last year they laid a lot of multiplayer groundwork with Star Wars: Battlefront, the developer's latest effort takes everything that was spectacular about that game's multiplayer and adds a really well done campaign on top of it. While there might have been some worries that this could be and exploitative game, making fun out of one of the worst wars of all time, DICE have straddled a nice line here that helps highlight several pockets of this globe spanning conflict. While it can shy away from the consequences and heavy material, it still feels respectful and lovingly done. While the multiplayer can be impenetrable and hard to jive with at times, and I wish some of the stories more emotional moments had a greater impact, it doesn't take away too much from what is an undeniably eye catching experience.

Buy it if: You want a spectacular war game, that is both impressive with its scale and visuals

Avoid it if: You don't get on with Battlefield's multiplayer, or you are a real stickler for historical accuracy.

Score: 8.7/10

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