Posted in: Electronic Arts, Games, Video Games | Tagged: battlefield, Battlefield 6

We Broke Everything! Our Preview of Battlefield 6 Multiplayer

We played a ton of Battlefield 6 multiplayer with media and content creators, killing hundreds and breraking everything in sight with glee!

It's odd, being the age that I am, that I saw Limp Bizkit rise the first time around, and now I'm seeing the resurgence, as "Break Stuff" was front-and-center in the promotion for Battlefield 6 this week. We were in Los Angeles for that livestream presentation, where they crammed 400+ content creators and media into one giant online group party to play several versions of the game's multiplayer features. We crushed it, got crushed, destroyed, got destroyed, took W's and L's with some of the best to do it, and we wish we could go back for more. But for now, this is our preview take on everything we experienced over the course of two days of battles.

So let's break this down into a few items just to keep things simple. We'll talk about the Battlefield 6 multiplayer modes, the class system, the maps we saw, and the overall experience. We'll start with the Class system, which has made a return to this game, and got a ton of praise from people at the event immediately. The four classes are Assault, Engineer, Medic, and Recon, which all offer different modes of play. Assault felt like the standard grunt soldier class, where you're thrown into the woodchipper to move the battle forward. You've got a couple of key weapon choices with a grenade, as well as an adrenaline shot to make it easier to recover and get the drop on an enemy. The second is an Engineer, who is basically the kid with all the toys, as you can repair vehicles, carry a missile launcher, as well as an anti-air rocket and proximity mines that will take out vehicles or at least damage them a fair amount.

The third being the Medic was an interesting combination, as you have a machine gun for a weapon and smoke grenades to give cover, but you will have the ability to drag people to safety and heal them, as well as drop help regenerate health in players by being around and offering up supply packs for people to reload with immediately. The last on the list is Recon, who is basically a sniper who also points out all of the targets and helps detect primary targets that need to be taken out by any means possible.

Of the four, I had the most fun playing Engineer, as there's nothing more satisfying than shooting a rocket into someone's face for instant death. Medic also offered up a lot of fun just dropping supplies every time I respawned and giving players a second chance. Recon was okay being a sniper, but more often than not, we were fighting other snipers as opposed to having a real say in the combat. The one we played the least was Assault, because it's just not that appealing being first in with the goal of not dying, especially if your side happens to be losing. This class needs a little something extra to be more appealing to us, but that was just our experience as the other three offered up options that were way more fun to play with.

Moving into the Battlefield 6 maps, we got to play a small variety of options, which included Siege of Cairo, Empire State, Iberian Offense, and Liberation Peak. The most popular one by far was Empire State, as we were fighting on a giant map set in a Brooklyn neighborhood. It offered up a lot of cool options we hadn't seen in Battlefront in a long time, including multi-floor vantage points, several routes that could be created and broken in a heartbeat, and the ever-present fact that the Manhattan Bridge over the East River was in the background. Liberation Peak was probably the second most popular, or at least the one we had the most fun on outside of Empire State, as we were given a massive landscape that was a mix of rocky hills, a village in the crossfire, and a literal uphill fight for a base set at the highest point you could enter that didn't count as out-of-bounds.

Now that's not to say that Siege of Cairo and Iberian Offense were bad maps; they were comparatively great compared to a lot of maps we'd seen in the previous two titles, as Battlefield 6 has offered up some not-too-traditional options for what feels like your standard Middle East and ex-Soviet locations, respectively. That said, having played a ton of FPS titles in the past, there was a bit of a discussion that we've played so many bright and sandy desert maps in our years, that this one didn't offer too much that felt different beyond the destruction mechanics of the game.

Iberian Offense was also fun to play but it offered a lot of the sameness of a lot of Eastern European countries and it took a few rounds to really get used to the winding streets and options for every building, as it felt like you could not go down the same path twice and get to where you wanted to go. Of course, this is all being testestm, we don't know how the final design will look or if any changes will be made. They were all amazing, but they each had their own different levels of fun.

Vehicles in this game are a must-try, as they offer up something a little different for each map. I can't lie, rolling down the street in a tank, blasting buildings apart until they couldn't stand was an epic experience. It was also great having an Engineer essentially camp the back and continually repair us until there was just too much damage to fix. It really made tanks feel like they were worth something again, compared to Battlefield 2042, where it just felt like I was in a can waiting to be blown up in ten seconds. They also served as great transportation, as you could load multiple soldiers into one and just push your group into hostile territory with brute force, then unload and wreak more havoc. The rare chance we got a heli on any map was also fun as hell, but quickly killed as Engineers and ground tourettes were able to disable them in a sinch.

Getting to the multiplayer modes of Battlefield 6, we ran through three of them in rotating fashion throughout a two-day experience. We got to try out Rush, Conquest, and Breakthrough. Rush says it all as you're playing with two teams of eight players each, vying for control over the map in a very specific way, as attackers are trying to blow specific locations up while defenders are keeping them at bay. It offered up a quick way to get into the game, but if you got a team that has a few missing players or some other issues, it can leave you feeling stranded at times. Respawns are not infinite, as attackers only have so many. But once all the targets are destroyed, there's nothing left for defenders to do. I enjoyed this one at times, especially as a Medic. But it does feel that if you're not all at the top of your game, you can lose ground quickly and not recover.

Breakthrough was a fun one as the map is divided into rolling sectors. Attackers must take them over to move on and gain more respawns, while defenders must hold the line and keep them at bay at all costs until they are depleted. I loved the hell out of this mode, especially being an attacker, as there's always a glimmer of hope to take over the next location and keep the fight going. This is the mode where Assault makes the most sense to play with Medic being a close second. I will say there were times when the battle dragged out for over 30 minutes, and the attackers barely got the point to earn a boost, delaying what should have been a victory. At a certain point, you do get fatigued from holding the line.

Conquest, however, was the match of the event, as everyone wanted in on what is essentially the main Battlefield 6 experience. This is all-out warfare where you're trying to control six different points at any given time until one of the two teams' respawns are depleted. These maps were absolutely chaotic when this mode came around, as this is the Battlefield we've been wishing would come back since Battlefield 3. I can't even hold that opinion back on this preview, as this reminded me of the times I played the series, and it was great.

There is no predicting a winner, as I was on teams that were getting mauled and instantly came back to win it, while also being on teams that were dominant and could not hold it together. This feels like the most fun and the fairest of all the modes we played, as it just gives you the chance to be your best at whatever you choose to be and lay it all out there with a ton of people backing your every play. I cannot tell you how excited some of us were getting when we'd look up and see that a lobby for this mode was ready to play.

The last item to talk about before we get to the experience is the destruction in this game. For a moment, let's ignore Electronic Arts' hype about how "Battlefield does destruction" and just look at it objectively. There are so many games where a grenade goes off and nothing gets destroyed except you, and maybe the potted plant next to you. Battlefield 6 makes it so that everything you hit has destruction, and that comes with benefits and consequences. Often times we would find ourselves blowing up buildings to take out snipers, because it was easier than charging in. But things don't just collapse into a heap, there's levels of destruction.

We tested out blowing up a building as an engineer just for kicks using the rocket launcher. We hit the top floor and part of it was gone, but not all of it. It took several hits to wipe out the top floor and change the advantage. It took more to knock out the lower floor, and as we did it, the building changed to offer different lines of sight, entry points, and advantages for players who came across it. The map will constantly change based on destruction, but these are not cardboard buildings, nor are they made of titanium. Everything you choose to do or not to will affect how the game can go in that area. That was refreshing to have on a scope that many players might not appreciate as you're taking out enemies and trying not to get sniped.

Overall, the multiplayer experience for Battlefield 6 felt like a return to form, shaking off the past few games and really getting to what made Battlefield 3/4 epic in the first place. But we also recognize this is only a sample of the game, as we got nothing for single-player, nothing for the incoming Battle Royale mode, and other multiplayer options were left out of this event. So while we loved the experience, we also know there's an entire shelf of shoes that have yet to drop. For those looking to try it out, the Open Beta launches on August 7-8 for Early Access players, followed by a two-weekend run from August 9-10 and August 14-17. You can try this all out for yourself on EA Play and see what you think of the experience. Go break stuff!

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