Firestorm, the game’s individualistic take on a battle royale mode, won’t be playable until March 2019.Īdmittedly, there’s still plenty to get your teeth into in the meantime. Tides of War – the game’s most ambitious multiplayer mode, which sets players in an ebbing and flowing campaign taking in new locations like Greece – won’t start to arrive until December 6. But the most potentially controversial chapter, revolving around a German tank commander, won’t be available until after launch – and sadly, it isn’t the only chunk of Battlefield V which will be missing for early adopters. The War Stories are fun and fascinatingly educational, while providing tastes of the multiplayer modes, even if they suffer from rather dumb AI, which the game attempts to mask by throwing up vast numbers of enemies. A third veers towards La Haine territory, as you play a French North African volunteer involved in the post-D-Day drive to reclaim France – while facing overt racism from the very soldiers you’re assisting. Another casts players as a teenage Norwegian girl who has joined the resistance, with a very Scandi-noir vibe. They’re impressively cinematic, too – a North African one, in which you play a recruited-from-prison initiate in the newly formed Special Boat Squadron, is pure Guy Ritchie. These chapters have a pleasingly open-world feel to them – after linear periods, they set a number of objectives which you can approach however you want, from employing stealth to taking a more in-your-face approach. Instead of shoehorning in an overarching narrative arc, players are given a set of War Stories – self-contained chapters that delve into some of the least well-known corners of World War II, and attempt to bust some myths along the way. Stuff like this can be funny, but the same can't be said for all of the bugs we encountered.The standout multiplayer mode at launch is Grand Operations.īattlefield V’s single player wisely sticks to the blueprint established by last year’s Battlefield 1. There is one common bug where mounted weapons will disappear, but soldiers can still 'shoot' them, so it looks like bullets are flying out of their outstretched arms. However, the vast majority of these bugs were not game-breaking, and some were even amusing. In our time with the game, we ran into a technical issue or weird glitch of some kind in nearly every match. Some of this content will be available within the next few weeks, but in the case of Firestorm, players have to wait until March 2019 to try it out.īesides the notably absent content, Battlefield V also comes across as somewhat unfinished due excessive bugs.

The menus are dotted with game modes that won't be available until later on, like Tides of War, co-op, a fourth War Story single-player campaign mission, and of course, the Firestorm battle royale mode. First and foremost, Battlefield V is a little light on content out of the gate, and at times feels unfinished.

Battlefield v review