Battlefield Memories

A few weeks ago, I purchased Battlefield 6. It’s the first Battlefield game I’ve purchased since Battlefield 1 (although I have played the others), and I am enjoying my time with it thus far. I will say, I still prefer Battlefield 1, but it’s a very solid game that needs some tweaking.

There are plenty of places to go online to read Battlefield 6 reviews and impressions, so that’s not what this post is about. Instead, I wanted to talk a little about my history with Battlefield.

I wanted to play the original Battlefield and Battlefield Vietnam, but I didn’t have a PC that could run those games. Instead, my introduction to the series was 2005’s Battlefield 2: Modern Combat on the original Xbox. Next to Star Wars Battlefront 2, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat was an eye-opening experience for online game play. The graphics were cutting edge and the sound design was unmatched at that time. Call of Duty was still making World War II games, and this felt so incredibly refreshing.

I was working at GameStop at the time of release, and after popping the Xbox 360 disc in to see the graphic upgrade, I immediately bought an Xbox 360 so I could play Battlefield 2: Modern Combat at the highest possible level.

Oddly enough, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat had no connection to Battlefield 2 on PC. In fact, there was no Battlefield: Modern Combat, they simply titled the game Battlefield 2: Modern Combat to try and loosely connect it to the PC game, despite it being an entirely different experience.

In 2008, Battlefield: Bad Company made its debut on the Xbox 360 and PS3, and with it came an almost light-hearted war story, and fully destructible environments. I was skeptical of the somewhat goofy storyline, but it really worked, and seeing buildings crumble when blown up was something to behold. It really separated the game from other shooters of the era.

Surprisingly, one of the Battlefield games I played the most was Battlefield 1943, released in 2009. This stripped down Xbox Live Arcade title (it was released on PS3 as well) featured only three classes and four maps. It was made with the Frostbite engine, so it featured destructible environments, but the game was basically Battlefield lite.

I appreciated the limited options, and found twenty-four person maps to be exciting to play. It was fun to start on ships or jumping into airplanes to make it to Wake Island or Guadalcanal, and me and a co-worker of mine spent countless hours late at night playing this discounted title. The servers were finally shut down in late 2023, but I would still boot it up every now and again, although finding a game became increasingly difficult over the years.

In 2010, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was released, and they upped both the ability to destroy objects and the storyline. The humor was dialed back a little and the gameplay intensity increased. Unfortunately for Battlefield, this was also the time that Call of Duty was in its prime, so it got less and less play from me as I played Call of Duty most of the time.

Most folks point to 2011-2015 as Battlefield’s prime. Battlefield 3 and 4 came onto the scene and dropped the Bad Company storyline and instead focused on intense gameplay on massive maps. Hardline was also released, a sort of police spinoff, which I really enjoyed. In fact, I played it just as much as Battlefield 3 and 4, which might surprise some folks. I enjoyed all of these games, and I definitely logged the hours, but this was also the same time Call of Duty Black Ops II was released and each year Call of Duty was upping their game. So, I split my time between the two franchises, but since most of my friends played Call of Duty, that’s what I ended up playing the most.

After Call of Duty Advanced Warfare in 2014, I was pretty much done with the franchise. I was burned out on the yearly releases and I disliked 2013’s Ghosts, and although I purchased Black Ops III, it just wasn’t the same. It also didn’t help that the group I played with had moved onto other things, and so I thought my time playing online first-person shooters had come to an end. But then Battlefield One was announced… a World War I Battlefield. Both Battlefield and Call of Duty originated as World War II shooters, but had since embraced modern warfare (and even into the future for Call of Duty), so this suddenly shift to the past tickled my history loving bone and I bought the game day one. It was one of the best video game purchases I made.

For the past nine years, I’ve played Battlefield 1 countless hours. It’s one of those games I can boot up at any given time and enjoy. I love the balance of the maps, the music, and the gun play. It’s nice to see things zeppelins being used in battle and as much as I enjoyed Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, 1943, and Bad Company, Battlefield 1 is my favorite Battlefield game.

This brings us to Battlefield 6. EA spent a lot of time and money to try and compete with Call of Duty, and sadly, this meant making Battlefield a bit more Call of Duty like. The gameplay is faster and deaths come quicker, and while it’s hard not to be impressed by the visuals on Battlefield 6, the gameplay seems to be just a little off. I wish EA would have worried less about stealing players from Call of Duty, and focused more on making a game that represents the best of what Battlefield has to offer.

With that being said, I’m still enjoying my time playing Battlefield 6, but I don’t pick it up exclusively, and I don’t quite get the same charge I got from older titles. In fact, when I get done playing, often, I feel like booting up Call of Duty, because the fast-twitch gameplay works better on smaller, tighter maps than the larger maps Battlefield has.

I think the one thing I wish the most is that DICE take this engine and make a Star Wars Battlefront III. I don’t see it happening, but I love the Battlefront series (basically Battlefield but in Star Wars) and I’d love to see how amazing it would look with modern console graphics.