For a game that was released back in November of 2018, DICE has seemingly done little to improve it. It is, without a doubt, a pile of flaming garbage. I didn’t even have time to get around to the multiplayer, I was infuriated by every single design decision in the single player titled “War Stories”. When the CGI videos are far better than any of the content the player does in the campaign, you know you done fucked up. The game’s executive producer, Aleksander Grondal, wrote on Twitter that they would “always put fun over authentic” which is a load of bullshit. There is little to no fun to be had shooting bullet sponge enemies in the single player campaign. In fact, DICE has made a mockery of the events of World War II. I’m sure many of their ancestors are rolling over in their graves for this, lack of a better word, injustice to real events.
The game also commits the cardinal sin of thrusting you into the middle of a prologue without letting you adjust settings first. Yes, let’s overheat my PC while I wait roughly 10 minutes or so before I can adjust settings. First you should let a player come to the main menu and if they want to, let them play the prologue. Not force them into a mini-campaign they have no want to play. Clearly, whoever came up with that idea lacks the mental fortitude to think critically. I’m surprised they have a job designing. But it’s EA, they’ll throw money at anyone.
Many of the missions revolve around stealth. You’d think with the years of creating single player campaigns, that they would have the experience and technical know-how to create an immersive and fun atmosphere. Well, you’d be wrong. They are clearly a small indie company. Enemies take anywhere from 2-10 bullets to die. Shoot them in the head with a pistol takes two, even if you shoot them in the face. Flamethrower users take at least 8-12 bullets to kill, even though they have no extra armor. Same with officers, they don’t have armor and yet, take several shots to drop. Oh, I mentioned stealth, well if you shoot someone, even with a suppressed weapon, and you happen to be several hundred meters away, every enemy in the vicinity immediately becomes aware of your position, and proceeds to light you up with near perfect accuracy. Fun, right?
Each mission has a goal, and hidden collectibles within – called letters – and as well as challenges to complete. Sometimes those challenges are to complete the mission without being detected, but with the aforementioned problems, even if you reload a checkpoint when being discovered, you’ll have to restart the entire mission because it’ll still count as you being found. There’s also alarms which the enemy can activate that’ll draw in enemy reinforcements. You can get close and disable it with a command, or you can shoot it. But wait, not all guns are strong enough to do so. Shooting it with a sniper rifle doesn’t work half the time. Gotta get closer. Oh wait, what about stealth – doesn’t matter anymore, you’re being shot at by the omniscient enemies.
Oh, there’s also vehicles. Like a plane, for instance. But the mouse and keyboard default controls borderline on unusable which again leads me to think that the designer responsible lacks a brain. Bunch of monkeys mashing the keys it seems like.
Overall, even though I got it on sale for 6 bucks, I regret purchasing it. That money would have been better spent on laxatives, and I would have had more fun than the several hours I spent playing this. And judging by the beta for their newest game in the battlefield series, the last thing DICE cares about is having fun and they just want your money. It would be better if nobody ever bought their games again, and forced them to really consider making a proper game with fundamentals that aren’t broken, and you know, a proper campaign like they did once, long ago, with Bad Company 2.
Bogdan's Review Blog 