While E3 seems like a lifetime ago, (it's actually been barely a week...) there are still one or two previews that I have for you guys that I think you will want know about. While running around the showroom floor I got to take just a little bit of time out to get hands on with Battlefield 4. One of the big moments of EA's press conference was when they lifted the curtain to reveal 64 player multiplayer. It was a clever reveal, only surpassed by the gameplay footage that Dice demoed on stage. While it was nothing truly revolutionary for the series, essentially looking and playing like previous iterations in the franchise, it did have the plus of focusing on air, water and land combat, all playing an important part in the victory. Oh yeah, and it had a building falling down. That was pretty hard to miss (...foreshadowing joke) It was an impressive blockbuster moment that we seldom see, usually reserved for singleplayer campaigns. I was anxious to see how it played out in a multiplayer space. I can report back that my experience was a little mixed. Let me start off by saying that the Battlefield multiplayer never caught my imagination. All the elements have always been there but is not one that has ever 'popped' as a whole. That is an important distinction to make because what I played felt pretty much like a worthy extension of previous multiplayer experiences. The most impressive thing about my time with the game is that it is everything that they promised in their press conference. The scale of the thing is just massive. That is nothing new to previous Battlefield players but 64 player, vehicular warfare across a cityscape is pretty overwhelming. Running through the empty streets, hearing battles going on in the distance, being able to go to the top of a building while planes, tanks, boats and jeeps trundle around supported by droves of online players is everything we used to dream of back in the multiplayer days of Quake and Goldeneye. This is multiplayer for the type of players who like scale, destruction and variety. But, for me anyhow, therein lies lies the problem. Remember how I said the scale of the multiplayer was overwhelming? I didn't necessarily mean that in a good way. The sheer scope of the game is pretty monstrous and you truly are just a pawn in grand scheme of battle and the setting. In my experience bigger doesn't necessarily mean better and that is true here. There was more than a few times I was left feeling a little lost in the map, not knowing exactly what check point should be crucial to my team's objective. This was something that was supposed to be alleviated by the introduction of the Commander on the tablet, but in all honesty, I either couldn't hear, couldn't see or couldn't get to the orders that were laid down. Once this all comes together and there is familiarity with the formula I am sure these issues could become easier to deal with, however as it was, it is an overload of scale and information making my tactical approaches confused and mismanaged.
Oh, and just to illustrate my point about the multiplayer's massive size, the center piece of the demo at the press conference was the building falling down. It was a moment that is far bigger than what we have come to expect from muatchmaking. However, it is an event I totally missed. I didn't realise until well afterwards that the building had actually fallen because I was in another portion of the map with buildings surrounding me. The map became more dusty, which is a nice touch, but there were few indicators that such a dramatic moment had occured. That is not a good or bad thing overtly and it brings the question back down to your preference of scale. Do you want to play in a map where such a massive event can happen and you not notice or does that make you think the experience is too big? That is something for you to decide. It is important to note that the game will almost certainly ship with much smaller maps for matchmaking that are a little more intimate, but I am just reporting on my play experience at E3. Like I have already conceded, these are issues that will be solved with time as a player comes to understand the mechanics of the game. The multiplayer is still largely the same experience as before just...well larger. Graphically the game excels and the sound design is particularly stupendous, but it has done nothing to pull me away from the titles that I play online, if I ever do at all. Dice have put together a great military shooter experience that will please fans of the series a plenty. I am just not sure it is going to win over a massive portion of the Call of Duty fans that franchise desperately wants.