Not so long ago, news spread that Activision was not at all afraid of Battlefield 6 and was confident in the success of Black Ops 7. The greedy company explained its position by saying that the Call of Duty series is "too big to fail." Those who have not played the Battlefield 6 beta gnashed their teeth at such arrogance, but those who did get to evaluate the new shooter from EA simply laughed.
Activision amused people not only with its attitude towards the competitor, but also towards Call of Duty fans. The company did not say that it would do everything possible to prevent the game from failing – focus on content, listen to the community more actively – but simply voiced its sincere confidence that CoD fans have been trained over the years to buy anything with the phrase Call of Duty on the cover.
Having played the Battlefield 6 beta, we can say with a clear conscience that this year Call of Duty will have to try very hard to keep fans.
EA definitely took into account the sad experience of Battlefield 2042, and seems to have done everything possible to help Battlefield 6 forget about this terrible nightmare for the "Batla" fan.
The first thing that immediately caught my eye in the new shooter was the truly impressive level of chaos and destruction that players will be able to create during matches. Everything around explodes, collapses, burns. Bullets whistle overhead, comrades shout (and not only in voice chat!), asking where the medic has gone, and why the assault troops cannot blow up the nasty enemy tank that prevents them from breaking through to the enemy fortifications.
Only after a while you realize that the tank would have exploded long ago if not for the enemy engineer who promptly repairs it, and the medic from your team came straight from Call of Duty, and is not used to working in a team.
It is from such little things that each Battlefield 6 match is made up of. The shooter requires teamwork and coordinated work even in simple modes, in which two teams simply try to get as many frags as possible, and you can not even talk about the others... But we will still say.
Modes for capturing and holding points on large maps very well emphasize the importance of each of the four classes presented in Battlefield 6. Yes, EA decided to abandon the stupid operatives who joked, grimaced and behaved as if they had gone to a barbecue with friends, and not gone to participate in hostilities. Classes are not limited by the choice of weapons, but receive various bonuses if they use the most suitable ones. No one forbids arming a medic, say, with a sniper rifle, but the healer will not receive a passive bonus in the form of the ability to hold his breath longer when aiming, as a scout can do.
In addition to bonuses for handling certain weapons, each class has other features: the same engineer receives less damage from explosions, and the sniper automatically marks opponents for teammates. Along with passive abilities, there are also active ones, such as a UAV for a sniper or a super-powerful burner for an engineer, allowing him to repair armored vehicles simply lightning fast.
The beauty of classes is that you can be extremely useful to the team, even if you are not very good at aiming. During the beta, a video spread across the network in which a player in the role of a medic pretended to be Desmond Doss from Mel Gibson's film "Hacksaw Ridge", and simply saved wounded comrades, completely ignoring opponents.
By the way, about saving wounded comrades. In previous Battlefield games, comrades who fell in battle writhed helplessly in pain and screamed under a hail of bullets, making their rescue often impossible. However, in the sixth part, the wounded can now be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged to a safer place. The mechanics make saving comrades truly cinematic and, to some extent, spectacular.
Although Battlefield 6 as a whole now looks like a really good replacement for Call of Duty, there are still some complaints about the game. Weapons feel too light and insanely accurate. Even heavy machine guns have almost no recoil, and high shooting accuracy allows you to accurately water enemies with lead, even shooting from the hip.
Battlefield defenders on social networks explained this by the fact that in the chaos of what is happening, it is sometimes very difficult to try to control the recoil of your machine gun, but this is such an explanation, given that even in Battlefield 2042 after several patches, different weapons began to behave differently. Coupled with the reduced TTK (time to kill – the time it takes to kill an enemy), the firefights become similar to playing airsoft. A couple of hits from a submachine gun – and you are lying on the ground waiting for a medic.
I also want to grumble a little because of the size of the maps. The locations presented in the beta were relatively small, which reduced the feeling of the scale of the battles that unfolded on them. But this nit-picking is more like harmfulness, given that there will be many more maps in the game at release. And the developers themselves have already stated that "smaller" maps were specially selected for the beta.
Analysis
Is it worth pre-ordering Battlefield 6? Definitely worth it. Does the game have a chance against Black Ops 7? Undoubtedly. Here, rather, Activision's creation has almost no chance.
EA listened to the community and made a game in which Battlefield fans can poke the faces of Call of Duty fans – at least for the next few years, until Activision comes to its senses. This is a really cool and very atmospheric military shooter, in which there are no idiotic skins with American Dad or Nicki Minaj, but there is just cosmic potential.
Will they use it? We'll find out this October.
