We’re well in to the season of big hitters coming out, and today we’re taking a look at one of them!
Battlefield V
Battlefield V is out, sort of… If you have Origin Premium, you can play the Deluxe version as much as you want, if you have the standard Origin Access you can play the 10 hour trial and I think depending on what retail version you’ve bought you can also play. I have signed up for Origin Premium for the month, mostly to get hands on with BFV but also because there are a few other games I wouldn’t mind trying out.
I do find all these different ways of playing it a little odd, and to me it seems a bit unfair that people who buy the game i.e. the standard version, are the last ones to get to play it. I like that you have a lot of options to get to try the game, but it just seems backwards that people who want to support the game directly are left behind whilst people who want to try it get instant access.
I think I’m up to about 10 hours in game at the moment and all of that has been spent playing multiplayer. I have to say that it’s a lot of fun. When it works.
Battlefield V takes us back to WW2 and in to large scale battles with vehicles and explosions aplenty. I never really got to in to BF1, there was just something about it that didn’t quite click with me, but I already feel a lot more ‘at home’ with this game. To me it feels a bit more like the older Battlefield games.
Visually it looks incredible and the sound design is also excellent – something I always fully expect from a Battlefield game. But the problem is, is there are lots of bugs and I don’t mean little glitches here and there. I mean full on game breaking bugs that I’ve encountered a lot. I fully expect them all to get sorted fairly quickly but it doesn’t make it any less annoying.
I’ll just give you a quick run through of a few of them. Not being able to spawn at all in some games. Spawning but the map image overlay staying on your screen so you can’t see anything. Accessing any in game menus causing the screen to freeze so you then can’t spawn. Various animation bugs including mounted weapons on vehicles not having any working animations, so the gun model doesn’t move at all when you do.
It’s honestly pretty damn annoying and something that simply shouldn’t exist with a game of this budget. I expect some bugs to slip there way through testing sometimes, it’s tough to catch them all. But these ones are so frequent that I and all my friends have had them multiple times. If I’d just spent £50+ on this game I’d be a little annoyed about it.
But like I said earlier I’m having a lot of fun playing it, and it does feel like a return to what made Battlefield great before – at least for me anyway. If you’re thinking about getting it, but aren’t 100% sure, definitely go for one of the trials – providing you’re on PC or Xbox, it’s the perfect way to see if you like the game.
The customisation has been toned way down too, which I was expecting, but there is still a lot to unlock and play around with. I haven’t tried any of the War Stories yet, so come back next week for a look at those!
Also, I just want to link this insane manouvre my friend pulled off in a plane. If you look closely, you’ll see this was his first kill in a plane…
The Blackout Club
Normally I’m not one for scary horror games, I tend to just get a bit too scared playing by myself. But there’s something about playing with others that makes it not quite so scary. The Blackout Club is a co-operative horror game where you play as teenagers investigating a dark secret beneath their town.
Up to 4 players can band together to explore procedural levels to try and uncover the truth in this town where everyone seems to be sleep walking during the night.
The game has a really nice visual style to it, and the gameplay is fun. I haven’t had time to play much of it yet and will be covering it in more detail when I’ve had the chance to really get stuck in, but first impressions are pretty good.
It’s tense and makes use of some interesting game mechanics – like being able to see your enemy only when you close your eyes. In fact the closing and opening of your eyes, whilst sounding like it’s not a big deal is actually quite nerve wracking as you’re always expecting a jump scare of some sort and it constantly puts you on edge.
XO18
If you missed the XO18 event from the weekend then you catch up on all the news from it here!
Personally I thought the show was ok, but nothing that special. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of news things to entice people to move over to Xbox. It seemed more like a show for people who already play on Xbox.
Probably the best thing from the show was Void Bastards. A very interesting looking FPS strategy indie game, with some beautiful comic book style visuals.
-Will
