3.5/5 ★ – WrathofBen's review of Battlefield 4.

Now THIS is the Battlefield game I truly feel nostalgic for. I got this game right when I got my original Xbox One in 2014, and immediately fell in love with the massive scale multiplayer. I must’ve spent hours playing this game, though I was never really any good. At some point, I started the story mode, got frustrated halfway through, and never touched the game much after that. Not sure what made it so frustrating, because the campaign wasn’t too difficult, even on Hard… anyway, let’s get into it. You play as Recker, part of Tombstone squad with Pac, Irish, and Dunn. When Dunn is lost in the first mission, the squad is put into your hands, as you navigate through a Chinese civil war, while also engaging in the Russian conflict from the last game. You are later joined by Hannah and work together to save the USS Valkyrie. That’s pretty much the best I got on a story summary. Like the last game, this game’s story is barebones, and honestly not that great. You never even take out the main villain, nor see his face. Chang is nowhere in this game. Your impact on the story feels worthless, honestly. For an FPS campaign, that’s not okay. That, and the huge plague of bugs that are still present in this game to this day make this campaign kinda rough to sit through. Though it’s not all bad. Gunplay feels pretty solid here, with real world physics coming more into play with this game. BF4 also brings back some Bad Company 2 features, like collectibles, weapon pickups, and loadout stations. It’s honestly nice to see DICE bring back some features that made Bad Company 2 so good. Dimo from BF3 even makes a return to help you and Tombstone escape a Chinese prison, which is really cool (until it isn’t…). This game also brings a score feature to the campaign, similar to multiplayer. This allows you to get bronze, silver or gold ratings on missions. Playing on Hard, I NEVER had to worry about missing a gold medal. Seriously, the game might be a bit TOO easy, aside from the Singapore level. The characters are also paper thin. You spend most of your time with Irish and Hannah, who are easily the most likable. But everyone else has zero personality, and almost no motivation behind their voice acting. Seriously, some of these performances are LAZY and BORING! It just feels like it’s everyone’s first take. And the ending… WOOF, that ending… or “endings”. There are three possible endings to the BF4 campaign, and the “worst” one feels like the most satisfying one, with the other two being the same exact ending as one another, with little differences. Either way, this game ends with you feeling like you accomplished nothing, and got to know no one. Multiplayer is Battlefield’s true bread and butter, and this one is no exception. Like I said, I spent HOURS playing this game, so I have a lot of experience with the multiplayer. And that experience is very positive! However, today… not as much. Granted, it’s been over a decade since the game launched, so its servers aren’t going to be in the best shape. But I can never load in to any game after my first match. It just sits at a loading screen and soft locks the game. And the games I do get into are filled with people who are shooting me crossmap with an assault rifle. So… I don’t think this game is in the best shape right now. Oh, but the cherry on top for the whole BF4 experience, even since launch, is the Xbox record feature… did I say cherry on top, I meant pain in the BUTT!!! This game wants to record every month as a clip!!! I was stuck on a checkpoint at the beginning of the Singapore mission in the campaign, and it must’ve recorded 20 clips. FOR NO REASON!!! It’s beyond annoying and frustrating. It just fills up your captures with crap that is NEVER impressive! Seriously, not a cool feature AT ALL! To wrap things up in a positive light, (because believe it or not, I DID enjoy this game), the sound design and graphics are phenomenal in this game. It still looks beautiful to this day, and sounds great! The music is also really solid here. This feels like the DICE standard! I just wish the story were written better and I felt more from the game as a whole. At least with Medal of Honor or Call of Duty, I felt like I made an impact on the conflict at hand. BF3 and BF4 have felt meaningless to me, and I feel like I never have any agency in the game’s events. And the same can really be said in its large scale multiplayer, as fun as it can be. With all that being said, I’m giving this a 7/10. I certainly wouldn’t mind revisiting this game, maybe even trying to nab all of the achievements someday. But for now, I’m going to just move on to Hardline and hope that story, as cheesy as it is, is as good as I remember it.