You pick the driver off with a headshot - there’s that satisfying ‘ping’ Battlefield 1 players remember and love.īattlefield 1 is a game that does some justice to the conflict it represents. Two players race past on a motorbike and sidecar. A biplane skitters across the sand nearby and bursts into flames. You find a safe spot and set up camp with your rifle. Under the burning sun, riding across the dunes of the Sinai Desert. Objectives fall and are recaptured, only to be lost again. Players race through the haze with pump-action shotguns. A moment of peace in the woods before chaos breaks out. The deep green shadows of the Argonne Forest - a train rumbles down the line as the game falls oddly quiet.

Artillery and mortars explode around you. Your boots clink on the piles of spent ammunition. Soldiers, players, follow the sound of it. A whistle rings out from a nearby trench. In the swampy pools of Passchendaele (one of the best maps in the game, perhaps one of the best in the series), you experience the claustrophobia of the trenches as the soot and smog burn your eyes. Picture this: the steep cliffs of Monte Grappa, 40 players hunkered down inside a bunker throwing grenades at each other, snipers’ rifles glinting on the far-off ridge, and the gigantic Behemoth airship coming crashing down from the sky in a rain of fire and grinding metal. RELATED: Battlefield 2042 Is Right To Throw Away The Single-Player Campaign Its set-pieces, sound design, and gameplay are unparalleled. The game turns five years old this week, and it’s still the most atmospheric entry in the series. Just how was the studio going to render the hellish scenes of the First World War in a way that respected those who suffered during the conflict? How was it going to turn a pretty stationary war of attrition into something that people would want to play? Somehow, Battlefield 1 did both, and it did it brilliantly. Even the brilliant launch trailer couldn’t dispel the fears that DICE was going to ruin its winning formula.

The guns, vehicles, and general gameplay would have to be vastly different from the popular, bombastic Battlefield 4. When DICE announced it was working on a Battlefield game set during the Great War, fans were a little sceptical.

Battlefield series