Battlefield 6 Review – Good Company
At its best, Battlefield 6 is everything you could ask for from a Battlefield game. Intense, close-quarters firefights transition into long-range skirmishes as control points change hands and the action moves from the tight confines of half-destroyed buildings to open stretches of land. As fighter jets and helicopters swoop overhead, a medic pulls out a defibrillator and rushes into a hail of bullets to revive a squadmate who was just blown up trying to destroy a tank with a handful of C4.
Elsewhere, a sniper taking residence in a high-rise building is snuffed out by a well-placed RPG, blowing a hole in their nest until the entire building eventually collapses in on itself, while just a few yards away, the burnt husk of a helicopter drops out of the sky as its previous occupants parachute to the ground amidst a salvo of gunfire. Battlefield 6 is a return to form for a multiplayer shooter that thrives on emergent chaos.
For myriad reasons, Battlefield 2042 didn’t evoke these moments often enough, leading Battlefield Studios–the collective name for developers DICE, Criterion, Motive, and Ripple Effect–to look to the past for the series’ future. It’s well-documented that Battlefield 3 and 4 were key inspirations in designing the series’ latest iteration, and that’s certainly reflected in how it plays. It’s a safe approach, which isn’t surprising given the negative reception to Battlefield 2042, especially when so many fans have been clamoring for a direct sequel to the series’ fourth mainline entry. As a result, there’s very little about Battlefield 6 that feels particularly fresh or new, but there’s also no denying that it’s quintessentially Battlefield. There’s still nothing else quite like its multipronged chaos, so a return to form is more than enough to get pulses racing, even if it doesn’t necessarily push the series forward.
