Battle Royale 5 - Is It Worth It?
Almost six months have passed since the release of Battlefield V. During this time, the developers completed the story campaign, angered the fans with changes to the TTC (and then returned everything to its place) and released a couple of major updates. Well, at the end of the fifth month, the “royal battle” mode, which here is called Firestorm, finally appeared in the game.
When Electronic Arts released the free Apex Legends, I had questions. Who will need Firestorm in the paid Battlefield V a month later? And will it be able to offer something fundamentally new, something that will make players want to play it, and not, say, the same "Arex", Blackout from Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 or Playerunknown's Battlegrounds ?
I will immediately answer one of the questions: nothing fundamentally new, but there are differences. Firestorm makes full use of the strengths of the original - an excellent picture and cool gunplay - and it didn’t do without things familiar from other “royal battles”. And at the same time there is destructibility. Everything is like in Battlefield 5 - I got from the tank into the house, and it fell apart. This is an important thing: to sit down in some rural toilet and wait out a flurry of shells and missiles there now will not work. Artillery mercilessly crushes buildings, tanks make holes in the walls through which BelAZ can pass - in short, everything is as it should be.
One more moment - technique. Not like in Blackout, but more serious. In Firestorm, there was a place for the same tanks and helicopters, which in theory significantly expands the capabilities of the players. However, not everything is so simple. Equipment needs fuel, and you can meet a player with panzerfaust somewhere in the open field every two minutes. So if you're driving a tank and don't have teammates covering you, prepare for the worst.
And don't forget that technology makes you stand out. Yes, the ability to crush enemies with caterpillars is worth a lot, but you have to live somehow!
Before the appearance of the mode, the attention of the players was attracted by the very "fire storm" - at least some change in relation to all these energy fields, albeit purely visual. It's a huge ring of ever-shrinking fiery front that serves the obvious purpose of getting players to move their feet, play more actively, and not sit in one place.
In Battlefield 5, the storm also blocks a certain part of the map, which, in principle, cannot be reached. That's right: the map is huge, and only part of it is available in one match. In the new game zone changes its position, so you can explore most of the map in three or four visits.
But then - a typical "royal battle". You land from planes, one knife in your hands, there is a dense taiga around, dog cold and no weapons nearby. And if it exists, then this is grandfather Mazai's Berdanka at best. Then run towards a village richer in loot, catch a random bullet, exit the match and look for the next one.
Here, Battlefield 5 looks like a step backwards compared to Apex Legends - there is no resurrection of allies, you can only raise a seriously wounded fighter to his feet, but that's all. Well, at least the marks for playing with random teammates remained, it would be strange if the marks from Battlefield disappeared. But it's still hard to play with randoms, and you can't do without a well-coordinated team, say, when opening bunkers with tanks and other equipment. The bunker opens slowly, plus the sirens howl - alone, this is almost one hundred percent bad business. The team is simpler - one turns the “steering wheel” that opens the door, the others insure. Timplay!
There are no classes in Storm, and the only thing that changes when choosing a starting outfit is the appearance of a fighter. Weapons with additional bells and whistles like scopes should be looked for in special zones that sometimes appear on the map - there, of course, all hell is going on.
Inventory management, as others have written, is very limited. The backpack itself is made quite adequately (even though it occupies almost the entire right side of the monitor), but it's really inconvenient to mess around with it. Fortunately, this is often not necessary.
Well, about sad things. I played just a few matches, but in none of them did the number of players reach the declared 64 people. The maximum I've seen is 58 players at the time of landing. Once the game started when there were fifty of us in general.
Well, at least the servers do not lag - and thanks for that! Optimization, by the way, is neat - the original Battlefield 5 was quite playable even in the alpha version - but there are still minor bugs. As well as rare departures from the server.
Firestorm is a familiar battle royale with tanks and destructibles. Whatever you want, then do with it. It doesn’t feel like a new word in the genre, but the fans will definitely like the original - the game has already been bought from them.
Although, judging by Twitch, the popularity of Storm (at the time of writing, of course) is relatively modest - 25,5 thousand viewers a day after the release, while PUBG has 43 thousand, and Apex has 90 thousand. EA clearly failed to repeat the success of the latter.