Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Dice
Release Date: October 2016
ESRB Rating: M (for Mature)
MSRP: $59.99
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platforms: Windows / PlayStation 4 / Xbox One

For the gamemode, see War Pigeons A Homing Pigeon is a variety of domestic pigeon that is selectively bred for its ability to find its way home over extremely long distances. Due to their homing ability, speed, and altitude, pigeons have long played an important role in war as military messengers. During World War I and World War II, carrier pigeons were used to transport messages back to.

Average Admission Price: .96 cents an hour.

My Rating: A solic 8 out of 10 with an emphasis upon the single-player story-mode.

Selected for our Annual 12 Games of Christmas Feature – a gift buying guide for choosing gifts for the Gamers and Geeks among your loved ones this holiday season!

Introduction

Battlefield 1 was developed by EA DICE and published by Electronic Arts as a first-person shooter and action-adventure game that is the fifteenth installment in the Battlefield series. The game was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in October 2016, as the first game in the series with a dedicated World War I theme. The game includes both a single-player campaign and multi-player modes.

The game was created as a five-act story arc that begins with a Prologue called Storm of Steel during which the player is introduced to a number of doomed characters who are members of the Harlem Hellfighters who are defending different positions in the French front lines, trying desperately to hold off a massive German attack.

It is important to understand that B1 was not created to offer the player a single story focused on a single character as was the case in previous games. This time around we are getting five rather unique stories, and the emphasis was placed on turning the environment into a character of these stories, which they manage quite nicely.

Game Play

Battlefield 1 is similar to the other games in the series, being a first-person shooter that emphasizes teamwork for its MP side, offering a dedicated story mode for single-player that at least this time around was not simply tacked on for completion.

The game is set in the period of World War I, and inspired by historic events, putting the player into a variety of iconic warrior roles, and making use of a wide selection of World War I weapons, including bolt-action rifles, automatic and semi-automatic rifles, artillery, flamethrowers, tanks, and other combat vehicles.

The weapons are actually a stand-out feature in the game, in that unlike with the previous entry in the series, they are not simply variations of the same pew-pew-pew but each offers is own rather unique characteristics.

Game designer Daniel Berlin declared the single-player campaign mode to be the largest and most open environment of any of the previous games in the series, offering players more options and choices towards completing each act. That is true for what it is worth.

The point to the prologue is to introduce the player to the various roles available, and for the player to try to defend each position for as long as they can before falling in battle and thus moving to the next position.

Battlefield 1 Pigeon Game Modern

The Prologue is followed by five unique acts:

Through Mud and Blood, which is set during the Battle of Cambrai in the Hundred Days Offensive where players assume the role of Danny Edwards, a former chauffeur who enlists in the war as a British tank driver.

Friends in High Places, the player takes on the role of Clyde Blackburn, an American pilot and gambler who cheats British pilot George Rackham in a game of cards and steals his plane. Posing as Rackham, Blackburn then takes command of the plane and makes a war patrol.

Avanti Savoia, in which the player assume the role of Luca Vincenzo Cocchiola, a member of the Italian Arditi unit as it takes part in a major offensive to seize an Austro-Hungarian fortress.

The Runner, which is set during the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915, has the player take on the role of Australian message runner, Frederick Bishop.

Nothing is Written, which takes place in the Spring of 1918, has the player assume control of Zara Ghufran, a Bedouin rebel working directly alongside British intelligence officer T.E Lawrence as they fight to undermine the Ottoman occupation of the Arabian Peninsula.

The single-player campaign mode is complimented by the multi-player mode – which most gamers will think of as the point to this title.

The game’s multi-player side supports up to 64 players and features a new squad system that allows a group of players to enter and leave game servers together, as well as traditional modes for the series and new modes that include war pigeons and operations. All game modes have a time limit; in some if the time limit is up, the team with the most points wins.

• Conquest Mode: a standard MP game modes in the Battlefield series that involves controlling various points around the map.
• Rush Mode: Another standard game mode, Rush consists of both Attack and Defense roles for the players.
• Attackers Mode: The attackers goal is to take control of marked points before their teams tickets are completely used up.
• Defenders Mode: The goal of the defenders is to defend their marked points against the opposing team.
• Domination Mode: Similar to Conquest, this mode uses a smaller field with fewer control points with game play that is similar to Team Deathmatch.
• Team Deathmatch Mode: Two opposing teams spawn in a small arena with no control points, and race to be the first to reach the point limit or, if the timer runs out, to have the most kills.
• Operations Mode: This mode combines elements of Rush and Conquest, dividing players into two teams, like in Rush.
• War Pigeons: This new game mode is exclusive to Battlefield 1, and features two opposing teams attempting to capture a communications pigeon.

Battlefield 1’s MP Modes feature four classes, three spawn-based classes, and one pick-up based class, each of which having its own rank-based Achievement associated with it.

My Take

You may have noticed that the bulk of the game play section appears to focus on the multi-player side of the game. There is a reason for that. The Battlefield series has long focused heavily on its MP side – with the single-player story-mode for the most part being tacked on as a necessary but not very well thought-of part that is traditionally left over from when the game genre was all about single-player story mode. Well it’s not anymore.

Battlefield 1 Pigeon Game Modes

Which is why the very excellent and broad story – in five acts – that has been created for Battlefield 1 is all that much more remarkable. Now that said – and despite the fact that I quoted the architect as marveling at the fact that it is the largest game world for a story mode in the recent series, that really is not saying much at all actually.

The reason for that is simple – the story mode in the series in recent memory has been so abbreviated that anything moderately bigger would stand out. Now before you start to wonder if I am dumping on this game, I am not. I am just injecting some perspective here. Because in truth I really – REALLY – liked the single-player campaign in B1. Even more so because instead of just tossing together a story for us to play, they actually spent significant time putting together an historically accurate one.

And in addition, they put some serious effort into building into that story a series of Achievements that would add to the game play in a fundamental way. To complete all of the related game play including the various Achievements the player needed to spend a good deal of time both exploring the large game world and sussing out its secrets. And that, mates, can only be a good thing.

So considering the rather robust (in comparison to previous chapters) single player story-mode campaign, and of course the massive and flexible multi-player side, what we end up with is another really great addition to the series.

The single-player story mode offers up an Average Play Time (assuming that the Achievements are important to you) of around 12 hours. More if you choose to complete the game on Hard difficulty, as that can really drag out the time.

The multi-player side on the other hand may seem to have a practically unlimited play time but in reality as it tends to come in chunks, a conservative estimate turns in around 50 hours of game play, after which the player will have accomplished much in terms of their rank and unlocking goals, and of course other titles will vie for their attention. On the plus side, however, is that the excitement that is available in the MP side will likely keep the player returning every so often to experience that again.

With 12 hours average in single-player and around 50 in multi-player, that gives Battlefield 1 an Average Play Time of 62 hours – and with its $59.99 MSRP (it can be had for less if you shop around) that works out to an Average Admission Price of .96 cents an hour – which is on the high-side of average for AAA titles in the shooter genre.

After playing the heck out of this title, we find that Battlefield 1 earned a Review Score of 8 out of 10, with the loss of 2 full points largely resulting from the too-brief single-player story-mode, and the decision on the part of EA Dice to put load-screen hints in that basically could be easily considered to be spoilers.

Parents: This is a war game. It is violent. It includes killing. Its subject is one of the most brutal wars ever fought by humanity. That being the case, we feel that it is properly rated by the ESRB as M (for Mature). Despite that however, there really is nothing in terms of concern that the average well-adjusted 16 year-old has not already seen in movies, and other games.

– – – – – – – – – – –

A review copy of this game for the XBox One was rented from GameFly

Copyright © 2016 CM Boots-Faubert

The various Modes in Battlefield 1.

Game Modes

• Conquest - An all-time fan favorite of Battlefield players, Conquest is a large-scale game mode with up to 64 players fighting for the control of key Objectives. With large armies on foot or behind the wheel and the addition of fearsome Behemoths, Conquest brings together all the elements of the signature Battlefield 1 All-Out War.
• Domination - Domination offers a fast-paced infantry focused combat in close quarter locations. It’s a smaller, but more focused version of Conquest, and the fighting revolves around strategic Objectives. Ready your Shotgun and sharpen your Hatchet – in the Domination game mode things tend to get close and personal.
• Operations - Operations is a completely new way to experience Battlefield multiplayer, giving you the opportunity to fight on an entire front of the Great War. In a sequence of inter-connected battles, a team of Attackers attempts to conquer ground and push the frontline forward, as the Defenders are trying to push them back. Should the defenders fail to hold their ground on a map, the Operation doesn’t stop here: they will fall back and regroup on a different map, while the attackers will push the assault. Sectors may fall, but players reinforced by gigantic Behemoths can still turn the tide.
• Rush - Communications and artillery were crucial during World War I, and Rush mode will have you interacting with both of them. In Rush, the Attacking forces must find and destroy the Defending force’s Telegraph Posts, which the defenders can use to call in artillery strikes. The Defenders can deny the Attackers by disarming the explosives they plant, but should the Telegraph Posts be destroyed, the Defenders must fall back to another sector. The Attackers win the battle if the Telegraph Positions in every sector are destroyed. The Defenders come out victorious if they’re able to run the Attackers out of reinforcements, or by having at least one Telegraph Position left intact when time runs out.
• Team Deathmatch - In many ways World War 1 changed the notion of how war was fought, but the end goal was still to inflict as much damage as possible to force the enemy to surrender. Team Deathmatch hones in on the brutal simplicity of infantry warfare: kill or be killed. This mode pits your side against the enemy and you need to defeat as many enemies as possible while protecting yourself and your team mates. At regular intervals a powerful Elite Class weapon is dropped somewhere on the map. Grab it to get the upper hand in terms of firepower. The winning side is the one that inflicts the most casualties to the enemy. If the timer runs out, the team that has killed the most enemies win.
• War Pigeons - During the Great War, man-made communication systems were still crude and unreliable, so dogs and pigeons were used extensively to carry messages. In the War Pigeons game mode the opposing sides compete to use messenger pigeons to call in artillery barrages on the enemy. When the game starts, a pigeon coup with a messenger pigeon is placed somewhere on the map. Locate the pigeon before the enemy and carry it to a safe location out in the open. There you prepare a message and send it off, calling for artillery support. Once a message is successfully sent an artillery barrage will strike the enemy.
• Fog of War - A mode in which the map is covered in various levels of heavy fog, mimicking real-life reports concerning the lack of situational awareness on the battlefield.
• Line of Sight - A variation of Rush, where players can only choose the Scout or Medic class. Scout bullets deal double damage.