Battlefield 4 (PC): Pre-Review Thoughts

At this moment, if I were to write an official review of Battlefield 4 it would be decidedly unfavourable. 1 star on Amazon, maybe a 2 for a Metacritic User Review because right now Battlefield 4 is like driving the ultra high-end sports car of your choice, with a twist. It looks gorgeous, the lines are great, the sense of power is incredible. But imagine that the hidden "feature" of this vehicle is that the front wheels will fly off without any indication that something is about to go horribly and dramatically wrong.

More than two weeks after launch, that's what Battlefield 4 is: a sports car with spring-loaded wheels.

Just know that at any moment, either the engine will explode or the wheels will perform
a version of The Incredible Journey where they try to return to the Goodyear factory.

So far my multiplayer experiences are 50/50 in regard to actually completing a match from beginning to end. That's actually fine when I'm playing terribly, my kill/death ratio is 1:14, and I generally haven't hit some kind of groove, but when I'm playing with a streak of kills, some lucky escapes, and I'm in that groove where my bullets are just more accurate than my opponent's and the damn wheels careen into a ditch, the game locks, and any experience earned during the course of the match is lost, that's almost enough to snap a keyboard in half or at least bash out a few keys.

Multiplayer, right.

It can be kind of borked for any game of this size and scope right at launch. Servers getting hammered, everyone wants to play, etc. I figured at least I can fall back to single player for a bit until some of these early wrinkles and bugs can be ironed out or squashed.

Hey, that's messed up, too. Lock-ups, crashes, freezes, whatever you want to call them, are not uncommon. The story isn't so gripping as to make me want to put up with the sudden crashes.

I don't know if these instabilities have anything to do with the fact that when you start Battlefield 4 your Internet browser opens -- it's still jarring, even now -- but there's something that doesn't feel right about launching a AAA-game and not leaping right into the game. Single or Multiplayer, your browser opens and you're navigating a web page that will activate the game when you hit the right button. Given all the current problems, I've been sorely tempted lately to just surf away. "Hey, what's happening on NeoGAF today?"

I'm a fan of the Battlefield franchise and if EA hadn't supplied a review copy of the game, I probably would have grabbed a copy myself because I still believe that if EA and DICE can somehow figure out how to keep the wheels on the car -- and I'm confident they will -- it seems like there's some real potential to be a game I'm going to play for a long, long time. Or at least some months.

But how do I honestly review a game on something as ambiguous as "potential?"

And how the hell were there reviews of Battlefield 4 within days of it's launch? Were those reviewers playing the same game as me? Were they playing in some kind of weird silo where they weren't affected by these issues or were they wearing a +3 Amulet of Stability to counter the instability of the game.

I thought about not throwing stones, because I've built enough glass houses in my time know better, but some of these reviews -- those that were penned in a handful of days after the launch -- need to be called out.

GameSpot: Unsurprisingly, the PC version remains on top with excellent visuals and sprawling 64-player matches that make the most of the great maps and incredible combat diversity.

64-player matches are killer! I experience one for about 10 minutes before the game locked up.

Metro GameCentral: Business as usual with a mediocre single-player campaign and one of the best multiplayer experiences in all gaming – especially on the inarguably superior PC version.

"The best multiplayer experiences in all gaming?" Obviously they found a way to keep the wheels bolted in place. And how is it superior if it won't run reliably?

PC Games (Germany):  Although the campaign and it’s story aren’t really memorable, the outstanding multiplayer makes the game nearly perfect.

From my experience, the last part of the statement above beggars all logic.

Post Arcade (National Post): In closing, single player is quaint, the online experience is a work in process, but once they get the bugs out of that delicious apple pie… it will be well worth the wait.

Okay, so the apple pie is full of worms -- I still like my sports car simile better -- but, but, but, the score for that last one is a 90/100!

Is it any wonder that video game journalists are, almost without exception, viewed as having all the critical and mental acuity of a paper bag full of dead goldfish? How can a game that has such a strong multiplayer focus, where strategies, exploits, etc. that sometimes don't float to the surface until months after a launch, be summarily reviewed within days of the game's release? It's disingenuous at best and completely dishonest at worst to even suggest that all the nuance and strategy can be parsed out in a matter of days by a reviewer. Either option doesn't do much to create any level of trust between reader and writer, that's for certain, especially if said reader hasn't been able to reliably play the game.

This is exactly why my real Battlefield 4 review may be a long time coming. If DICE and EA can get the game almost entirely stable -- I can tolerate the occasional disconnect or weird server issue -- it looks like there's a game here that I'll want to keep playing after the review -- an event that actually doesn't happen that often. I'll keep my fingers optimistically crossed that the wait will be worth it. Until that stability arrives, I'll make "vvvvvvrrrrroooom!" noises and pretend to be driving.

- Aaron Simmer