First Foray into Multiplayer: Part Three - Battlefield 4

In Part One, we looked at Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Blacklight: Retribution. In Part Two, we looked at Call of Duty: Ghosts. Now, we'll get into Battlefield 4

People often compare COD and the Battlefield franchise, but these games are worlds apart when it comes to multiplayer. Okay, the single-player games are similar, but that’s expected. The multiplayer area is where where things really diverge.

What Makes the Multiplayer Special?

Battlefield offers huge playground where nearly anything can happen. You can create your own stories. Even though I’m terrible at gaming, I’ve done some cool things here.

My team was getting sniped from the top of the tallest structure on the Rogue Transmission map. I was able to climb all the way up to the top of the tower without getting shot, snuck up behind the two snipers and killed them. I then leapt off the top of the tower and opened my parachute at the last minute. I landed in front of an enemy LAV, which was about to destroy me when an engineer from my team destroyed it. All of this was unplanned. It just happened.

That’s just one of the stories that shows the magic of Battlefield. These sorts of things happen with regularity in these matches.

Once you get used to the gunplay and the different classes (I like playing Assault class), it’s a blast, and I highly recommend it – even to people who don’t usually like to play multiplayer.

One of the only things that is frustrating is getting killed by vehicles – I’ve been hunted by tanks and helicopters, but even that is sort of fun, at least when I can get away from them. I’m also not a big fan of getting owned by recon snipers from halfway across the map, but that’s part of the game too. The other times I did (and I die a lot in this game), it’s because I made a mistake or got outplayed by better players. I like that. It makes me strive to be better.

The Bugs

What about all those bugs and other issues everyone is talking about? Well, I think I’ve been fortunate because I haven’t really encountered too many issues.

Sure, I’ve had a few. I will occasionally get some frustrating lag that makes the game virtually unplayable, but I’ve put more than thirty hours into the multiplayer already and have only had that happen on a few matches. I think the kids today are calling the type of lag I get “rubberbanding”.

Another issue is that it sometimes seems like bullets and hits aren’t registering properly. Again, this was minor and it doesn’t seem to happen to me very often.

The Most Fun

So far, I’ve had the most fun when playing Battlefield 4 out of all of the multiplayer games I’ve tried. It haunts my dreams. I do wish more people would use their microphones, as it could be fun to squad up with some players and come up with actual strategies.

I pity any squad that has to put up with my ineptitude though. I did come in #2 on this match, but you can still see from my score that it wasn't much of a feat.

I am the Gomer Pyle of Battlefield. There are stormtroopers and Cobra infantry with better kill/death ratios than I have. I still love it though, and I am getting slowly better.

If you’ve been playing Battlefield 4, how do you like it? Feel free to share your gripes, and some of your cool war stories here in the comments.