Battlefield V: Firestorm
Another game, another Battle Royale. I’m not complaining though, because I think Battle Royale games are the most enjoyable to play. I see many people complaining that there’s too many BR games on the market and I’m having trouble understanding why that’s even a problem. There are other genres of games out there and no one is forcing you to play this one. Yeah, I get it – you hate the fact that these companies are spending most of their time on this particular mode as opposed to the game mode you’re more interested in. At the end of the day, don’t buy the game if you’re fearful the game’s campaign or multiplayer modes, outside of BR, will suck – go buy something that interests you and stop crying about it! With that being said, the most recent BR game out is Firestorm. This is Battlefield’s take on Battle Royale and it’s different than any other BR game I’ve played thus far. Firestorm is a BR experience unlike any other and one could argue that’s a good thing, as well as bad. I’m going to go over my opinions on what Firestorm does well, and also where it lacks compared to other BR games I’ve played.
You party up with your friends in 4 man squads, or drop in solo. There’s no duo option and I’m sure people have already started to complain about that if they haven’t already. I personally enjoy squads, so there’s no issue there for me. You start out in a plane, just as you would in any other BR game. The map is a combination of different terrains, so editing your character to match the terrain is difficult since you’ll never know where the majority of the fight will take place.
One part of the map will be unused because the game already scales out the first circle. The map appears to be small from the overhead map view, but once you have boots on the group you’ll notice that it takes quite some time to get from one location to the next. I wasn’t really sure why they cut out a portion of the map right out the gate, but it’s not that big of a deal. The storm is made of fire and this is one of the most interesting takes out of everything Firestorm has to offer. The fire appears intimidating, and for the most part it is. When you’re relatively close by to the storm you’ll notice the sounds of the fire overtake your microphone or surround sound. The atmosphere itself changes and you’ll start to see debris from the fire floating around. The fire will engulf everything in its path and level all houses and obstacles as it encloses. When you’re outside of the storm it’s very difficult to see and, depending on your health situation, will put you in quite the panic as you try and get back into the circle and away from the storm.
There is a large amount of locations to land and obtain loot. You’ll notice that the loot itself is scattered in outside locations, which can be camp-like sites, as well as in buildings. There aren’t many major cities noted on the map, which I found disappointing. This results in hot drops throughout. It seemed that no matter where my team landed, we always had to deal with a couple teams. The best option to avoid these initial fights are to land in building clusters throughout the map that aren’t within major cities.
The loot in the game is my major concern. You have a good bit of weapons and accessories to choose from, but the way in which you pick them up is very clunky. The BR games I’ve played up until this point have all succeeded, to some extent, with how they incorporate looting into the game. This game fails miserably with looting. The loot in game that you search for throughout buildings and different sites are easily obtained, but when you kill an enemy the dead body shoots out all of its items, leaving you to look throughout the general area for the loot that interests you. If you kill multiple enemies relatively close to one another, this is where you see a huge problem. You will try and pick up a particular piece of loot, only to run into the problem of picking up something you don’t want instead. I’ve noticed myself having to pick up items just to get them out of my way. This leads me to the next problem.. and what I believe to be the most annoying of all – Discarding items. When you have too many items in your inventory you will obviously be unable to loot any more items until you discard unwanted items. To discard an item you need to press down on your d pad and go into your inventory. Once you’re in your inventory, you’ll need to take your right analog stick and navigate throughout your inventory for the particular item you want to discard. After finding the item, you’ll press X (or square on PS4) to give you options on what you want to do next. You’ll be able to swap or drop the item from here. This may not seem like much when describing in text, but when you’re trying to quickly loot in game, you’ll realize it’s close to impossible to do so in a timely manner. An easy fix to this would be to use the same concept as other BR games and organize the loot in individual loot containers that can be separated from other nearby loot containers that have been created from downed players. The issues regarding dropping and swapping loot is something that can be easily fixed in a patch after hearing player feedback, so I’m not too concerned about this.
My only other concern is regarding the aftermath of games. Winning a game doesn’t feel very rewarding and when you do win there isn’t anything that indicates you’re a winner except for a “V for Victory” text that goes over the screen right before turning over to the scoreboard. The stats page is very bland and is doesn’t get into much detail. You’re able to see random stats pertaining to things you don’t care about, total kills, as well as wins in squad and solo. I think a kill/death, most kills in a game, and an online leaderboard specific to Firestorm would be appreciated
Enough with the bad things. Although Firestorm offers some clunky in game mechanics, the overall mechanics are very smooth. I was a fan of Battlefield V and the multiplayer game modes, so I was able to transition well to Firestorm. The gun and player mechanics are just as good, if not better than any other first person shooter on the market. Mix that with amazing graphics and variety of weapons and vehicles and you have yourself a pretty awesome BR experience.
Overall, I believe Firestorm is a great take on the Battle Royale experience. The game has its problems, but they’re issues that can be resolved in future patches. The intensity that this game brings is unlike any other and when you integrate that into the BR world you get an incredible experience that I would recommend to almost anyone interested in the genre. The vehicle battles, falling debris, and fast paced action this game brings is what separates it from all the others. If you don’t play this now, then you should at a later date when it appears as if all the problems are dealt with. I just hope, for your sake, that by that time, the majority of players aren’t too good that it makes you put it down.
