I walked past Game yesterday going into Telford Shopping Centre. I had no intention of going inside.
But as I was leaving the centre the little devil on my shoulder said...
"Y'know, Battlefield 1 is out now."
The angel on my shoulder said...
"No harm in having a look. And let's be honest, it doesn't matter what I say because you've already decided you're going to get it!"
So after not playing it last night due to watching the Flash, Westworld and Raw Recruits: Squaddies at 16, the boy woke me up at 0700 this morning and we went downstairs. I resisted for an hour whilst I checked Facebook and Tankslap, but the call was too strong.
I plugged in the headphones so my 7 year old wouldn't hear the audible horror of war, and the visual aspect was taken care of by virtue of him playing on his tablet.
Or at least, I thought he was until I looked over to see him engrossed in a close combat trench warfare cut-scene. I told him not to look at the visceral stab & slash fest and to his credit, he went back to his tablet.
So anyway, the game...
You are literally thrown in at the deep end at the back end of WW1, although this is based on that, doesn't necessarily depict real-time events or weapons. I died about 3 or 4 times in the intro/tutorial, although I think this is meant to be part of the experience.
I'm about 2 and a half hours in, so far I've been involved in trench warfare, stealth missions, tank battles and a sniper-fest (although this was my choice, there were other ways to tackle the objective). And I have killed many many men.
But the graphics are sweet as you like, the audio is spot on, the effects, the acting, I even got hairs on my arm standing up during a particularly terse tank battle and the old Battlefield theme tune kicked in. This was compounded by me pulling off a long range tank kill from a moving vehicle against a moving target. Such satisfaction is a beautiful thing!
It's early days yet, I haven't even contemplated multiplayer and I probably won't until I've got the hang of the controls, but if the rest of the game is as good as my first impressions I'll be one happy bunny.