By Kevin Kenson
While a number of exciting new things were released today including GTA Online, by far one of the most anticipated is the currently exclusive Beta for Battlefield 4. We got a chance to try the game out this morning and ran a few benchmarks, as well as test out the new content.
The beta itself is focused on the Shanghai map, which can currently be played in either Domination or Conquest. These two modes are basically the same in their objective of holding down key area’s, but domination is a small segment of the map with a few players, whereas conquest is the full scale version featuring up to 64 participating players at once. The reason behind this choice is that Shanghai is meant to capture all the biggest things DICE wishes to accomplish with BF4, specifically a good balance of needing all types of vehicles whether they be by land, sky, or sea, and a concept that they like to call “Levolution”.
Levolution is the idea that the map itself changes as the battle rages on, leading to a change in team tactics and situations. While numerous small examples of this exists like destroying a wall or lowering shutters, by far the intriguing example is the skyscraper placed at the center of the map. At the start of a match players may rely heavily on air transport to get to the top or use elevators, which makes it a lot easier to defend once you hold it because you know where your opposition can come from.
However, teams have the option of taking out the building’s supports which cause the whole thing to come crashing down, completely changing the center area of the map from a tall skyscraper to an uneven pile of ruined terrain. This causes both sides to have to adjust their approach, and is hopefully only one major example of what we might see in future maps, whether they be in the base game or future DLC. This aside, the core gameplay is still very much the same as BF3, with some tweaks and an overall prettier look as well. Organized squads and teamwork are still essential, and vehicle use is heavily recommended when it’s available.
If you want to check this stuff out in action as well as see our benchmarks, make sure to check out our video recap. If you want a chance to try out the beta for yourself, it’s currently exclusive to people that own BF3 Premium or Medal of Honor: warfighter, or you can get access by pre-ordering the games Digital Deluxe Edition. If you don’t want to shell out the money just yet, the Beta will be entering Open stages starting on the 4th, which it will remain in until it ends on the 15th, ten days before the game’s official release on Oct 25th. If you’ve already spent some time on it yourself, make sure to let us know in the comments what you’ve thought of the game so far, changes you like, don’t like, or just your thoughts about the Shanghai map itself.
Source:Tech of Tomorrow.
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