It all started way back when... Battlefield 2 was new and I played it on a friend's killer PC (a Pentium 4 with half a gig of ram was killer for 2005). At the time it couldn't possibly have been anything with more than a gig of storage but everything about the game was epic. I remember immediately going out to pick up my own copy of BF2 and realizing that I had to do some PC upgrades to get it running. After BF2, I went on to play BF2142. Battlefield 2142's futuristic setting and different approach to the conquest mechanic easily put it at the top of my favorites list.
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| It had walking tanks!! |
On the Xbox 360 I put tons of hours into Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, but I've never touched BF:BC1 or BF2: Modern Combat (had my fill on pc). The Bad Company series was a great spin-off from the basic Battlefield formula while still maintaining that great gameplay that was vastly different from Call of Duty at the time but still gave you that "rpg-lite" itch that kept you coming back for more. The Bad Company developers also took some time and care to create a great story that rode the line between serious and hilarious but not cliche or cheesy. Well, maybe it was just cheesy enough to be loved. I even bought all of the dlc for Bad Company 2, the Vietnam expansion was cool, but I loathe WWI, WWII, and Vietnam settings in games. It is unfortunate that EA hasn't put out another one. As far as spin-offs from the "Battlefield-norm" go, Hardline has quite the reputation to live up to.
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| Battlefield 3 |
I have probably logged a couple hundred hours in Battlefield 3 on 360 as well. While I did not splurge on the DLC as much as I did with Bad Company 2 (I didn't buy BF3's End Game pack), I did pick up the game day one and jump in feet first. I loved every minute of it. Bad Company 2 set the bar for fully destructible environments and Battlefield 3 took it to a whole new level. Despite its accomplishments, I believe this was the game that broke everything with the introduction of "Premium." I feel like its sort of a pay-to-win proposition thinly veiled as a pay-to-shortcut cash grab. It seems like EA just lifted the monetizing models from the BF: Play4Free and BF: Heroes games and set them on top of BF 3 and 4... and now every game dev/publisher is doing it. Anyway, I picked up vanilla BF3 on PC (through a humble bundle). It looks incredible even with a modest video card, but the controller support is kinda wonky.
Battlefield 4 was also a day one purchase for me on 360. I went all in on it and it was pretty broken. I ended up not playing a whole ton of it due to the brokenness and lack of timely updates to the 360 version. Honestly, its great but I ended up putting more time in to BF3 on PC.
Now its time for another iteration on the series, Battlefield: Hardline. This spin-off explores "cops and robbers" gameplay that is set in the style of a cop-drama tv series. It is a bit of an offshoot, but I look forward to some welcome and long overdue changes and I hope Visceral can breathe some new life into the franchise.