Look. I get it. I shouldn't expect much from an MP-focused AAA FPS titles even though they pour millions and millions of dollars into this thing. But there is a line where it becomes so bad that excuse doesn't work.

Setting aside the numerous campaign bugs that they just didn't give a rat's ass to fix since the game's release, the game's level design itself is just poor. They give you "more freedom" by giving you a semi-large area with bunch of enemies to tackle. But unlike Halo, you have such limited options: your stealth is basically useless, the friendly AI is one of the worst I've ever seen, and the player really has no option but to shoot from cover. Then there are missions like "cover me while I'm doing this," which somehow takes so long (this dude taking like 5 minutes to open a goddamn glass door, for example), and the whole game is just repetition of these levels in sequence, making the game tiring very quickly.

And yes, story is of course bad, and intrusively so. But I should've expected that. What I didn't expect is that they had a level set in Xinjiang Uighur where the only people present are US Marines and Russian army. At that point, it's downright offensive.

I enjoy modern military AAA shooter campaigns for what they are, but dear lord, this was something else.

Singleplayer:
Mediocre story with fun gameplay. At times the game tries to be as grand and grandiose as Battlefield 3 and falls a bit flat, some of the characters are also very unlikable (Hannah) and deviate from the enjoyment of the story. One of the segments I really liked was the prison break with Dima, who was by far the most interesting character in the singleplayer campaign.

Mutliplayer:
One of the definitive multiplayer experiences of Battlefield, and a big portion of this is thanks to the levolution mechanics, and with 2042 on the horizon the multiplayer is gaining massive popularity again so there's no time better than to pick up the game again and go back to a real Battlefield game instead of wasting your time with shit like Battlefield V.

Yet again, I broke down and tried to reinstall BF4 to see how the game held up. This was probably the second or third time I've done this in the past year.

Playing the PS4 version (on PS5), the visuals just don't hold up anymore, which makes sense since this was a PS4/XB1 launch title. With the muddy browns and grays and less brightly-lit spaces, it simply feels way more difficult to parse what's happening on your screen than in either BF1/V. The caveat here is that from what I've seen of players still playing BF4 on PC the game does hold up and the chaos is much easier for me to parse there/

The unlock system as a returning player is also frustrating. I could very easily unlock some longer-range attachments or useful kit items if I sat down and put my mind to it for a few hours. But that's a few hours I would be spending mostly frustrated with having to work with the very limiting limitations of whatever stuff I actually do have unlocked.

I guess I'm a boomer now. A decade ago, I would have gladly wasted hours grinding for this stuff, but now it seems like a total waste of time. I've got other stuff to do, I'm not ramming my head against a wall trying to keep up with the NEETs that have been playing this game for almost a decade.

Fun selection of maps that change throughout the match. Scratches a itch that many other games don't and allows for a lot of creative ways to kill others. Because of how many ways to attack, you often die by the most ridiculous ways making you feel hopeless. Because battles are so large you often feel your contribution is meaningless and capturing objectives play far too little importance. But flying a helicopter over site and shooting people while you eject is the kind of fun you won't get elsewhere.