A Review from Atop My High Horse

 

Battlefield One Beta

Let me begin by saying that first person shooters are not my specialty. Mostly because I suck at them and I only started playing multiplayer games within the last two years.  In my beginnings of online gaming, the thought of having to play with real people was daunting. Will I have to talk to them? What If I do a mission and I am the weakest link in the chain and there’s a group of 12 year olds that secretly hate me. What if my character gets tea bagged in the game?

So, I was delighted when I downloaded the Battlefield 1 Beta and discovered that this game was totally different from your typical COD style shooter.  I quickly caught on that you can be an asset to your team in so many different ways. You don’t have to just rely on getting the most kills or worry about your kill to death ratio. It seemed like you had more purpose in this game and I really appreciated that.

Things I picked up while playing BF1:

Horses are damn near invincible

First things first, try the damn horse. It is so much fun, and you can gallop around the map taking flags like a champ. I realized that most of the time when you get a kill with the horse you are actually not getting them with the saber like you think, you are getting them by trampling them with the horse. The horse has a set kill box, an area around it that if you run into a player, you trample their little life out. I can tell you how much fun it is to go sniper hunting with a horse.  Imagine this sniper, a person who has all of this sill and patience sitting there being awesome at the game, then here I come on this horse and I am just going to run them over. Brains, meet brawn. Because no matter how good you are, the horse reckoning is upon us!

Next tip, snipers and even some tanks can’t get you if you gallop and zig zag. If you follow these few movements you are a fortress and you are almost immortal. As long as you keep moving, and keep all of your movements hard to pin down, you can stay on that horse and kill, kill, kill, as much as you want.

 

Last cavalry tip, the horses are dumb. They will get caught up on something and you will be stuck in a prone spot and someone will snipe you.  That fall from the high horse is hard. I took one ride up onto the overlook rocks on objective Fox trot and the horse got stuck up there and would not move. It was stuck on the only bridge to get down from that spot, and I was stuck up there with it. Boo! Always have an exit strategy with the horse and don’t take it into areas with any dead ends. Having said that, taking a horse into the city block is risky, but a lot of people don’t expect you to, so you can get quite a few kills there as long as you don’t get trapped against a wall.

The shot gun should be illegal

When I discovered the shot gun, the game got a lot better.  No longer did I have to shoot someone a bunch of times for them to go down. Now I only needed to vaguely shoot in their direction and they were going to get blasted away. Like one would expect, this gun works the best in close quarters.  An urban setting is perfect for getting some kills in.  Setting up camp and defending a block of buildings that are pretty active can be really fun.

Play the fucking objective

When I first started playing Battlefield, I thought I was supposed to kill as many people as possible.  Fortunately, you get a ton of points for taking the flags. If you stop thinking about your individual score, and start thinking about your team you will do a lot better. If you hold less than three objectives, your team starts to bleed tickets.  It is imperative to constantly be after the flags. Relentlessly PTFO and you will get to the top of the leaderboards in your team.

Don’t use the vehicles as your personal taxi

The tanks and the airplanes are not your shuttle. Each of the heavy vehicles play a very important role in the game. If you need to get from point A to point B, take a jeep.  Try not to fuck someone over in an airplane by jumping out of the cockpit and then parachuting over one of the objectives.

Battlefield One is going to be amazing

I am so excited for the full game to come out. If that one map could keep me obsessed with playing for a full week, I am sure that the fully flushed out game will be so much fun. Overall, I am really impressed with the Beta release and I think I found a new series that I love.

-Mel