Destruction is what has always separated Battlefield from Call of Duty. Blowing up cover, buildings and vehicles is one of the battlefields series main strengths, however in the beta of it's fourth iteration battlefields destruction element acts as both a blessing and a curse.
The only map available in the beta is the Siege of Shanghai, a huge map with a central focal point of a towering skyscraper. A river runs next to the monolith of a building with a single bridge connecting it to the rest of the map, which is mostly smaller structures making for great small scale firefights. However the tower is where most of the action happens, Helicopters patrol the skies picking off any ants they spot down below, whilst tanks roll around its base halting any advancing units. The single bridge is near impossible to cross on foot therefore the team at EA DICE added an under bridge for safer movement on foot.
Upon picking your class (Assault, Engineer, Recon, and Support) you choose your drop point depending on what zones your team has secured. I was dropped on the side away from the skyscraper and immediately headed over there not meeting any resistance. Either the match was hardly populated or I was a stealthy wizard, most likely the former. Regardless I followed some teammates over to the skyscraper and went inside taking the elevator to the top floors. Standing on top of the building was breathtaking, the scale of the map is huge. The width alone is enough to get excited about but standing the same distance vertically upwards added a sense of scale that has yet to be seen in the FPS genre. After I spent a minute admiring the view from the top I did the only logical thing there was left to do...I jumped. Consequently my first death shortly followed but what a way to go out, and the fall wasn't as short as I expected, it really is a tall tower.
As I mentioned above destruction is the name of the game when it comes to battlefield games. later on in the match I was running around the base of the skyscraper when much to my bemusement a huge explosion knocked me down and killed me. upon re-spawning the map looked unrecognisable covered in dust from head to toe. But it was the same map albeit missing one massive feature. Some crazed individuals had taken out the supports of the skyscraper and toppled it! That's right the map's most distinct feature is fully destructible along with many other areas of the map. This scale of destruction gives players the notion that they are in a fully interactable world. Capable of causing whatever mayhem their satanic minds can conjure up.
However not everything can be blown up which makes for some bizarre inconsistencies. If you choose to you can take down a skyscraper, but much smaller buildings wont receive a scratch regardless of how many RPG's you hit it with. Naturally if everything was destructible the match would become very boring very quickly, but some minor destruction effects would give the game a much richer sense of realism.
I was very impressed with my first play through of the Battlefield 4 beta and the best thing is that everything is subject to change. Hopefully EA DICE take into account players feedback and deliver an even more refined and immersive war experience
Image Credits
www.preorder.org/battlefield4
www.spawnfirst.com
www.multiplayergames.com
