You’re darting over piles of rubble, avoiding sniper fire as you sprint to safety; a jet flies overhead, sending an aural shockwave from the sky. A fellow soldier is knocked down up ahead, but another squadmate grabs them, pulling them out of harm’s way. There are bloodcurdling screams for help, the shouting of commands, and explosions in the distance. Smoke fills the area as a grenade launcher stuns you, and you barely survive.
You quickly duck into a nearby building, but a rumbling catches you off guard; a tank has hit the bullseye on the wall separating you from the chaos, and the whole structure is about to come down. You leap out of a window and get ready to fire, but you’re surrounded. This will all be over soon… but a respawn will have you back in the fight in no time. This is Battlefield 6. Well, at least one scenario within it. A wonderful example of the kind of bonkers, action-packed moments you can expect, and there will be many just like this.
The pressure is indeed on for Battlefield 6 to be a big success, and if my four hours of hands-on time (so far) are any indication, the gigantic development team at Battlefield Studios might have just nailed it.
It’s a promising start, with the huge multiplayer reveal showing that the team is more focused than ever on recapturing the success of the series, after a mixed reception to 2021’s Battlefield 2042. More broadly, EA needs a win. Sure, EA Sports FC is a regular shoe-in, but other IPs from the publisher have not met expectations, and Call of Duty – along with colourful shooters like Fortnite – rule the roost. Battlefield 6 is an important moment, and it hits with a confident oomph, almost instantly.
The fundamentals feel great; Battlefield 6 is a shooter that is, at its core, fantastic to play, whether you’re running across the map with an assault rifle, kicking back with a sniper or racing to capture key points from your opposition in clutch plays. Vehicles, as well, handle excellently. Battlefield has always had a neat point of difference when compared with its contemporaries in the way its map allows for vehicular combat, whether it be cars, tanks or aircrafts, and it all comes off as intuitive and slick.
“It’s genuinely startling when you’re inside a building that starts collapsing around you, and immensely satisfying to wreck the map in whatever way you see fit.”
But perhaps the most alluring feature of Battlefield 6 is its focus on what the team calls “Tactical Destruction”. Sure, we’ve seen destructible environments in video games before with varying degrees of success, but the way it’s implemented here on this massive scale feels better than anything I’ve seen. Based on the intent of players going through these spaces, the developers note that “no game of Battlefield 6 will look the same”, whether it’s a tank destroying buildings, or simply players smashing stuff up with a sledgehammer to carve their own path.
From my time so far, the tactical destruction makes for a lot of potential watercooler moments; it means you can smash through walls rather than using the doors, or take out the floor beneath you to drop down a level and surprise your opponents. If somebody tries to hide behind cover, blow it up. It’s genuinely startling when you’re inside a building that starts collapsing around you, and immensely satisfying to wreck the map in whatever way you see fit.
Where Battlefield 6 thrives is where the series has always had your adrenaline pumping, in large-scale, open battles across giant maps. I spent a chunk of time in Conquest, the core mode where you’re securing and holding objectives while depleting the lives of your foes. These battles are unlike anything you can find in other shooters, with so much going on that it could be overwhelming, but balanced by smaller squads of four (ideally one of each class) supporting each other within much larger team structures. It’s chaotic in the best way, and the visuals impressively keep up with the levels of mass destruction.
A challenge I’ve always had with previous games in the franchise is the frustration of sometimes spawning nowhere near where the action is, forcing you to run back, and potentially get popped off by an enemy as soon as you arrive. This wasn’t an issue I came across in the same way here; the maps definitely feel huge, but getting back into the battle never seemed that far away. It might be too early to call (I spent around 45-60 minutes in each game mode), but the balancing feels spot on here, with very little boring downtime.
Squad Deathmatch is a close-quarters faceoff that places Battlefield 6 more firmly in that twitch-shooter Call of Duty territory, but it’s a lot of fun to play too, as is Domination. These classic game modes don’t feel out of place; in fact, they’re a breath of fresh air for a more intense, quick fix, when you don’t have time for all-out warfare that can last up to 40 minutes in Conquest, with teams jostling for position. Gunplay feels smooth, and the time-to-kill feels right, although these smaller maps did mean shotguns were extremely prevalent, and our squad noted they felt a bit overpowered, with a longer range than expected.
The last mode we got to test out was Breakthrough, with teams split essentially into attackers and defenders; one of these felt wonderful as we pushed forward from point to point, keeping foes on their toes, while a round directly after found us completely pinned down by snipers near our spawn point, unable to make a dent. Multiplayer can be fickle and frustrating, but also exhilarating and thrilling, and the highs certainly outweigh the lows. I didn’t get to play the new mode, Escalation, with fewer and fewer control points as the round progresses forcing intense combat areas, but even without that, what I’ve seen so far of the multiplayer offering is incredibly solid.
Small tweaks in Battlefield 6 make all the difference; when a squadmate is down, you can grab them and pull them away from danger, reviving them while you do it. It feels totally badass when you pull it off, while making a lot of sense; so many other shooters, you just have to lie there or crawl slowly towards a pal, but here it’s a gratifying action-movie moment that can make a difference. You can also peek and lean around corners, land in a combat roll to decrease fall damage, and even hitch a ride on vehicles by grabbing onto the side of them, for a handy shortcut into the battle when there are no available seats.
A shout out must be made to the audio in Battlefield 6, too. They’ve captured the feeling of being in an active warzone so well, and that’s due largely to the visceral sound design. Gunfire comes at you from all directions, and there’s a cacophony of explosions, shouting, vehicles zooming last, squad banter and more that is polished, intense and not at all repetitive. It’s the cherry on top of a delicious violent sundae.
There’s a lot more I could talk about, but that’s my lasting impression so far after spending the day learning all about Battlefield 6’s multiplayer: The action-movie stuff. The “holy shit” moments that happened in every single match I played. I pictured myself on the couch at home, playing with my mates, trading insane stories of the all-out war happening all around us. More than anything, I’m absolutely itching to play more, and that’s something I haven’t confidently been able to say about a Battlefield game for a long while.
With a “Battlefield Universe” promised, including a single-player campaign, other unannounced game modes and a long-term plan for multiplayer content in the future, Battlefield 6 is the shot in the arm that the series needed, and could very well be the must-play shooter of 2025. Let’s hope all of the other pieces fit into place.
Battlefield 6 launches on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC on October 10.
For more on Battlefield 6, check out our interview with Battlefield Studios.
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Checkpoint Gaming was flown to Los Angeles as a guest of EA for this hands-on preview.
About the Author
Luke Mitchell
he/him
Luke spends his time making radio, playing video games, binge-watching TV, getting unreasonably invested in wrestling, and hanging out with his beautiful pets.
