Battlefield 6 Review: Best Since BF4?

0:01Spawn on Me is the premier podcast spotlighting people of color. Every week we talk news, what we've been playing, and tell you who's invited to the cookout. Our show is all about talking about gaming through a prism of blackness because we are the culture. Welcome to Brocago, y 'all. Yo, what up everybody in Brocago? This is the Spawn Me Podcast with Khalif Adams. I'm your host, Khalif Adams. Hope you are doing well. Hope you're having a fantastic week and hoping that you are getting in where you fit in. it is October 12th. The year is moving as fast as possible and is moving as quickly as it has been for most of this year, which seems like it's flown by in a real way.

0:45And I am excited because we have a very cool episode this week with a full review of one of the biggest games of the year in Battlefield 6 with some other stuff that's going to be coming up a little bit later in another episode. This one's going to be just about Battlefield. We're just going to be doing a live review of the game. in this episode. But if you missed our last episode, please go check those out on the feeds. Make sure you go in and check in all that. We had fan from acclaim on the show and the team from acclaim on the show to go talk about their resurgence in the space and how they are making dope moves in the video game industry.

1:21And it was super, super fun to be able to talk to Mark from the team about all the dope stuff that he's been working on, his Bronx roots. So we can share some time with that. And again, getting a chance to hear more about what they've been doing. So make sure you're checking us out on YouTube, on podcast platforms all around the world, and make sure you are subscribing to the show, sharing the show, and all of that goodness here. So I'm excited because I have been a big fan of Battlefield. I have, you know, we got a chance to go to the reveal event a couple months ago. I got a chance to have some more hands on time.

2:01We've had the game a little bit earlier. You know, Embargo has already dropped. It was on Friday. You know, it's been a couple of days afterwards. Now we're getting a chance to see what the game looks like in its full glory with full people on the servers. You know, when I was playing and getting time in with it, it was basically, you know, bot servers because we didn't have full players on. And now we get a chance to check out the game in its full glory with all the modes and all the maps and stuff ready. and you know i'm really excited for it so you know what let's just jump into our battlefield 6 review

2:47so battlefield comes to us you know as a game that i have been dying to get my hands on something that i've been playing for a long time something that i've been looking forward to since many many years out you know we've had a couple of games that have not been good in the space for a while those games have not been great and it's been one of those things where if you don't have a game that feels good it is hard to really get yourself motivated for the next version of the game and as a person who was deep into the battlefield space for a long period of time the name of our podcast is based off of the the idea that comes from the battlefield lineage and the battlefield series and the spawn on me uh kind of uh you know lower third that happens or the kind of message you get uh when you're in the battlefield and you're looking to spawn on your other teammates so you have a good space to to land is a part of the ethos of our show so me being able to go to the the event and and and be blessed with early copies of the game shout out to our friends over ea shout out to our friends over in the pr side um and getting a chance to not only say what's up to the team and you know the folks like andy mcnamara and and vincent pella over at respawn and all those other other places has always been a pleasure and a privilege to be able to be able to to be close to those folks and be able to you know give them some some some my thoughts about where they're at and what the game looks like and give them some pats on the back when when it's time to do that and i think this game is if you're a fan of the battlefield series, if you're a fan of what this game is trying to do, if you're a fan of big time, big battle warfare, Battlefield 6 is one of the best versions of Battlefield I've ever played.

4:34I know everyone's going to jump in, especially in the early days and say, well, this doesn't work and this wasn't working. And this one particular thing felt a little bit weird or this other, you know aspect didn't feel as good i mean most games in the first couple of days that are that that they're out and being played by the public are gonna feel a little bit off they're gonna feel like you're still getting your sea legs you got to figure out what your controller settings are going to be like and what everything else that kind of connects to that feels like and from a baseline perspective even before i started tuning things and feeling like getting into the groove of stuff, this game just feels good.

5:12Like it feels good from every layer of the package that you get. There's one small part that I'll talk about in a couple of minutes that didn't necessarily feel like it's hitting the mark for what the quality standard is for the Battlefield series, or at least it's kind of reminiscent of, you know, what you see in newer development for a part or piece of a game that is coming together. But as a person who continued to figure out good ways to be involved with all of this stuff. This game feels really, really good. They've done the smart thing of giving you a good amount of maps in the first couple of days.

5:51You have nine maps you can go into at launch with more coming at the rest of, I think, in the end of the year, or at least before the new year starts. So you have nine maps that span a bunch of different locales. One of my favorites, of course, is the Brooklyn locale, which I think is super good. They've done a really good job of replicating what Dumbo looks like. If you're familiar with what the Dumbo area is in New York and Brooklyn, it looks extremely good. Like the gun sounds fantastic. The gun variations that you have and the kinds of different tools that you have within your tool set feel extremely smart and feel really well done with some new perks and so new additions to the space for various parts and various classes that you do have and outside of that then you have a ton of new modes too that go along with the game that i think really bridge out a really smart and really uh fun package for you to kind of get your your baseline together for a lot of that you know a lot of those are coming back you know you have rush you have conquest you have those big to big map uh modes and then you have smaller ones like capture the flag and kind of some CQB close quarters combat maps where it's more of a kind of like maybe 10 to 12 player size maps as opposed to the usual kind of 32 or 64 player maps that you have with the big vehicles and all that kind of stuff.

7:17So it's always a good space to be able to bridge that gap for folks who are not only newer players, but veterans of the series like myself, who were who kind of like cut their teeth on on games like battlefield 4 which i feel like was the game that most people who paid attention to what battlefield was doing at its highlight at the at its heyday that was like the pinnacle of what the battlefield experience was was battlefield 4 then you had battlefield 1 which didn't do as well you had a lot of conversations about the the main protagonist you had a lot of conversations about the time period all those things felt a little bit weird excuse me you know battle for five i mean battle for five i mean and you had 2042 that felt a little bit weird in those spaces but I think it was a game that people that people were embracing because they didn't have anything else to really dig into Battlefield 6 goes back to the drawing board and then also moves everything forward in really smart ways so like you have your classic different types of archetypes right you have the assault class you have your engineer class you have a recon class and then you still have your support class and those have done extremely well like those continue to be you know the baseline of what you have and those particular archetypes give you very specific things you can do the assault class now has a ladder that you can use to breach a specific space you have the engineer class which is there for anti-tank and anti-air stuff one of the cool parts about the recon class now is like just using your scope you can auto spot people with just kind of painting your scope across people and one of my favorite things that has now kind of been into the mix and they've talked about this at the event and they talked about this during some of the PR stuff was the new movement that you have within this game and you can see in that lower right hand picture this moment where the the support character is kind of basically pulling you know someone out of the fight.

9:20If you're on the ground and you're looking to get picked up, you don't just necessarily need the paddles now. People can drag you out of combat. You can be kind of pulled back into the space in a really smart way because it then moves you closer to the battle. You get to be able to move towards the front lines of the field. You can stay within the fight. You don't have to necessarily die automatically waiting for someone to pick you up. Now other people can pick you up and drag you out of danger and pull you behind cover. You now have a drop roll. So if you're kind of jumping from a higher place, instead of just like hitting the floor and losing health, if you time it properly, you can roll to a combat roll and still keep your momentum.

10:06There's a crouch run that almost looks like a roadie run from Gears of War, which is super helpful because it muffles your footsteps. and it also kind of gets you into a lower space so your head isn't exposed all the time to be able to get shot. And these small little changes have really made the game feel special. It makes it feel different and it makes it feel good in a way that we haven't necessarily seen before. And I think it's a testament to the team that they are building out all of these small systems that go alongside not only the ability to have these much larger maps and also have these variations on those maps, which I think is one of the things that the team had talked about.

10:48And I didn't really understand the modularity of what they were talking about, but you would have the same map, but in certain kind of game types, you would be able to chunk out those maps into smaller sections. And even within that map understanding, you could still be able to get different variations on like where the the spawn points would be where the the the cat points would be where the mcoms would be which are the places that you try to to take over and kind of you know if you're playing a king of the hill or you're playing a capture the capture the space uh kind of game type you have different variations on what those will look like even in the same game type but it would be different configurations of that map so like a quick example would be you know you here you have a picture of of a breakthrough game type.

11:41And you can see that the configuration here in that same map looks a certain way on this particular screen. But even if you look at this version of it, you know, different amount of players, different game type, but the configuration of where players are gonna go, what pieces you're gonna be taking over, like what does that look like is vastly different. And I think that makes it feel really cool to be able to see how they've built out this game to not only be something where you're getting different vibes and different flows for map placement, but it gives you the ability to kind of keep those maps in rotation, but give them a different feel every time, which is really hard to do.

12:27It's a smart way of thinking about all of those pieces because it literally gives you more ways to play this game in a way that we hadn't really seen before. Those parts are really dope. I think the gameplay has been so much fun getting a chance to play with actual players now and having those folks be in the mix and having those people, you know, be in the space and getting a chance to showcase what that looks like from a gameplay perspective has just been really fun as a person who has been looking for this kind of experience and looking for the ability to play with a team. and to really strategize and to figure out good ways to to motivate around the map as a person who loves to play the support class and figure out good ways to be helpful to my team it feels like the best version of battlefield that i have played in a very long time this is probably and i would definitely say if i would have stamped this so far this is the best version of battlefield that we've seen in a very long time this game makes you want to play it every day i was thinking about this thing.

13:38I was on a small mini vacation this weekend, went to go hang out with some family. All I could think about was playing this game. All I could think about was trying to figure out good ways to get back to playing and leveling up my, my characters and leveling up my, my, my kits and, and, and trying to figure out good ways to think about, you know, Ooh, if I strategize and move here, like, what does that mean for being able to set up good spots for my team? What does it mean to be able to find good choke points, to be able to get good kills, to be able to figure out good ways to learn the maps? And all of those pieces just feel extremely good.

14:14But I have been so excited to get other folks back into the fold and to be able to play this game and to be able to, you know, come back to it with more people who now understand, you know, not only how different this is from a Call of Duty game, but how they are supposed to be playing it. I think a lot of folks still who may not necessarily be Battlefield veterans are still trying to compare this game to a Call of Duty, which I think is a wrongheaded thing to do. but only but also because it really tells you that like folks who may not necessarily be playing multiple versions of these kinds of games don't really understand the kind of foundational pieces of what that means for being able to play these games well and to be able to if you're competitive what does it mean to be able to win at games like this is really a team game it's really about building out what this looks like for uh team play and things like that so i've been playing it across multiple platforms.

15:12Been playing it on Xbox Series X, been playing it on PlayStation 5 Pro, been playing it also on PC. And of course, PC has the most beautiful version of the game. You know, I'm running it on a 4090. It looks stunning in all those ways. Like you get all of the goodness that you want from a game like this when you have so much destruction that they've definitely tried to figure out and and and kind of keep that levolution feel that that was what you know battlefield 4 was known for you know strategic uh destruction uh is is a real thing like knowing where people are and being able to say i may not necessarily be able to get over to that to that building but i can blow that building up with people in it and be able to not only you know make some new choke points but be able to take out players in the ways that i want feels extremely good you know there's still a br that's supposed to be coming out very very soon as well that's connected to this game i think it's happening towards the end of the month which will be a whole other uh part of the game to really dig into and to have fun with and again this game from a multiplayer perspective is the pinnacle of what this series is is looking to be even in this early stage even in the stage where they haven't necessarily had the chance to continuously tune in the ways that they have but what they've been able to do is they've been listening really closely to the community they have found good ways to really pull in you know smart folks who have been playing these series for a long time alongside newbies who are kind of learning the ropes and they've already made really smart changes to not only you know some of the weapons like the shotgun is isn't as lethal it's still it's still pretty rough in terms of getting kills and TGK is really low, the time to kill.

17:01But for the most part, anybody who is a fan of 4, this is your Battlefield game for the future. This is the game where I can see them not necessarily making this an annual franchise, but bouncing off of this baseline, this kind of foundation, and figuring out good ways to keep this game rolling for a long time. I know Battlefield 4 lasted for a very long time before the next version of that game came out. And players were still happy with it. And people were still excited about getting a chance to play it all the time. And still were, you know, making servers and trying to find good ways to get people together for things like that.

17:42What I also love in this game is that they've now given the ability for players to make their own maps. That we have to do a whole other conversation around. I'm already seeing people making versions of Call of Duty maps within this game, which I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing. I don't know if I necessarily rock with that idea of let's just make Call of Duty maps in Battlefield. Because, again, Call of Duty maps have a very specific purpose. And I don't think they lend well to the style of gameplay that you get in a Battlefield game. but it's cool to be able to see people learning the editor being able to to to figure out good ways to to to bridge off of things that have already been made from the community or from from the battlefield team while also reinventing some ideas around what that is i saw a space invader game that already got kind of made within this within the uh the editor and got put on the community tab that's cool i love stuff like that things like that is really really are really really dope.

18:40I appreciate the fact that people are figuring those things out. And it gives me hope to be able to figure out like, oh, I want to play around with the editor and see what I can do. Because there are some aspects of the maps that I think are really good. And there are some features of specific maps that I'm like, oh, I'd want to use the Brooklyn Bridge as a place to be able to have a really cool map. And people are already doing that already. Because it's a part of the map that you can see currently in most of the EA made maps. But you can't really engage with them if you're a player yet but you can do it on the community side like you'll be able to to to kind of you know be in spaces and use assets that that aren't necessarily the usual ones which i think is super cool and again gives this game something different than the previous games in a much bigger way in a much more community-based way um with all of the good there's one aspect of the game that i don't necessarily know is is really hitting the way i want it to and i would say that that was probably the single player single player looks great.

19:39I think one of the things that is kind of difficult about that game or about that part of the game is it's a little bit wonky in terms of the way that this campaign has been given to us. I think it is visually inconsistent. Like I think in some moments, there are some breathtaking parts of the game that are happening. There are some other aspects where facial animations look really really janky uh you know movement between segments where you're kind of transitioning from um a moment that is kind of scripted to one where you're starting to then have control of the gameplay some of those feel a little bit antiquated and old um i think the story is is cool i think it's the kind of you know usual you know we found a bad guy who has taken over a pmc group and is now kind of threatening the rest of the world i don't think you're you're finding a lot of new uh things there even though they're doing some fun um uh kind of story beats in there i think they they knock out some of those pretty well and they showcase some of the destruction in the world pretty well within that but i don't think it is a campaign that you would want to go through more than once i think once you've done it and you've kind of gone through and gotten the collectibles or gotten the things that will give you skins or things like that it's kind of forgettable in that way and it sucks because motive is is brilliant like you know them in in the dead space remake and and them with with what will be the the dope iron man game that they're going to be working on like i have high expectations for what they do and for what they bring to the table um but it felt very much so like this was a first time go through for making a game or making a mode like this, at least for them.

21:29I think characters are interesting, but I think the kind of execution wasn't there in the way that I had hoped. I was kind of really hoping that we'd get a new version of the Battlefield campaign in a way that really would give them something, a leg up, or at least something comparable to what we see in the Call of Duty space. And I think what you wind up seeing is just how many, you know, just how having so many reps in with companies, with multiple studios kind of making campaign content for the Call of Duty series. They are sharing information. They are seeing how those things work between those studios.

22:05And they've had more time to be able to build out what that kind of formula is for them, as opposed to Motive, who have just kind of who are coming into this game, you know, potentially kind of new at this. it doesn't mean that this campaign can't get better in the future for the series. I think they probably will have a ton of learnings that come from this in a way that will really give them a lot of space to grow. And that's what I hope for. I hope that they get another chance to make something dope here in this space. So maybe there's some add-on content that they get a chance to do. Give themselves some time to really, you know, map all those things out and figure out the things that make this game good and make these kind of characters cool.

22:46make these characters cool but in this first iteration coming back from you know a hiatus for a couple of years of not having a battlefield game i feel like even with the the ability to have this new version of this game out with multiple versions of um you know tools and and things that are kind of coming to the space the ai didn't feel that smart they don't really kind of pay attention sometimes to where you're fighting. You know, some of those things just don't make a lot of sense in terms of the story. And again, that unevenness of the graphical layers of what this game is trying to do just show themselves too easily.

23:27It just winds up being like, this game looks really pretty and it looks really weird and kind of antiquated in some other spaces, which sadly is unfortunate for a game like this that has grown and will continue to grow in so many different ways across its lineage and across how many times this game is going to be played over the years, which we've already seen. Steam numbers were crazy, you know, over over 600 ,000 people playing the game on launch day. No, no, no numbers exactly on what was there for the console side, but I would consider it to probably be probably even more on the console side across, you know, the two platforms.

24:06but man this game is dope i am so hyped for everybody who gets to play this game i am very excited to jump in with all of you in brocago and go and go jump onto some maps and play some games together i am so excited and so happy to see the battlefield team get a win and to see the battlefield team come back so strong as they have getting a chance to see them and meet those folks and be able to tell them how excited I was. And then to see all of that come through in their work in a game that I think would probably be a game of the year contender and has finally given some competition to the Call of Duty game in the space.

24:45We now have some really good competition in the FPS space now. It's not just we have the one game that's doing its thing. We have multiple games now that are able to really hold their own and we'll see what happens with Black Ops 7. but I still feel like having played the beta for that we kind of have a good understanding of what that game is going to be giving us it'll be cool to see what they do from the um from the the campaign side of it but I think Battlefield now not only from the multiplayer layer of it but also now from uh the kind of overarching IP and what this game is trying to do they really have something special this is my favorite Battlefield game and it's only been a couple days in I'm dying to play more.

25:29I want more people to play this thing. This is the quintessential Battlefield game for this generation. I think this is the game that will bring people back to Battlefield in a big way, and I'm just so happy to see that it's really coming to fruition and coming together in a real way. So that being said, we're going to have more stuff in a couple of more episodes this week. We have a lot of reviews that I'm doing right now. I'm heads down on a bunch of stuff. There's still some news in the world in the gaming space. There's a lot of discussions to be had. We're hopefully going to be having some folks from the ESA on the show in the next couple of weeks talking about their latest survey that they put out that had some really good stats about the kind of current space, current state of the industry in terms of who we're playing and where they're playing and, you know, who is playing, which I think is one of those discussion points that we always dig into here on our show to say like, yeah, all these people who think that we don't play and think that women don't play and all these other groups don't play are actually playing probably even more than than the kind of understanding of what the base is so we're hopefully having those folks on the show we have a couple of really dope hardware uh reviews coming up very very soon so keep your eyes peeled for that stuff and again thank you so much for rocking like again thank you so much for being a part of of our family here and being a part of our show in in all the ways you can all the ways you can share the show and all the ways you can be a part of this dope project that we call spawn on me so until then until next time have a wonderful rest of your weekend have a wonderful rest of your week definitely hit me up if you want to play some battlefield you can hit me up on blue sky you hit me up on twitter uh and let me know if you want to get some running because i'm down uh and all my friends over ea bravo congratulations on launch uh and much love to all y 'all for putting out one of my favorite games already of 2025 and going into the future i know i will have much many many hours in on this game so until next time much love to you all peace