From the beginning of the Battlefield 6 hype, it just felt a little different. Well, it’s safe to say after some time with the open beta that Battlefield Studios might have something special on their hands. Battlefield 6 has the chance to be everything and more than BF Studios promised fans.
Battlefield 6 Open Beta Pros
The beta was as polished as it could be, after some initial server hiccups and server queues, the game has been stable. My game has only crashed once after six hours of gameplay. The game crossed over 334,000 peak concurrent players during the closed beta, and during the open beta, it hit a staggering 517,853 concurrent peak players. Battlefield 6 is set to be the most popular game in the franchise’s history.
The game looks beautiful. But even when you turn the graphics on “low” to boost PC performance, the game still looks incredible. I also noticed how much better my PC ran the game when I turned everything down. The graphical preset settings are easy to use.
You can destroy everything in this game. It is wild to see all of the buildings crumble. You can shoot out a support beam of a crumbling building, bringing down the entire thing on the enemy team.
All of the guns I’ve used feel like laser beams; you get all of the aim assist, and it feels fantastic. The kits feel unique and useful, and everything besides the shotguns feels pretty balanced.
There is a real skill gap in play here. Between map knowledge and destruction physics, moving through the maps is different every game. Class distribution between the squad plays a huge part, and the vehicles can make or break the team. A good tank player can dominate the map, especially if he’s got “engineers” on board, providing constant heals.
Flying the jets and helicopters takes incredible skill that I’ll never have, and I love that. I love that there are things to grind for in the form of actual skills to acquire.
The game provides incredible cinema. Choppers can be shot down into your building, collapsing the entire thing on your team. The chaos happening all around you is enthralling.
Battlefield 6 Open Beta Cons
There are so many settings in this game. The controller’s aim settings are too much. It doesn’t help that I’m new to Battlefield, but still, why? I hate having to hop down a YouTube rabbit hole just to make my controller settings feel good.
The mini-map location on the lower left of the HUD, in my opinion, isn’t the best. Having the option to adjust it would be awesome. My eyes always go top left naturally, probably from years of playing Warzone. Traditionally, the top-left is a more common location for important HUD information.
The game is a stimulation overload; this isn’t a negative per se, just an observation. The amount of stuff going on is what makes the game intensely captivating, but also draining. Maybe I’m just a 34-year-old washed gamer, but my brain felt pretty rinsed after a couple of hours. I only played Conquest, so I would like to see what the pacing is like on the smaller game modes.
Battlefield fans will hate me for saying this, but this game needs a battle royale game mode to keep all of the new players for the long term, in my opinion. You already have the Battlefield community by the balls with this game, but if you want to keep all of the Warzone dorks around for the long haul, then you need a solid BR. This game will succeed without it, but it could dominate with it.
