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In a world dominated by ‘next gen’ shooters, science fiction, and concept driven games, it’s nice to see a polished, well made throwback like Battlefield 1 succeed.

For a long time, the Battlefield franchise was in danger of becoming stale, another clone to the popular Call of Duty franchise. Indeed, many of us could see the slow descent into banality. We could see that transition starting with the introduction of a progression based ‘unlock’ system and DLC multipacks. While DICE’s newest game doesn’t eliminate all of these problems, it certainly bucks the trend of modern gaming.

To begin with, Battlefield 1 is a wonderfully fresh release from EA. It combines the simple, tried and tested gaming experience derived from early 20th century wars, with the polished sophistication and the smoothness of 21st century gaming. For the first time in awhile, the Battlefield single player campaign manages to hold the attention, mixing personal stories with jaw dropping backdrops and solid gameplay, which remains surprisingly fresh even after repeat playthroughs. Neither do the main stories tone down the bleak, abject horror of World War I’s battlefields. There’s none of the nostalgic glory we’ve come to expect from last gen shooters, but rather a gritty and realistic interpretation of ‘The Great War’.

Another welcome change is the addition of a sneak mechanic to the game. During several moments you find yourself outnumbered behind enemy lines, requiring the use of stealth to survive. When Battlefield has attempted this in the past, the mechanic often seemed rather clunky and arbitrary, but it’s fair to say that isn’t the case with this latest iteration. Through the use of low light and lures you can safely navigate unseen amongst the enemy, though the thrill seekers amongst you will be happy to know the game doesn’t force this upon you too harshly. Another staple of DICE gaming, destructible terrain, makes its return as well. Although, due to the fact that vehicles are a lot harder to counter, you should expect to see plenty of once safe redoubts reduced to rubble.

Moving on to the multiplayer, the one criticism I do have with Battlefield 1 is the slight gameplay imbalance vehicles poses. Naturally when striving for realism, one must realize that the average soldier in World War I is practically useless in the face of a tank, but that’s seldom a consolation in multiplayer. When you combine that with the rather open maps with long sight lines, it’s easy to see why vehicles rule the day during online play. This is only somewhat counteracted by the in-game balancing measure that supplies a ‘super unit’ (either a zeppelin or an armoured train) to the losing side, a well meant but poorly implemented idea as this tips the scales too far in the opposite direction most times and hands a victory to the losing team. The snipers among you will be happy to hear you’re still the kings of multiplayer. Indeed with automatic weapons restricted to close range due to their inaccuracy and the trend towards bolt action weapons during that period, a good sniper has more relative power than ever before.

A rather interesting feature of the new game is its ‘Conquest’ mode. This mode is essentially a rolling battle across a huge sprawling map that allows the attackers three attempts to push the defenders out. If successful, the losing team is pushed back to another map and the game continues, following the story of a World War I campaign faithfully. I get the impression this is a game mode that’s going to stand up very well and that DICE intend to flesh out.

In short, Battlefield 1 is a smooth and tight game play experience, relying on robust core game play which has been polished to a shine. Despite the minor imbalance issues present in nearly all online games at launch, it’s quite easy to see this game having a long run of online play helped along by the updates DICE has in store.