Why The Gulag remains Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s best mission (opens in new tab)

Some truths are hard to swallow, but here’s one that I’ve been reluctantly digesting over the last few years. The Battlefield series has had its ups and downs over the course of the last generation, as its overall trajectory continues to bend away from the franchise’s core appeal, to the point where its most recent release, Battlefield 5, felt a far cry from the series’ highpoint of Bad Company 2. 

That’s not to say that DICE’s shooter series hasn’t had its moments since then. Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1, in particular, are fantastic games in their own ways. On the contrary, it’s not so much that the quality of Battlefield games has deteriorated, but rather their identity has shifted, and subsequently narrowed in the process. 

The franchise’s patented brand of destructible, open-ended sandboxes have been slowly switched out for more static, corridor shooter-style arenas that hold more in common with DICE’s recent Star Wars Battlefront games than they do Battlefield. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that kind of shooter. It’s just not the experience I’ve come to know and love from this long revered IP.

Which is where Call of Duty comes in. Battlefield’s primary competitor has been undergoing its own pivot of late, albeit one that swings in the opposite direction. 

Where Call of Duty was once known for its three-lane, close quarters combat, Activision and its rotating roster developers have been empowered by the opportunities of evolving hardware to stretch those parameters upwards and outwards, designing larger maps with higher player counts, vehicular combat, and more. 

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare‘s Ground War mode, while problematic, represented the apotheosis of that evolution… until Call of Duty: Warzone came along and took that scope to even greater heights. Now, with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, we have Fireteam mode, in  which “10 teams in squads of four face off against one another in large-scale maps featuring land/sea/air vehicles and various objectives”. I don’t know about you, but that sounds awfully familiar to me…

Only in Battlefield?

While my impressions of Black Ops Cold War had been somewhat marred by a poor experience with last month’s Open Alpha on PS4, October’s ongoing Beta testing presents a much better picture of Treyarch’s upcoming instalment. Nowhere is that picture more flattering, however, than in the recently released Fireteam mode, which is already a favourite of mine amongst the roster of the game’s new multiplayer modes. 

Set across a collection of large-scale zones (which are almost certainly going to be stitched together to form the next Warzone map), the mode is a tapestry of chaos in all the right ways. There are a number of variants planned, too, but players are currently privy to only one in the beta, Dirty Bomb, whereby teams are tasked with collecting uranium caches to arm and detonate radioactive bombs peppered around the battleground. Blow up a bomb, and its blast zone becomes a toxic wasteland. It’s Conquest meets Rush, with a Warzone twist. 

What’s more, Fireteam’s introduction of squadplay, right down to the ability to respawn on a squadmate, is yet another brazen-faced loan from Battlefield’s playbook, but I’m not even mad about it. Frankly, after long losing interest in Battlefield 5’s unsatisfying shootouts just a few months after its launch, I’m just happy to be enjoying something that emulates the comforting rhythms of classic Battlefield once again. 

To be clear, Call of Duty is still leagues apart from the soaring heights of Battlefield at its best, where RendeZooks (opens in new tab) and destruction multi-kills were just part of the package, and that’s okay too. There’s room for both shooters in the marketplace, and both occupy a space in the genre that caters to different tastes. But that’s just it. With Battlefield currently MIA, I’m more than happy to let Call of Duty come in and fill the vacuum for now, even if it’s not a worthy replacement in and of itself. 

Battlefield 6 is scheduled to launch sometime next year, and with the power of PS5 and Xbox Series X behind it, I hope DICE capitalises on the opportunity to take the series back to its roots, removing the ever encroaching barriers of recent entries to put player experimentation and sandbox strategy back at the forefront ofs its multiplayer combat. If it doesn’t, however, then I don’t see any reason why Call of Duty can’t keep winning me over in the meantime. 

For more, check out the best Call of Duty games in the series’ history, or find out everything you need to know about the PS5 in the video below. 

The post The Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War betas Fireteam mode continues the franchises hard pivot into Battlefield territory appeared first on Game News.

Original story:  Battlefield 5 has big ambitions to change up the 16-year-old shooter series, and its new Grand Operations mode (opens in new tab) might be the most daring of all. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to play it right when the game arrives. Electronic Arts and DICE revealed that Grand Operations will go live “shortly after launch” in a post on Battlefield 5’s official website. The mode has been featured prominently in BF5’s pre-release announcements and trailers, so this is kind of a bummer all around (even if it’s better to get something late than all buggy and awful).

If you’re not familiar with the concept, Battlefield 5’s Grand Operations are a sort of uber-multiplayer that meld together new and classic Battlefield modes. For instance, one Grand Operation starts out with the Allies parachuting into Axis-occupied territory, seeking to destroy a set number of anti-air cannon emplacements. If the Allies complete their objective, they’ll have an advantage in the next round, which will play out with different objectives and potentially a new map. If neither side reaches a decisive victory across multiple in-game “days,” it can even end in a no-respawns war of attrition to be the last side standing.

In other words, Grand Operations are like Battlefield 1 Operations, but grander – more varied objectives, more areas, more potential for that good ol’ Battlefield mix of cinematic action and oddball antics. It’s too bad we won’t be able to play them immediately when Battlefield 5 goes live on October 19 (or earlier if you have EA Access or buy the deluxe version), but at least “shortly after launch” doesn’t sound like it will be too long. Like, probably less than a month, right? Maybe a week and a half? I don’t know.

Battlefield 5’s Tides of War (opens in new tab) – think Fortnite seasons rather than DLC expansions – are set to go live a month after the game launches, so hopefully Grand Operations will be humming along and ready to receive some new stuff by then.

See how Battlefield 5 is learning from Fortnite and Destiny (opens in new tab) in its bid to be the only shooter you’ll need this year. 

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