Battlefield V in beta test shows that DICE still has realism in shooting games

With the duel beta tests for Battlefield V and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, we finally have a better idea of ​​what will distinguish each game. Battlefield V wins on the realism of the experience. But the blackout mode of the Black Ops 4 is very well done, making it a welcome addition to the not-so-realistic royal battle mode that all major shooters are starting to embrace.

One of the major new features of Battlefield V is Grand Operations. This makes the battles of more than 64 players more dramatic, drawing on historical events such as Germany's invasion of Norway during the Second World War. During last week's beta test, I participated in the Battle of Narvik, where the British attempted to detain the Germans in 1940 in the port city. Narvik served as an ice-free port for the iron supplies that both parties wanted, putting up a desperate battle that has not received much attention in the history books.

Above: The view of my tank in Battlefield V.

Image credit: EA

This is the kind of configuration that has been made for big operations, where the back and forth can change to the minute. The bouts last four days of play, with matches lasting half an hour or more. With Narvik, you can participate in land, air and sea combat. If your team loses a turn, your team will have fewer resources on the next turn. I saw this happen because the Germans lost a round but got bonus points for successfully evacuating the soldiers. The fourth day of the battle only occurs if the teams are tied at the end of the third day. On this last day, each death is permanent and both camps start with limited health and ammunition. If all members of a team are eliminated, this team can no longer appear in the final fight.

The map was so big that I had to steer to find the front line. Inevitably, I spent a few lives running too close to the action and getting shot at. In the first part of the video above, I'm having a good time with an antitank gun about nine minutes away. But I probably stayed too long at the antitank gun. I also enjoyed being able to install one of the machine gun emplacements while the British were coming down the railroad tracks. At the end of the second day, we lost two of the three sectors. That day, I managed to get a death rate of 1.5 or 9 dead and six deaths.

Above: Battlefield V

Image credit: EA

I love the appearance of stats, air maps, opening cinematics and voiceovers. This makes you feel immersed in the action of a real battle. And of course, the gameplay is fun. The combination of the ambient sounds of battle and beautiful graphics makes it so realistic.

Some parts are not realistic, of course. A cool gameplay addition is the possibility for the engineer to create barriers, protection against sandbags and other deterrents everywhere on the battlefield. But the speed with which this happens is superhuman, because no one wants to be shot at with barbed wire. The environment is highly destructible because you can break through the barriers in the tanks and blast the houses realistically.

On the other hand, when I was playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, I always knew I was playing a game. The graphics looked like games a few years ago. Sure, I was playing on the PlayStation 4, which does not look like a PC. But the Blackout card (and Black Ops 4 cards in general) gives the impression that you play in an artificial arena Hunger Games, with many more points where realism collapses.

And that's probably the distinction between what games are trying to achieve. Call of Duty is designed for non-stop action, and Battlefield delivers action without sacrificing realism.

Here is the second part of the video below. Towards the end, I get my first chance to ride in a German tank. But my team managed to lose all the battles over three days, so we did not have to spend any extra time.

I only wish to have more things to blow up in this particular battle. I played Battlefield V on a desktop (a few years) with a GeForce GTX 980 Ti, 8GB of main memory, an Intel Core i5-4590 processor running at 3.3 GHz. It worked well at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 at 60 hertz.