Battlefield 6 Beta Review: Is the Franchise Back in Action?
Battlefield 6 beta has died down after its first weekend and for many people that was their first real taste of the next generation of Battlefield gameplay. And a lot of sleep was lost as many gamers spent countless hours in the beta and had a good feel for how the game plays. With the dust having settled – for now at least – here are some plain thoughts on exactly what was good, what wasn’t, and the big one: is Battlefield looking like it’s back?
The Cheater Problem
Alas, as is often the case with those free-to-play betas, cheaters made theirselves known in short order. Battlefield’s developers have already reported that a massive 330,000 players have been banned and I imagine the number would be close to the half a million mark by now. It’s just a bummer to see people wasting real money in order to mess with games, especiialy this early on in the life of a game. And the only good advice is, as always, keep on reporting cheaters to maintain an even playing field.
Performance: Console vs. PC
The vast majority of Beta players just played on console to get around the streaming issues experienced with Battlefield 2042 on PC. A lot of them had a great and gameplay-impressive time on PlayStation 5, finally getting their hands on a proper next-gen Battlefield that wasn't held back by old-gen tech.
PC performance, however, seems inconsistent. Some gamers are having a great time playing, while others are experiencing high CPU and VRAM usage, especially when streaming. This is something to keep an eye on as the developers continue to fine-tune the game ahead of full release.
Time-to-Kill (TTK) & Server Issues
Battlefield 6 has a very high TTK – up there with some of the highest I’ve seen in recent years, including the days when DICE was playing around with BFV's TTK all of the time. And while right now the balance feels like it’s just about perfect, there are server issues—say around hit registration—that can skew that experience. Final tweaks on launch might squeeze that into a sweet spot.
Game Modes Conquest Shines
From Advance to King of the Hill, the beta has a fairly robust selection of modes. Conquest remains the definitive Battlefield experience — fast-paced firefights, numerous capture points and no extended downtime between battles like that found in 2042. It’s Battleground 3 all over again.
Spawn logic needs some improvement. There’s nothing more irritating than being spawn killed, and rotating the spawns might be a way to change that.
Weapons & Class Balance
Now, two weapons rule the meta: the M4A1 and shotguns. The M4A1 has a high rate of fire and you’re not fighting with much recoil, but shotguns are also deadly up close. Both are surefire nerf candidates.
Class balance is also questionable, particularly for Assault players that don’t have as many bullets as the other classes. On the flipside the Engineer class felt ridiculously versatile and could very well be the Conquest faithful's default choice.
Movement & Gunplay
Battlefield 6 feels chunky in movement, maybe a little too unwieldy at times. Diving, sliding gives a sense of flow — but over-aggressive movement during firefights can throw off your aim and precision, turning movement into skill-based threat-reward rather than being able to spam mobility like in Call of Duty.
Sniping Feedback
Sniping is fun, but without the old-school bullet drop that made most of the OG Battlefield gamers happy. This has the potential to make long-range shooting feel too risk-free; adding in bullet drop would increase realism and also give sniping that little bit more satisfaction/skill element.
Is Battleground Back?
In numerous ways, yes. Battlefield 6 captures the spirit of those oldies like Battlefield 3, 4 and yes even Hardline to give you chaotic large scale-video game battles, great gunplay and the classic Conquest chaos.
The key question now is whether DICE can keep the instigation alive after launch, with a steady stream of new content updates and maps, alongside ongoing balance updates. Prior to that, feedback has been overwhelmingly positive -despite of the bugs and glitches you expect from a beta.
After around 10 years or waiting for a truly great Battlefield, this could be it.
Final Verdict
Battlefield 6 looks like a mix of what made all its predecessors work: it’s a loud, messy, epic spectacle. But then, this might be what Battlefield loyalists were looking for, if the creators can smooth things over with sensible updates and fix some of the beta rough edges.
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