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I used to flip between Call of Duty and Battlefield as my go-to shooter series. Don't get me wrong, I've always had time for Halo, and as more modern series like Destiny and Overwatch came about, these started taking more and more of my attention. But in the heyday of PS3 and Xbox 360, I only really had eyes for CoD and Battlefield. Today, it's a completely different story. Battlefield is a shell of its former self, and Call of Duty has become such a mega live-service behemoth that it feels as though you have to commit your entire being to the franchise to stay up to date. Just because this is the current climate for the franchises doesn't mean that I don't have a soft spot for them, so when I saw that everyone and their grandma was playing what seems to be a low-poly version of Battlefield, a game known as BattleBit Remastered, I just knew that I had to see for myself how this massive-multiplayer shooter stacks up.
Let me just start by saying this game, albeit as a still rather rough Early Access project, proves that gameplay trumps visuals. Without question. Sure it's nice watching skyscrapers crumble into tiny pieces thanks to the power of the Frostbite Engine, but if the game is fundamentally not fun to play at its core, then this means very little to actual players. BattleBit Remastered is one of the best examples of this, as this is a game that isn't striking or eye-catching, in fact at a first glance you wouldn't be remiss to assume it was some Roblox invention. But it's not. It's a game that takes the best parts of the crazy Battlefield gameplay and simply allows it to shine without having to figure out how to make the experience as realistic and pretty as possible, without compromising performance.
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If you've played a Battlefield game before, you'll become very familiar with what BattleBit Remastered looks to offer. There are a host of class types that offer unique mechanics, tons of customisable weapons, an array of vehicles to drive and pilot, all set on sprawling and expansive maps that can be blown into smithereens. There really is a lot to delve into here, as there are tens of different types of guns, all of which feature their own progression systems that allow you to unlock new attachments by earning experience with the weapon. This is on top of an overarching progression and experience system that unlocks new weapons and tools as your career level increases. Again, it's all very Battlefield.
As is the gameplay and gunplay. It's tight, responsive, and designed in a way that it promotes player agency. This isn't an arena shooter with maps that have three lanes, it's a sandbox essentially, and you can decide where to go at any given time, something which works because the maps don't feel empty thanks to BattleBit Remastered supporting whopping 254 player servers (i.e. two 127-player teams). The guns are thrilling to use too, and don't have that same level of cumbersome feeling that a lot of other massive-multiplayer shooters do, all because this game isn't looking to be realistic first-and-foremost. It's looking to be fun.
To me, this is BattleBit's biggest strength. The game is just fundamentally fun to play. It's not as demanding or skill-sensitive as a Call of Duty, yet doesn't attempt to be so immersive that it loses itself as is the case with modern Battlefield games. It's a great title to simply log on for a few hours each week without repercussions and without feeling like you're missing something.
Thanks to BattleBit Remastered's core style of design, the game is also built for high frames-per-second gameplay, and accessible gameplay at that. You don't need some battlestation of a PC to be able to run this game, as is the case with modern CoDs and Battlefields, no you can probably even run this game rather effectively on a Steam Deck or even a Nintendo Switch, if the developers fancied porting it over there at some point. Why? The low-poly graphics mean that you simply need a 4th Gen Intel i5, a GTX 600 Series GPU, and 8GB of RAM to run the game at its recommended specifications, which generally speaking is the sort of technology that probably powers the dusty desktop from 2003 that your grandparents still use.
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It's not all fun and games or hunky dory. There are some clear areas that need improvement. The user interface and scoreboards, for example, are very challenging to pick out important and relevant information to the player. Then there's the sound design, which is difficult to make heads or tails of. Granted, there are a lot of explosions in BattleBit Remastered so sound does get drowned out, but being able to hear ally footsteps more clearly than enemy footsteps is a problem in my books. And while I'm poking holes in BattleBit, the time-to-kill values seem a bit all over the shop. Sometimes you'll annihilate an enemy and then other times it feels like they are bullet sponges, and this feels the exact same for receiving damage from opposing players.
Yet, considering this in an Early Access title, a game that is very affordably priced at that, you can forgive some of the weaknesses that BattleBit Remastered has right now. With time and assuming the areas in need of improvement are tackled, there is a prime opportunity for this game to really cement itself as a great Steam indie title. If you have £10 to spare, definitely consider spending it on this game and not some V-Bucks or a skin you'll forget about in a couple of days.
