Battlefield is DICE's military FPS that gamers absolutely love. Last year, it wrestled the crown for best multiplayer FPS out of Call of Duty’s cold dead hands. DICE will tell you that it has🧸 not been an easy road to AAA super stardom. Since 2002, there have bee🍬n multiple entries into the franchise, but not all of them have been hits. There are some duds in their arsenal.
DICE has a simple formula for creating Battlefield games, with large maps, team based combat, and vehicles. Lots and lots of vehicles. When DICE adheres to this formula, gamers line up to snag a copy. When DICE deviates or falters, the games are not a big success. DICE has tried a lot of different things over the years to keep gamers interested and keep them moving from one Battlefield game to the next.
The most common thing that changes from each Battlefield game is the setting. Not the way Call of Duty changes locations, giving gamers have something new to look at in between the shooting. When a Battlefield game goes from Vietnam, to the distance future, then back to World War 1, the gameplay and weapons change with the times. That has led to many successes in the franchise, as well as many of its failures. DICE takes risks with their beloved Battlefield and that is what keeps gamers interested.
15 🥃 Battlefield Play4Free
Imagine if all the great parts of Battlefield 2 and Bad Company were packaged together in a game and that game was free to play. Now stop imagining and wake up, as Battlefield Play4Free did that and it really sucked. Those gamers🐟 that missed this free to play, microtransaction heavy failure of a game ꦜare lucky.
DICE found a way to strip away the fun and function of their successful Battlefield games, as they committed the cardinal sin of multiplayer FPS, by locking the gamers into one class for the entire match. That’s right, there was no changing on the fly to react to the match at hand. Whatever loadout you picked in the beginning was yours until the match ended. The limitations put on gamers were not outweighed by the Battlefield brand of fun and combat.
14 Battlefield Hardline ♚
DICE goes out on a limb every once in a while with their games and Hardline is a perfect example of when that limb snaps and falls out from under them. Maybe it was the flooded market of modern/future military sh🐭ooters or maybe it was t𓆏he current political climate with America’s police force. Regardless of the reason, something drove DICE to make this lackluster game that took gamers off the battlefield and onto the streets of America’s inner cities.
Making this leap from the expansive battlefield to the tight corners of urban combat really liಌmited gamers. The game put you in the role of a cop busting bad guys and took focus away from what made the series so popu꧅lar. Gamers spent more time being stealthy and handcuffing criminals than most police simulator games.
13 🥂 Battlefield Online
Battlefield Online is the only game on this list where DICE handed over most of the development to another company, Neowiz. Released in 2010, the game attempted to remake Battlefield 2 for the free to play audience. Ho𓂃wever, it never really reached the success of the original.
It was geared for Korean audiences who missed the first few Battlefield games and, before launch, it claimed 100 gamer battles would be possible. The game was not a hit in Korea because just a few short years after its release the servers were shut down. It was a quick and easy chance to grab money from a new market for DICE and EA, but this western shooter did not have a following in Korea. It seems that free to play and Battlefield do not mix so well.
12 Battlefield Heroes ꦯ
DICE has a lot of competitors in the multiplayer and single player FPS market. Back in 2009, they tried to take on one of the biggest ones, Team Fortress 2. It did not go so well. Instead of translating the fun and function of Team Fortress to the Battlefield franchise, the game stripped away all that was good🌠 about the series.
The maps were not massive sandboxes that allowed for gamers to use their imagination when it came to winning, as the maps were cramped and repetitive. Where Team Fortress 2 excelled in creating different classes, Heroes fell flat. Add the fact that the game was free to play, which just added the frustration of gamers being pestered💜 with microtransactions, and you have a be𒐪low average game. Everything that was effortless and fun was lost and instead gamers suffered through a bad clone of a good game.
11 Battlefield 2: Modern Combat ꧑
Console gamers got thrown a bone with this entry in to the franchise. Sadly, it wasn’t the best bone DICE has ever thrown. While PC gamers got Battlefield 2, Modern Combat was DICE’s first console game and the last for about three year🦋s, until 2008.
This was DICE’s first single player campaign and it was not a great first attempt. DICE’s inexperience with single player really showed from level design to the actual story. The real travesty was the multiplayer, which DICE knew how to do well. Modern Combat only had two modes and was so poorly optimized that gamers barely stayed connected through an entire match. Those were the lucky ones to get out of the lobby. This early Xbox 360 release failure unfortunately will be echoed again with Battlefield 4 and the Xbox One.
10 Battlefield 4 𒅌
The launch of a game is so crucial to its overall success, both financially and critically. Battlefield 4 was marred by a tremendous about of connectivity issues and bugs that made launch a nightmare for DICE. It didn't help that this game was the first Battlefield to be released on the current generation of consoles, making it a bad first step into a 🌜new era.
DICE scrambled to fix the issues by delaying future projects to address the serious issues. Many gamers gave up and never played the game after the patches were released. Another aspect game to the game that really sunk the launch was the incredibly short single player campaign. Eventually the game leveled out and provided some good old fashioned Battlefield fun. However, the launch set DICE back tremendously and caused a great deal of damage to 💙the franchise.
9 ✤ Battlefield 1943
Battlefield 1943 was the band-aid or bridge while gamers waited for the next Bad Company game. The game itself was more of a large scale DLC than a full release game. It only included four maps, but this time it was in the Pacific Theater of WWII. So it was a little different from 1942.
The real draw for this Battlefield game was on consoles. It was a chance for these gamers to get to know the original 1942 with a fresh coat of paint and the game even broke a few records for downloads on Xbox Live. But it is the overall experience that places it on the back end of this list. The game was a place holder, waiting for the next game to really improve with actual innovation. 1943 was playable and offered a real Battlefield experience, it was just not complete.
8 🥀 Battlefield 2142
DICE had tackled World War II and modern combat, so they looked to the future with this 2006 release. This game is very black and white among die hard Battlefield fans. Those that love it, do so because of the Tit🌼an mode. In Titan, teams would attempt to take down the opposinﷺg team’s warship by attacking one of two weak points. Fans have been clamoring for a sequel or update to this mode ever since.
The game overall was a weird but fun venture into the future of gaming and warfare. Sadly, the mix of mechs and future weapons were not quite enough to rank this game higher. That is because outside the Titan and Conquest mode, there wasn’t anything else to do▨ in the game. With all that in mind, it was still a great first step into the future war genre of FPS.
7 Battlefield Viet✱nam
DICE gets a lot of points for trying a new theater of war with Battlefield Vietnam and this game also featured a real leap forward in terms of gameplay mechanic🧜s for the studio. The two sides were vastly different and created unique strategies and playing ܫstyles depending on which side of the conflict you were on.
On the American side, gamers felt the weight of the US Military behind them in the guns they used and the vehicles they had at their disposal. The Vietnamese side was more agile and stealthy, with the ability to rush the Americans from all sides without warning. Very few games since have felt so balanced and authentic to the setting. DICE’s attention to detail flourished in Battlefield Vietnam and gamers responded positively.
6 Battlefield 1𒐪942
The Battlefield that started it all took everyone by surprise back in 2002 and gamers still venture back to Wak💖e Island to t🌜his very day. The PC community has really kept this game alive and kicking with mods that took a great game and made it iconic.
Not many gamers had ever played a 64 player match spanning land, air, and sea when the game was first released. The focus on classes, mid-match tactical decisions, and teamwork struck a chord with PC gamers who were being left behind for console gamers. Each map favored a different approach that DICE really built on throughout the series. 1942 was such a strong first entry into the series and t🍸he basis for all of the successful games that followed.