The Battlefield 6 beta was met with a wave of optimism over the Summer, and now, launch day is finally upon us. I've been playing the game in early access over the past week, giving me ample opportunity to see the campaign and dive into multiplayer modes. I'm pleased to report that Battlefield 6 is a strong return to form, doing away with all the controversial changes found in Battlefield 2042 and delivering the quintessential Battlefield experience. On top of that, we have some PC benchmark numbers, so you can get an idea of how well the game runs with DLSS on/off and with Frame Generation enabled and disabled.
Campaign:
The Battlefield 6 campaign is a grand return to form. Gone are the tacked-on ‘anthology' missions. Here we are presented with a full 9-mission long campaign, following a squad of marines as they attempt to precisely dismantle the Pax Armata private military force before the world crumbles into chaos. You aren't a super soldier either, a few bullets can knock you down, so you will have to use all of the tools at your disposal even in the single-player mode. Thankfully, as the leader of your squad, you can give out commands to your AI teammates to smoke or grenade targets, blow up tanks or helicopters and scout the area ahead for a quick reveal of enemy locations. If you ever get knocked down, your squadmate will pick you up but there are a limited number of defibrillator charges, so you'll need to use cover and think tactically – especially on higher difficulty levels.
The campaign takes place in settings all across the world. If I had to pick a favourite mission though, it would be No Sleep, set in the dense streets of Brooklyn and capping off with a high-speed chase with a train. The campaign slows down a tad in mission 7, Nile Guard, in which you spend around half of your time in a slow-moving tank shooting at other slow-moving tanks set against the backdrop of the Egyptian pyramids. It is not a bad mission, but it was easily my least favourite. Fortunately, the pace gets picked right back up for the final two missions, Operation Ember Strike and Always Forward, which combined, offer an excellent send-off to the campaign with a mix of wide-open spaces for sniper shootouts, tense close-quarter battles, vehicle combat and lots of explosions.
For me, the Battlefield 6 campaign ranks highly amongst some of my favourite ‘military shooter' campaigns. It is easily the best one I've played since Modern Warfare (2019). In terms of where it ranks amongst Battlefield campaigns, it is in my top 3, falling just short of Bad Company 1 & 2 but ranking above Battlefield 3 & 4. I would certainly like to see some of these characters again in a future Battlefield campaign.
The campaign is just one component of the overall Battlefield 6 package, however, so now, let's dive into what's going on with the multiplayer.
Multiplayer:
The Battlefield 6 campaign was a huge return to form, and I am pleased to report that the same can be said for multiplayer. The original class roles, Assault, Support, Engineer and Recon are all back in their rightful place, doing away with the controversial ‘specialist' classes found in Battlefield 2042. This simple change cannot be praised enough. It takes us away from the ‘codification' of shooters and puts us firmly back in Battlefield territory. The rest of the game's design also screams Battlefield and is a true celebration of the series' strengths.
Destructible environments have been dialled up to 11. While Battlefield 4 featured one massive destructible set piece in certain maps, in Battlefield 6, the majority of buildings and walls can be blown to pieces. Having trouble with a squad hunkered down in a house? Get a tank over there and blow it up. Need to force a sniper out of position? Shoot a rocket or two at the tower they are perched in, or the wall they are hiding behind. A lot of problems can be solved with enough firepower, which in turn encourages squads to move around in groups and to avoid going solo in large-scale modes.
The wide range of destructible buildings also means that the map can meaningfully change over the course of a large-scale game mode like Conquest. Positions that were once well fortified are now a pile of rubble, forcing the action to move elsewhere. If you get caught out in the open, movement tools like the combat roll can help you quickly escape from high points of the map and avoid some incoming fire. If that fails, you can always go prone and hide amongst the rubble. As the Time to Kill here is relatively short (but not COD levels of short), the game encourages players to really use cover and hold advantageous positions.
I think it goes without saying that my absolute favourite multiplayer modes in Battlefield are the large-scale ones. Conquest is an iconic game mode that gives players full access to vehicles, a large map and all of the chaos Battlefield is known for. I don't enjoy close-quarter combat modes quite as much, but they have their place, especially for those who would rather rack up killstreaks than play to the objective.
Breakthrough is another great mode, in which one team is attacking, and the other is defending a position. The goal is simple, defenders must hunker down and avoid giving up valuable map space, while the attackers are attempting to push the line back to obtain the objective. This creates a tense battleground from the moment the match starts, whereas Conquest takes a little while to get going, as each side captures points closer to their spawn before meeting.
Escalation is an all-new mode for Battlefield 6 and is sort of like playing Conquest with ‘Shuffle' activated. Players on each side must capture territory across the map and as the game progresses, fewer territory options become available, forcing the action to move unpredictably across the map as the game progresses. It is a fun mode, but not fun enough to take me away from the ‘legacy' modes like Conquest or Rush.
I enjoy all of these modes but my absolute favourite is Conquest. To me, Conquest captures everything great about Battlefield versus its competitors. Conquest is especially fun if you have a communicative squad who know how to play their roles effectively.
The objective-based gameplay of the large-scale modes are Battlefield's biggest strength, but they can also be an Achilles heel. If you end up in a game with a bunch of people refusing to play their roles, with medics not reviving, engineers not repairing tanks, or downed teammates opting to lose a life and respawn rather than wait for a revive etc, then it can quickly become a frustrating experience. Fortunately, in situations like that, the game is likely to be over pretty quickly and you'll be back in a fresh match before you know it. If you are one of those people who prefers to run and gun without any teammates weighing you down, then the close quarter combat modes should be your point of call.
The only mode I have yet to spend much time with is Portal. This is the home for custom game modes in Battlefield, giving players the tools to design their own modes and make changes to the maps. Think of it like the Battlefield equivalent of Halo Forge. Assuming the Portal gets enough community backing, it could be worth the price of admission alone, but we won't know how much value it really brings to the table until players have had some time with it.
As an added bonus, I can confirm that you earn EXP regardless of whether you are playing an official mode or a custom game. You won't be limited to official matchmaking playlists for progression.
PC Performance & Benchmarks:
Now let's get down to some nitty gritty technical details. Battlefield 6 is perhaps the most polished Battlefield game I've ever played at launch. While many of the past entries have had me crashing or encountering weird bugs, Battlefield 6 has been fully technically competent right out of the gate. Your mileage may vary as every PC is different but for me, the experience has been very solid all around during the pre-release period across both multiplayer and singleplayer.
Here are some screenshots comparing the DLSS Quality, Balanced, Performance, Ultra Performance and OFF modes, all using the Ultra preset:
And in this gallery, you can see comparisons between the Overkill, Ultra, High, Medium and Low graphics presets with DLSS OFF:
The key when looking at these screenshots is to look at details in the distance. The lower presets reduce details at a medium to long distance. At close range, all of the presets get pretty close to each other, with the exception of the low preset, where close-up details and shadows see a more significant reduction.
When it comes to the Overkill graphics preset, I would recommend ignoring it. On my system with a Ryzen 5900X, 32GB of RAM and an RTX 4080 graphics card, all it seemed to do was make 1% lows and latency worse, while keeping the average frame rate the same as Ultra, all with imperceivable visual gains. High appears to be the most optimised preset, offering the best balance between visual effects, performance and latency. It is a perceivable upgrade from medium, without the added performance penalties of the Ultra and Overkill presets.
For benchmarks, I have run a sequence on the Siege of Cairo conquest map across the Ultra, High, Medium and Low graphics presets, measuring with Nvidia FrameView. Latency numbers are also included but Nvidia Reflex is on in all cases. Conquest maps are the largest that Battlefield has to offer, with the highest player count and all in-game vehicles, making this an ideal use-case scenario. To make the sequence easily repeatable, I am running a self-hosted private game with a bot-populated server.
RTX 4080 (QHD, no DLSS):
| Graphics Preset |
Ultra |
High |
Medium |
Low |
| Average FPS |
99 |
107 |
113 |
120 |
| 1% Low |
68 |
70 |
82 |
84 |
| Average System Latency (ms) |
33 |
32 |
30 |
26 |
RTX 4080 (QHD, DLSS Quality with Frame Generation 2x):
| Graphics Preset |
Ultra |
High |
Medium |
Low |
| Average FPS |
189 |
193 |
210 |
220 |
| 1% Low |
104 |
109 |
114 |
119 |
| Average System Latency (ms) |
45 |
40 |
40 |
39 |
Frame Generation adds an amount of latency, there is no doubt. However, with Reflex on, the penalty is kept to a minimum, with just an 8ms penalty on the high preset. Considering the frame rate jumps from 107FPS to 193FPS, that trade-off seems alright to me. Interestingly, I found that the latency doesn't scale down as linearly between the graphics presets with Frame Generation on compared to off.
Some people have very strong opinions when it comes to AI-inserted frames but in my experience, Frame Generation at 2x adds all the extra fluidity I expect from a game running at higher frame rates, with minimal impact to the controls.
I don't necessarily care if some frames are ‘fake'. I do care about my game feeling smooth to play. For me, Frame Generation ticks that box. It feels like a game running at 200FPS versus 100FPS and when it comes to control latency, I don't notice the difference. Sure, a difference does exist, the latency numbers above prove that, but can I actually feel that difference in-game? Nope.
As for the visual impact, the AI-generated frames come and go so fast that it is impossible to notice. Even with the unpredictable nature of a multiplayer game, Frame Generation keeps up without presenting any visual hiccups.
If you are trying to climb leaderboards and give yourself the best possible advantage, then playing at low settings without Frame Generation would be the way to go, because at the highest level of competition, every millisecond will count. However, for the average player, there has been nothing in my experience to suggest that Frame Generation is a negative. I have not once run into a situation where I died or missed a shot and thought that Frame Generation or system latency was to blame. That's not just the case in Battlefield either, I could say the same for every Frame Gen-enabled game that I have tried, both single-player and multiplayer.
On an RTX 5080 with Multi Frame Generation 4x, the AI can send frame rates skyrocketing above 400FPS at points, although it mostly hovers around the 350FPS range. This is great for maximising my monitor's refresh rate and the MFG implementation does feel better here than it has in previous games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. However, there is something about the mouse movement that feels slightly off, which is a deal breaker for me in a multiplayer game. For me, 2x Frame Generation appears to be the sweet spot, providing a nice boost to performance without detracting from the overall feel of the game.
Conclusion:
Overall, Battlefield 6 offers a great all-around package. The single-player campaign is well worth playing. To me, each mission had something memorable about it. The first 5 missions and the final mission in particular are all missions I am looking forward to playing again in my hunt for achievements and collectables.
The multiplayer moves back towards Battlefield's strengths with the classic class system and focus on large-scale warfare modes like Conquest and Escalation, with added classic modes like Team Deathmatch and King of the Hill for those who prefer a faster-paced, small-scale game mode. Before the end of the month, Battlefield 6 will also debut its own Battle Royale mode, and Portal has a lot of potential to grow and keep the game alive well into the future.
If I only had £60 to spend on a shooter for this busy October-November period, my money would be going to Battlefield 6 over this year's Call of Duty.
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