Battlefield 1: Turning Tides DLC
Part 1
This will be short and sweet, just like the current DLC released, simply because it is in one of two parts. The second part will come sometime in January and we’ll see what happens then. In the meantime we have to contend with Part One, which is all but a proper bag of “WTF.”
Uphill all the way with naval and air support.
Two maps have been added, with the added operation to go with them. Conquest mode being Conquest the maps I’m sure are okay for that mode. However, if you’re like me and like the Operations game mode, you will completely and totally hate them or love them, depending on what side you’re on.
Everyone knows of World War 2’s D-Day Landing, but before that time there was amphibious assaults during World War 1. None of them ended the way they wanted to, nor did the one you get to play in this Operation. The Battle of Gallipoli was the first large scale (Comparable to D-Day) amphibious assault involving shore bombardment, aircraft, specialized landing craft, and amphibious troops. While in real life the battle lasted 10 months and resulted in the allied nations failure to take the peninsula and over that time casualties (including from sickness) of 302,000 (250,000 for the Ottomans,) in this game you will feel as close to this as possible as assaulting the beach has very little protection and even when you get off the beach there is still very little protection in the trenches as you are taking a hill of which the enemy can shoot down at you.
The last two sectors of Achi Baba. Almost the entire map is a choke point.
As I have said since the very early days, the (team) balance of this game is still almost non-existent. So depending on your team and you’re side, you will be either extremely frustrated to the point of giving up or so bored that you want to just leave. My first three matches in this Operation was steam rolling from both sides. Either I was a medic just trying to keep up with the front lines only to get sniped so I had to respawn back in the rear only for me to have to run twice the length because we took the next sector.
And this is just the first map, which involves ships and aircraft bombing a (comparatively) small area with neither side having proper defenses against the other. The second sector finally has field guns to take on the newly added Destroyer you most combat but if the captain is smart (which of course in this game that is EXTREMELY RARE) he can move outside there range and still be able to fight. The third sector you get a massive defense gun (same guns from the In The Name of the Tsar DLC) that can do an extreme amount of damage at extreme ranges however the aiming system is still clunky. The final sector you get two more guns however keep in mind none of these have good defense positions so while they’re set up to take on ships, they cannot shoot at infantry (unless they step in front of it of course,) nor can they turn inland to shoot at infantry advancing up the hill.
And of course keep in mind, this has the naval aspect to the map, so what is the allies get when they’re loosing? That’s right, a Dreadnought. Which means the defenders will be dying constantly to a ship that can take out ALL of the defense guns in one volley and even though we can repair the big guns to defend, the second the ship doesn’t see the guns on fire they can fire at it again and you have to start all over again. If you’re lucky you can fire once, maybe twice before at the ship before it’s destroyed, that’s assuming of course they have good aim on you.
At least some of the unlocking requirements got easier.
And that was just the FIRST map. The second, which takes place further inland I thought would be everyone’s cup of tea. Infantry only, no vehicles, no planes, no boats, nothing but Elite Kits. But what’s that one thing that everyone really hates about infantry. If you said grenade spam you’d be half right. The other half is MORTARS MORTARS MORTARS. There are SO MANY choke points…SO…MANY…that if you love the mortar you will be in high heaven getting so many multi kills very quickly.
Again the conquest version of this map is no different that any other conquest map, but in Operations it is a nightmare. If you’re team (Attacking) is good they can roll over the first map fairly easily it seems but once you get to these choke points on the second map, you will be stalled hard. Especially since, like regular Operation mode, if you steam roll the team, the next map they get there “Behemoth” or in this case of this map, ALL THE ELITE KITS, including the new Infiltrator.
New scout carbine. I hate carbines in this game but you might like it.
Speaking of which, the Infiltrator Elite Kit has to be the most balanced kit added to the game. Unlike the other Elites in the game, this one is powerful but by a distance type thing. If you treat it like a Sentry or Flametrooper you will get killed almost instantly. The Infiltrator can call down Artillery from off map, add a spawn point for the whole team, as well as use a grenade launcher (Modified Rifle Grenade launcher) for long range while a sawed off shotgun provides close range attack. But he is not that tough and can be easily killed if he isn’t of course hiding because he loves the kit that much and desperately waiting to call in another Artillery strike.
The both teams will be notified if a spawn beacon is deployed from the Infiltrator and both team will be notified when artillery is incoming. However a problem is this notifications are not in your face saying “INCOMING!” or anything like that. At the very top of the screen it will tell you in text “Enemy has Deployed a Spawn Beacon” while when Artillery is incoming, friend or foe, it will just be a Blue(friendly)/Red(Enemy) on the mini-map. But luckily if the artillery takes time to actually fire and when it does it does take time between shots so you have a small amount of safety to work with when you don’t pay attention.
This gun has between point .01 and 0 amount of recoil, but very little damage.
The weapons added are, like all the ones they’ve added in the previous DLC, are interesting (at least to me because of that time period and people thinking “Stripper clips, single bullet reloads for revolvers, and exposed magazines are the future of weapons” seems cool to see them in games) but unlike the previous two DLC’s, these guns, while interesting, compared to the all the other guns in the game are very, pardon the lack of a descriptive term “Meh.”
The guns are not a dramatic change or damage or fast or anything. The French DLC gave up slow, hard hitting weapons while the Russian DLC gave us, more/less, fast (rapid fire) weapons. This DLC gives us weapons that a cool to look at but honestly any other weapon can do the job better than the ones added.
The Destroyer, being a naval lover, is a nice addition especially since almost every crew seat gets a different weapon instead of just being stuck to one weapon, switching between main gun and torpedo launchers are nice when you can really help with taking down a Dreadnought. But it’s extremely fragile (compared to the Dreadnought) so only a few shots and it’s sunk. So take care when commanding it.
I’m a naval lover so I love the new destroyer but it can easily killed as it should be because there’s not an easy counter at range for this.
Problems have appeared though. As I’m sure you’ve seen around the internet, the Dreadnought from time to time now seems to travel from the future where it picked up some kind of technology to fly. There appears to be a fair amount of lag (but that might be just server problems that could be fixed with a restart, I don’t know for sure) and it appears the moving mechanics, while the sliding cool down is a nice touch (no more sliding out of the way of bullets,) it appears getting “stuck” on teammates is problem. I’ll be trying to go around someone only for what it seems to be stuck on them so neither of us can move. This is EXTREMELY annoying when you’re trying to dodge out of the way of grenade spam only for both of us to die because for some reason we’re stuck on each others clothes or something.
One last complaint is the gun-play patch, AKA TTK (Time to Kill) Patch. It’s been in the test server for months and we were expecting it to arrive with this new DLC but instead it’s still on the test server. It will supposedly actually do a pass on all weapons to make them more unique and worth playing instead of each class just using one of two weapons per class because these two weapons can do everything and every range.
Overall this first part of the DLC is very…I genuinely don’t know how to describe it. Additions to a game that is desperately trying not to die too soon is always welcome but this DLC is not that great so far. Hopefully the second part will make up for it (I highly doubt it) but until then I don’t see many people playing this Operation for a long time or even these maps simply because it’s just so simple, no cover, hold the high ground, rack up kills or camp choke points and murder people with LMG’s or mortars. Maybe by January they’ll make some tweaks to things or the TTK Patch will arrive and make it interesting.
Other than that, like the French maps, I don’t see any version of Cape Helles or Achi Baba maps being played much after the new few weeks. Maybe in Conquest mode, but certainly not Operations since these are the only two game modes anyone plays.
