After the Apocalypse, a new beginning beckons for Battlefield
DICE, it's easy to forget in all the kerfuffle that's surrounded the developer in recent months following the Star Wars Battlefront 2 debacle, can still craft a damn fine shooter. When the parts align - when you're sprinting between falling masonry on Battlefield 1's depiction of the western front, as a Sopwith Camel buzzes overhead and a Saint Chamond tank churns over the hills on the far horizon - it's still capable of making some of the most dramatic and spectacular shooters around.
Play through any of the maps introduced in Battlefield 1's Apocalypse update - which marks the final expansion for DICE's period shooter, some 17 months after the base game's release - and you're never more than a few seconds away from such moments. This is an update that doubles down on the popular iconography of World War 1, on the hellish thunder of No Man's Land and of seeing idyllic countryside turned over for mud, blood and mortar fire as DICE leans on such familiar backdrops as the Somme and Passchendaele.
It's mightily effective stuff, and for me - someone who prefers nothing more than a straightforward game of Conquest - the Apocalypse expansion gets straight to the heart of what makes Battlefield special. Even more than that, it delivers on the fantasy of its own chosen arena just as well as the series has since Bad Company 2's brilliant Vietnam expansion. When you're running through the trenches of Passchendaele, or bringing down the windmill on the outskirts of the Somme map and wiping out an entire squad, it really is that good.
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