Tweet
Best known for its Dead Space trilogy, developer Visceral Games takes the baton - and indeed, the Frostbite 3 engine - from DICE to build a Battlefield universe all of its own. Early access to the multiplayer beta launching today shows that the gameplay has changed in that handover to support its new cops and robbers theme. But as a pure technical exercise, does the maxed-out PC experience leapfrog its predecessor?It's safe to say that, for its multiplayer component at least, changes to the engine aren't on a monumental scale, based on tests run at ultra settings. Visceral promises that AI is extensively rewritten from the series' military outings, but underneath, the rendering technology is visibly close to that of Battlefield 4's. Reflections rely on a similar mix of real-time and baked-in methods, depending on your perspective of a scene - and the game's HBAO shading still looks odd up close, cutting off the effect at the ends of objects and hands in a way that looks closer to the screen-space approach.
However, despite its quirks, the per-pixel lighting remains gorgeous as ever, and each map design benefits from strong artistic direction. It's worth noting that this beta leans more on medium sized maps, focusing on the LA bustle of Downtown, and the junction surrounding the Bank Job's vaults. That said, given the level of detail iron-pressed into these smaller areas - including the impressive number of destructible elements - they rank among the more adaptive maps we've seen from the series yet.
Read more…
More...