Starting with a side note, I have played both Verdun and Tannenberg. I actually played them rather religiously for a good while and loved both games. They didn't age so well and the population fell off. Then I played Beyond the Wire, and while I respect the game, I would not recommend it for various reasons. It's not terrible, but it's not great neither. Battlefield 1 can go to Hell, it's an arcade shooter with a WWI reskin and objectives. It's as authentic WWI as a triple cheeseburger is authentic Chinese cuisine.

Now then, where to start? Let's start with gameplay, and for that I shall quote myself from how I explained it in the official Ghost Recon discord: "The gameplay is WWI in the best and worst ways: Half the time you're dying from artillery, mortars, grenades, and rifle shots you cannot do a motherf-cking thing to stop, and the other half of the time you're charging through trenches, mountains, and towns at a full sprint using your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rifle like a lance and screaming at the top of your lungs because bloodlust isn't supposed to give you a b-ner but it has and it's ANGRY." I stand by this 100 percent and then some. This game is *BRUTAL* and pulls almost no punches in regards to reminding you that in the heat of battle, WWI was a meat-grinder. Sure, this means a lot of dying... a ton of dying, in fact. I mean you might go three spawns of just dying to artillery and mortars because they found that sweet spot to try and get you to rage quit because, well, WWI. But then you find yourself on the giving end, tearing through swaths of enemies with a bayonet, rifle, grenades, or you say screw it and poke heads with an ice pick at combat speed. Have teeth, will bite. Rip and tear until it is done. This makes the combat very intense and even oppressive at the best of times, but I am not only okay with this, I feel like this is something a lot of games are missing. When a war slams down onto your little battlefield with the whole f-cking hammer, it shouldn't feel like baby's first day in airsoft. It should feel like baby's first day getting thrown into a f-cking wood-chipper to the bombastic melodies of the Third Reich's afterbirth. If you cut your teeth in Verdun, Tannenberg, or Beyond the Wire, you're still going to want a mouth guard because Isonzo is going to bash your f-cking teeth in and then issue you a bayonet to exact your revenge. FORWARD! *whistle noises intensifies*

Now the sound. It has them. Lots of them. When the fighting begins, it starts with the sounds of the rifles and occasional launcher of some kind of explosive. When the whistle blows, the rhythmic drum of heavy machine guns remind you that mankind's reply to the crime of existing is belt-fed and when the artillery hits, the loud explosions, bombastic tones, and then deafening of your ears with all the literal bells and whistles reminds you that if God had a delete button, it's chambered in 47mm and hates everything about you. And then the screaming. NOW we get into a problem, but an odd one: When people die, they scream. A LOT. I swear I've heard them scream for a minute straight after being blown to literal pieces, with me trying to identify the head and/or lungs of the poor soul to put him out of his misery with my bayonet. It well borders into the point of both absurdity and hilarity, but I never found myself hating it.

The graphics are nice. I mean, yeah. It's the best looking game from this series so far, and by far. It's vibrant with its colors, the levels look great, everything is made to be as authentic to the real battlefields, even to a fault. All good stuff. It's not the next gen of the next bit push of the next big advancement in graphics, but it doesn't have to be nor do I want it to be. Let's be real, everytime a game boasts of its graphics the gameplay always tends to suffer until said graphics become the norm. Guess we can't have our cake and eat it too. (DICE and Ubisoft, I'm talking about you two.)

You can customize your character, both in appearance and loadout. Epic mustaches, cool uniforms that are all authentic, authentic weapons and gear, nothing to hate here. No women, which DUH WWI, and the character skins appear to be their proper nationality. TAKE THAT AS YOU WISH, I'm fine with what they've done. IOW you don't have Asian soldiers serving the Italians nor Austro-Hungarians of WWI.

Now, there are slight issues I have with the game. Slight, however, and thus they didn't really take from my experience. Animations that are interrupted don't really pick up from where they left off, which can be off-putting. Some weapons and items seem bugged, which really is where a lot of my complaints lie but again, it was nothing that took me away from the game nor the experience. Most of my rage, otherwise, comes from crap that happens from other players, which I'll get into in a bit and that's *nothing* against the game itself, so meh.

NOW ONTO THOSE PLAYERS! Sure, enemies kill me, I call BS on how they had a sight picture on me, but crap happens and I cannot see their screen, which doesn't bother me in the long run... no matter how much I curse nor the horrid sh-t I say when it happens. What *bothers* me is when you got players camping the back lines and not playing the objectives. It's such a bad problem I feel like the game needs sergeants or corporals who can push and drag these guys out of their positions and force them to move forward, like they did in WWI. FORWARD! No? Then tell it to Mr Six-Chambers-of-Reprimand. Record your complaint at the flash and the sound of the bang. I really feel like there needs to be *some* way of either forcing these players to push or to at least punish them for not playing the objectives other than, well, not getting a score for playing the objectives. Many of them just want a high KDR and don't give a damn about who *actually* wins or loses, which makes the rest of us pissed beyond all measure. I mean damn, I wish I could pistol-whip them or something, and like I said: This *WAS* an issue in WWI that was solved by threatening to *kill* them for cowardice. At least for this game, maybe bring that back?

I... don't know where else to go with this. It's a great game, but only if you want the authentic WWI experience of realizing that if war is Hell, and Hell is the equivalent of a Sbarro's that's been anally-vored through a blender covered in barbed wire, mud, and bolt-action rifles that's then been slammed over your head by an angry Austrian whose sole job in life is to make a misanthrope out of you. Once this has been achieved, he'll give you a bayonet and point you at the nearest gore-covered Italian, who is waiting for you with a smile under his fancy mustache and a tent being pitched in his pants.