‘Battlefield 6’ review: modern multiplayer warfare – with an unusually good campaign too

War! Huh! Good god! What is it good for? Well, going by the latest instalment in over 20 years of all-out Battlefield series skirmishes, it’s good for national unity, squad solidarity and moments of pure chest-thumping adrenaline thrill.

Having recently cast forward to a US vs Russia conflict optimistically named Battlefield 2042, this time-jumping series – previously set anywhere between World War I and a projected future ice age war in 2142 – now lands in 2027 for Battlefield 6, with a fractured NATO coming together to take on a mysterious private military company called Pax Armata, operating out of central Asia but making incursions as far abroad as Gibraltar and New York City. Pax aren’t entirely what they seem – there are some distinctly meta twists to be had in the gloriously rendered campaign cut-scenes, angling the camera back towards the player themselves – but Battlefield 6 itself certainly is.

The series is famed for its huge multi-player battlegrounds, where the reinstated soldier classes (the run-and-gun Assault player, rocket-laden Engineers, medic and ammo Support suppliers and the sniper-ish Recon) hammer it out for territory and survival in modes such as Conquest, Breakthrough, Domination and Team Deathmatch. That’s all here again, allowing up to 64-player teams (halved from the overbearing onslaughts of 2024) to gain experience to unlock new weapons and playing out on vast new maps – abandoned Brooklyn warehouses, ruined Cairo backstreets, the mountain villages and oil refineries of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. A smart new addition is Escalation mode, where teams battle to hold capture points as per Conquest, but with one removed for every position held, gradually concentrating the fight into smaller, more intense locations like in-built dramatic climaxes. Also back, though, are the launch bugs which drove players away from Battlefield 2042 in their thousands. You won’t wait long to get your tank stuck on some floating pipes, find yourself caught in an eternal revival loop or face off against randomly teleporting enemies.

Once properly patched, though, Battlefield 6 looks to be a solid incursion, particularly in its criminally short six-hour (or so) campaign mode. Historically a bit of a Battlefield afterthought, the campaign is where you’ll find the glossiest cinematic graphics, the greatest gameplay variety and the most intriguing and involving sequences. From an opening death-or-glory last stand in a crashed helicopter, you’re soon skydiving into Gibraltar to visit, admire and then largely demolish charming villages. Stalking through the streets and sewers of Cairo in night vision. Dodging exploding tanks, planes and buildings on Mediterranean beach assaults. And head-shotting enemy snipers in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, the Great Pyramids and magnificent Asian dams.

The campaign isn’t gonna hold your hand, rookie. An ability to swiftly ascertain complex geopolitics from crackly radio discussions will help, as will a working knowledge of military hardware, so that you’ve some idea – upon finding yourself in a well-stocked weapon dump – whether to pick up the AK666 Stickgobang or an IDK Facemulcher in order to best tackle the grunt-swarm ahead. Tackling early sections without the help of your personal scout Gecko marking enemies out for you can be pleasingly realistic – no real-life soldier has handy red arrows to aim at, after all, just the odd moving shadow in the distance – and there’s a sense of genuine lifeline relief to later discover specific weapons which highlight hostiles with infra-red or Ready Brek outlines. But grabbing and blasting works well enough to draw you in; after a few hours, you too will be shouting “on my six!” at your squad-mates as if you know what the fuck it means.

There are frustrating elements. The way the same button both reloads and revives team-mates, leaving you automatically slapping in another clip while they bleed out at your feet. The sluggishness of the Cairo tank battle, or the arrival in the late stages of drone warfare, making the whole actual-people-fighting bits seem pointless and outmoded. And the fact that you’re teamed up with a bunch of cowards who will often totally refuse to race headlong through a checkpoint into a gunfight and let you – the real hero here – hang at the back sniping enemies in the dick. But with its methodical invasions of Brooklyn apartment blocks, its underground train chases, its Presidential sieges and brave bunker descents towards the truth of Pax Armata, this is the real drama and daring of Battlefield 6, and there should have been much, much more of it.

‘Battlefield 6’ is available now PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S