Battlefield 4 Might Have A Game Mode For Everyone

Mode 7

News by Craig Pearson Contributor

Published on Sept. 30, 2013

I tend to just glom onto one mode in multiplayer games, which means when I'm playing other modes and maps*, and people are shouting at me to do the thing with the thing, all I hear is "Blah blah Craig is handsome and best blah". I just stick to what I know, because I don't need affirmation. Anyway, other people like variety in their games, and therefore demand modes for every occasion from the likes of DICE. Battlefield 4 will come out with seven game modes across ten maps, and I will now list them and give some commentary based on my previous experiences on the Battlefield.

I'll start with the modes everyone knows about: Conquest is back, with 64 people fighting over control points. It is the Battlefield I know and play, and therefore is clearly the best option for my hideously casual skillset. There's a 20 player Team Deathmatch mode, which I've never bothered with, and a 20 player Squad Deathmatch, which sounds a bit more fraught: four teams of five players are fighting for leaderboard control. I could never find anyone to play if with me in Battlefield 3, but that was because I never had enough friends online to form up a squad, and didn't really care to get involved with others. I like the idea of it, though.

Rush mode also returns. I dallied with this in previous Battlefields, but it never really dragged me in. I quite like Attack/Defend modes, but this never seemed to put me in the huge battles that I play BF for, and the smaller fights were never tense enough to compensate. The 20 person limit this time around suggests it'll be another mode I'll filter out of the browser.

Domination is a newish mode to Battlefield. It first landed in the Battlefield 3: Close Quarters DLC, so it's good it'll get a wider audience as part of the main game. It's basically an infantry-only Conquest mode, with control points to gather and defend, but in smaller and more intense maps.

There are two genuinely new (to Battlefield) modes, though. Defuse is the smallest of all Battlefield multiplayer stramashes, with two teams of five fighting. It's basically Counter-Strike: each player has only a single life per round, and each team can win either by eliminating the other side or arming/detonating objectives. I wonder if those objectives can be counter hacked, to give the game a bit more longevity? Though if that was the case then those that died would probably be left spectating, which is never fun.

The final, and probably most exciting new mode, is also the best-named of all the modes: Obliteration. It's a 24 player team-vs-team game where a bomb spawns at a random area on the map. The team fight over control of the bomb, so they can arm it and deliver it to an objective. The game is over when one team has destroyed three of the opponent's objectives. DICE describe this as feeling like a game of American football, with a constantly shifting offensive/defensive line. Despite being a bit of a stickler, I really hope this mode ends up popular. I like shifting objectives in maps that aren't tied to specific locations. Chaos is always more preferable to me than structure. It's also the mode from the beta.