Have You Played... Battlefield 4?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

Battlefield 4 is not the best Battlefield. But it is my favourite Battlefield for one reason - Obliteration mode.

In Obliteration, both teams squabble with their guns over a bomb that spawns in the centre of the map, attempting to carry it to one of several targets located deep behind enemy lines. The team that destroys all of said targets wins.

It's basically rugby with tanks and helicopters, and it's exactly as ridiculous as that sounds. More importantly, it's also the most fluid and friendly of Battlefield's modes. The constantly shifting objective means there's less of the camp-sniping infuriation prevalent
in Conquest and Rush, while teams naturally coalesce around the bomb-carrier, providing air-support as the carrier dashes toward the objective like a weaponised Jonah Lomu, or scooping them up in a tank or a humvee and driving them to a target.

I like Obliteration for the same reason I enjoyed rugby over football at school. I have all the twinkle-toed grace of a baby giraffe on a bouncy castle, but even I can pick a ball up and run with it, even if it is into a wall of testosterone-enraged teenagers with metal bolts screwed into their shoes. Similarly, I can't compete with all the lightning-fingered randoms who populate Battlefield's servers any longer, but I can pick up a bomb and run with it.

Everything else about Battlefield 4 is ho-hum. But Obliteration is one of the few team-based multiplayer shooters where you can make a genuine contribution almost immediately, and that makes it a little bit special.