Fighting on the top of a skyscraper in the middle of the Chinese city of Shanghai when all of a sudden you hear it. The crunch of bending steel and shattering glass and a death message that says “Killed in Action.” You spawn back in and all you see is a big pile of rubble and debris. This game is Battlefield 4 and unlike its predecessor Battlefield 3 it has a lot of new additions that are both good and bad depending on how you look at it. The main two parts of the game are the campaign and the newly revamped multiplayer.

Starting with the campaign there are many things in it that are good and also many things that aren’t. The first mission takes place in the year 2020, six years after the events of Battlefield 3, and it starts you off with stealing vital intelligence in Baku, Azerbaijan about a Chinese commander trying to set up a coup d’etat of the Chinese government and join forces with Russia to take out the United States. After stealing the intelligence from the compound there is a fire fight against the Russian armed forces that caught wind of the special ops team’s mission in Baku. This leads to a car chase through the rural roads of the country and you end up driving into a giant lake where the ultimate sacrifice must be made to escape alive. That’s just the first mission and there are many more that progress into a pretty mediocre storyline where you as the player are a person named Recker and your squadmates are Dunn, Pac, and Irish. There are many weapons involved in the campaign like the M412 Rex, the P90, and many more  are unlocked by finishing the campaign level that they appear in and they can be used in the multiplayer aspect of the game.

Next would be the multiplayer portion of the game where they added a few things since the predecessor Battlefield 3 like Levolution, the re-introduced commander system, and the brand new Battlepacks. First there is the character customization and loadouts. There are many things that you can change in your loadout such as the many different types of weapons and knives that can be used, and if you played the campaign there are a few guns and a knife that you can use in the multiplayer if you’ve completed the missions. Included are also many maps that range from a wide desert expanse to a very close-quartered arctic map. On every map there is a new addition called levolution where one event can change the course of the fight completely; for example in the map Siege of Shanghai a giant skyscraper is located in the middle of the map and if you takeout the supports at the bottom of the building the entire thing will collapse, and the flag on top of that building will now be on the end of a peninsula of rubble and debris where there used to be a giant skyscraper. Another cool aspect that was re-introduced into the game for the first time since Battlefield 2142 is the commander system. Here you can look at the battlefield with a bird's-eye view over the map where you can direct other players to attack or defend the objectives. Some more things to do as Commander is that there are UAVs and Counter UAVs that can be used as well as cruise missiles and putting a big C-130 in the air for the other players to spawn into to provide air support. Another thing that’s new in this game is the introduction of Battlepacks. Battlepacks can be earned when you level up or are unlocking new things for guns when you’ve finished unlocking everything via kills and all that’s left are the Battlepack items that have to be unlocked that way.

To finish off there are many good things about the game like the multiplayer and some not so stellar things like the alright campaign; it’s all around a good game and definitely recommended for anyone who likes casual or hardcore FPS gaming.