When bullets crackle past your head and the industrial whir of an apache drowns out the skies above, the sense of immersion is inimitable. That's in strong part to the game's sound design, which is less vulnerable to aging, and still eclipses the authenticity of many other contemporaries with its wartorn soundscapes. Thankfully, the map we'd made it into was a good one – Rogue Transmission – and while Battlefield 4 is showing its age in more ways than just that borked Battlelog, it didn't take long to see why everyone's returning to this eight year old shooter in anticipation of 2042. A quick internet search revealed that this is because Battlelog, the awkward social system that DICE and EA once pushed into all of its Battlefield games, was shut down in 2016, and so players now have no way of squadding up in instalments that relied on the service to do exactly that.Īfter much faffing and shared frustration, the two of us finally managed to get into a game together (we had to both select a match from the server list and pray that we'd join in on the same team), but at this point it already felt like an exercise in diminishing returns.
I couldn't join my friend's party, nor could he join mine, thus leaving us incapable of entering a match together. The first signs of trouble appeared the moment the game booted up, and quickly revealed that the ability to create or join each other's Squads – a key part of the Battlefield experience – was completely broken.