https://rollingstone.com.br/entretenimento/battlefield-6-e-uma-fantasia-militar-retro-inteligente-o-bastante-para-fingir-ser-burra/

Brooklyn is on fire. The intermittent bursts of gunfire are muffled as tanks tear up the asphalt of Washington Street toward the East River waterfront, where a century-old carousel lies in ruins. As US forces devastate landmarks and halal food trucks in a deadly clash with a fictional paramilitary cell, it’s impossible not to cringe in horror.

Fortunately, the scene isn’t something straight out of the daily news — although it is eerily close to a future that many Americans fear. Instead, the violent upheaval of New York City is just one of the scenarios Battlefield 6from the EA (released this Friday, 10), in which 64 players compete to dominate the territory in a first-person shooter with impressive realism.

The word “realistic” is a bit loaded — the scenes depicted are not exactly what anyone expects to see anytime soon. Still, they feel eerily close, and the weight of the infantry’s footsteps and the detailed physics of the collapsing buildings make everything feel as real as possible. While other games focus on cartoonish action and power fantasies, the harrowing gameplay of Battlefield 6 it sounds like a return to basics — even if it continues to be exaggerated.

After spending much of the last decade in the shadow of the colossal success of Call of Dutythe franchise Battlefield returns as the most anticipated military shooter of 2025. With a solid solo campaign and a top-notch multiplayer mode that turns the horrors of war into addictive fun, Battlefield 6 it’s a welcome return — even when it makes you want to close your eyes.

Obama-era military machismo

Although I have tried many times over the years — with sub-series like Bad Company — solo campaigns were never the strong point of Battlefield. The newest one is not revolutionary either; It basically serves to display linear and highly detailed versions of the multiplayer mode maps, with some good action sequences. The thin plot follows a group of US Marines who travel the world trying to thwart the terrorist plans of a fictional private army called Pax Armata.

The story is a pile of clichés, with playable sections functioning as flashbacks to place the audience in the present — when the marines interrogate a government official about how the world has become total chaos. The main cast is forgettable, but the game uses tricks from old titles. Call of Dutylike Modern Warfare and Black Opsswitching characters’ points of view just enough for the player to memorize someone’s name before witnessing their death.

Mechanically, most confrontations come down to shooting corridors, which doesn’t favor the player. Battlefield has the best. Although some areas are relatively open, the rhythm imposed by the plot means that there is always a “right” path and a “wrong” path — something you only discover when the on-screen timer tells you to “return to the combat zone”.

Level design sometimes takes inspiration from multiplayer, where the best way to deal with a sniper is to take down the entire building. But, in the campaign, this ends up being confusing. The player is instructed to clear a three-story building, while rifle bullets make the walls collapse and enemies appear out of nowhere like horror scares.

The developers tried, laudably, to include the class system in the story — each member of the squad has a role, such as a doctor or engineer — but in practice this only means that, when being shot, the player is left lying down waiting for an unintelligent AI companion to come and revive him, even with enemies nearby.

The campaign shines in the moments where it shows cinematic destruction in scripted sequences. Early on, a HALO (high-altitude free fall) jump covers the player’s visor with smoke and condensation as he plummets toward a war zone in Gibraltar. Elsewhere, the squad sneaks through the alleys of Cairo with night vision goggles, trying to avoid a protest that is about to turn into a full-scale riot.

The big marketing draw is the chaos in Brooklyn, which occupies a large part of the first act. Taking the battle indoors — breaking into Brooklyn Heights townhouses or desperately crossing a collapsing Brooklyn Bridge — is effectively scary. Despite the clearly apolitical speculative fiction, it is difficult not to draw parallels between the US military occupying a liberal city in a video game and the images that play out daily in the CNN.

Cognitive dissonance is circumvented by placing the blame on a fictional and morally ambiguous private army, but it is evident that the experiment works on both sides of the political spectrum. For certain players with a nationalist mindset, crossing the Grand Army Plaza with a .50 machine gun is almost a virtual aphrodisiac. For others, it’s an all-too-familiar nightmare—albeit with a hint of hypocritical relief: It’s comforting to return to Egypt or Iran to commit the same level of carnage on foreign soil that pop culture has already made banal. The trick is to convince the player that, no matter why he likes the game, it’s okay — because he’s the “good guy.”

At its best, the story mode Battlefield 6 operates on the same wavelength as late-2000s military games, where morally gray acts of war are common, punctuated by the clash of domestic threats portrayed in first-person perspective.

Multiplayer mayhem across multiple levels

Despite the surprisingly competent campaign, the real attraction of Battlefield It’s always been multiplayer — and it’s rarely been as good as in this new title. Eliminating the excesses and tricks of recent versions, such as Battlefield 2042 (2021) and Battlefield 1 (2016), the game returns to the style of the best phases of the franchise, such as Battlefield 3 and 4 (2011 and 2013, respectively).

Since the first titles, the difference between the competitive mode of Battlefield is its gigantic scale. Before there were 24, then 32, and now 64 players in a true sensory avalanche. Few games compare to the military shooter from EA offers: an experience in which the player can start the game on foot, running under a hail of bullets, and minutes later be in a jeep, tank or attack helicopter pouring fire onto the roof of a building.

The class-based system encourages teamwork; The only way to successfully conquer a designated zone is to advance as a group, but it’s easy to be shot down by snipers and artillery. The smartest way to move forward is to coordinate and fulfill your role — whether Assault, Engineer, Support or Recognition. Each class has unique abilities: Assault allows you to lead the front line with great firepower and improved mobility; Engineers can repair allied vehicles or deal extreme damage to enemies; Support can replenish ammo and revive allies instantly; Reconnaissance allows you to mark enemies to increase visibility on the battlefield.

Different from Call of Dutywhere everyone is practically “Rambo“lonely, Battlefield it goes beyond simply running and killing opponents without stopping. Of course, there is the basic deathmatch, playable in a classic 2v2 or in small squads of four, where everyone races to accumulate 50 eliminations and win.

But the real experience of Battlefield is competing for strategic points in long battles of attrition. Ways like Conquest, Breakthrough and Domination They are variations of this concept, with small changes in the rules that define each one. Conquest is a large-scale confrontation, where two teams fight to control different points marked on the map (A to F), and holding each point for a period reduces the opponent’s score until it reaches zero. Domination It works the same way, but with fewer points and smaller arenas for more frenetic action.

Breakthrough It’s similar, but instead of everyone being equal moving around the points, there’s a more direct attacker and defender scenario: one team advances while the other must hold the line. The mode Rush It’s similar, but smaller, with a focus on destroying objectives rather than simply dominating areas.

While most multiplayer modes are variations on the same idea, there is an element of constant improvisation that makes Battlefield 6 Shine where other shooters fail. If a team can’t take a point because infantry is trapped in a door that becomes a “kill box,” you can simply knock down the entire wall with an RPG. Suddenly, the barrier breaks and everyone can move forward.

While the slower speed and emphasis on physics — from the trajectory of long-distance bullets to the destruction of structures — are part of the DNA of Battlefieldthere is also a certain amusing absurdity to some of the tactics.

Playing as a doctor Supportyou can gain a lot of experience and turn the tide just by running through a crash site, defibrillating a dozen fallen soldiers while shouting, “Get up, soldier!” As an engineer, it’s exhilarating to ride in the support seat of a helicopter, holding down the repair button while a simple blowtorch keeps the aircraft in the air even as intense fire turns its walls into Swiss cheese. It’s the balance between realism and fun that hits the spot.

Nowadays, everyone has some trick. In the race to capture the public’s attention, both solo and competitive games have become self-perpetuating ecosystems. Everything is bigger, louder, and filled with pop culture IP skins just to attract gamers.

In comparison, Battlefield 6 it seems almost old-fashioned. It’s a straightforward action shooter that follows a 20-year-old playbook, both in gameplay and in avoiding any point of view on its amoral military jingoism. Given the overwhelming noise in games and in real life, it is a frankly welcome distraction.

Battlefield 6 was released on October 10th for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PRAÇA.

• Battlefield 6

• criticism

• game

• game

• Review