So you’ve spent the weekend Conquering and Dominating or being Conquered and Dominated in the Battlefield 4 beta, and found that the former happened on just enough occasions that the overall effect felt pretty good. But perhaps you’ve a yearning to really wipe your enemies from the map, or be peeled from the streets of Shanghai yourself. If so, DICE would like you to meet Obliteration – a new mode in which both teams attempt to secure a bomb, smuggle it into enemy territory, and hit it properly hard with something.
DICE are rolling out the new servers as we type. You’ll find a link to the beta download on theOrigin Store front page.
DICE have called Obliteration their “Battlefield Moments Generator”. The bomb spawns at a random location, and both teams will scramble to pick it up and drop it off at one of their opponent’s three objectives. Once it goes off, another spawns elsewhere and the race begins again, until all three of one side’s objectives have been destroyed. By default, a time limit ensures that the struggle doesn’t drag on for too long.
“Obliteration can be devastatingly quick or a harrowing tug of war depending on how good your team is at staying together and delivering the bomb,” say DICE. “Compared to Conquest, the action in Obliteration tends to be heavily focused on wherever the bomb is located.
“Since there’s only one bomb at a time, you will often find yourself going from attacker to defender in the blink of an eye. You need to be able to predict enemy movement to defend at the right place at the right time and reclaim the offensive – or intercept the enemy to reclaim possession of the bomb.”
You’ll need to be a highly mobile “team player”, so it’s no surprise to learn that the mode was partly inspired by American football – the lethal levelling of the immediate area standing in for the traditional touchdown, obvs.
It’s worth mentioning, too, that Obliteration mode is better on PC than the current consoles – supporting an extra eight players up to a total of 32.
Obliteration ought to test the limits of DICE’s ‘levelution’ shtick as applied to the beta Siege of Shanghai map. On the Paracel Storm map destined for full release, Obliteration players will note that the weather gets stroppier and the seas choppier as the match goes on. And enough well-placed shots to the wind turbines offshore will send the nearby battleship careering onto the beach:
Let’s hope for something similarly explosive in DICE’s skyscraper-strewn version of Shanghai. What are you expecting?