Happy New Year CHS! This month we will be reviewing one of my favorite games, that will be turning 10 years old this year, Battlefield 1 released by EA and Dice Entertainment on October 21, 2016. Battlefield 1, like many of the Battlefield games, doesn’t follow one character, but rather tells the “stories” of different characters. There are five different stories the game follows.Because they are long and detailed , I will review my favorite,Through Mud and Blood.
The first story of Battlefield 1 is Through Mud and Blood, the story of a British Tanker in WWI, where the entire game is set. You play as Daniel Edwards, the driver of a MkV tank named Black Bess. At this time of the war, tanks were becoming popularized but had not yet seen large combat against each other. The crew accepts Edwards as their new driver, yet the tank gunner, MacManus, still misses the old driver who was killed in combat. The crew works together to break through German defenses in occupied France. During the assault, two more members, Fisch and Pritchard, are shot by German soldiers. After losing reinforcements, Black Bess and the crew continue through a forest while Edwards leaves the tank to scout for hostiles and advances past the German lines. The tank’s engine shuts down because of spark plug failure outside of a village with several British tanks, which the crew discovers have been captured already by the German army. Edwards is sent forward to retrieve parts from the captured tanks and after obtaining three spark plugs, he returns to repair Black Bess. The crew pushes into the village and removes the remaining German soldiers as they attempt to capture the railway station in the town of Cambrai, where British and German tanks engage in large-scale combat for the first time. When the crew of Black Bess reaches Cambrai, they meet heavy resistance by the Germans, fighting through French and British tanks that have been captured and repaired by the Germans, along with artillery and several squads of infantry. As Edwards and his team capture the railyard, they are hit with a barrage of artillery, one of the shells strike the tracks of the tank, immobilizing it and it is soon overrun with German soldiers. The crew use their handguns to defend against the invaders, but eventually, a bullet from one of the Germans strikes a gas valve. Townsend uses the leaking valve to strike a match, igniting the gas and blowing up his tank from the inside. McManus and Edwards escaped the explosion, walking to the next town together and the screen fades to black. This story about gaining trust has every reason to be my top story of Battlefield 1.