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Subscribe from just £3 Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£9.99Subscribe now Gamescom 2025 schedule Battlefield 6 Horror Special New Games for 2025 Recommended reading I spent 4 hours playing Battlefield 6 multiplayer and speaking with the creators, and here are my 10 biggest takeaways I've played Battlefield 6 for an afternoon, and while it's a clear successor to Battlefield 3 and 4, I wish there was more destruction Everything announced in the Battlefield 6 multiplayer reveal The 10 best Battlefield games of all-time Battlefield Here's a PSA to all Battlefield 6 beta players: Please don't ignore your medic duties, I promise it'll make this explosive FPS even more enjoyable for everybody Battlefield I spent hours with the Battlefield 6 beta, and these 5 games are helping me fill the hole it's left behind Battlefield Battlefield 6 dev says the magic words: Bad Company 2 is a "huge inspiration" for the upcoming FPS, and my excitement for the beta is now at an all-time high Battlefield Battlefield 6 Battlefield 6 multiplayer is taking inspiration from Bad Company 2, but I hope its single player campaign looks further back to the series' best story Joel Franey 17 August 2025 Opinion | Battlefield 6's single player looks like it's going to take itself very seriously, but the series' best is still a late 2000s comedy When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: EA) So Battlefield 6 will indeed have a campaign as well as multiplayer! Battlefield 2042 was content merely to have lore, as are many FPS online shooters these days, but by all accounts Battlefield 6 is going to include a full-on single player story mode just like mama used to make. And while the brief teaser trailer we've seen doesn't show much, it feels as though the tone is pretty clear – a straightforward, "ooh-rah" military campaign about defending the beloved US of A from an endless cabal of faceless hired goons. Which is fine! I admit I'm always a little bit amused by any story that tries to portray America as underdogs, but lord knows it wouldn't be the first time a game has asked us to suspend our disbelief on that. No, what makes me a little disappointed is that the tone looks like yet another departure from the greatest and most subversive story that Battlefield ever did: the punk genius of 2008's Battlefield Bad Company. "Hey, how ya doing? You smell very clean" (Image credit: EA) Aim to please (Image credit: Riot Games) We've rounded up the best FPS games for you to test yourself in next For those who never played it, Bad Company 1 was a singular satire and not-so-sly middle finger at the American military and much of the culture around it. Our heroes were four useless oddballs who had been assigned to the most infamously inept platoon in all of the US army, and their purpose was clear: to absorb bullets. These grunts were pure cannon fodder, and the greatest indignity was that they knew it. If they survived, that would be fine, but nobody who gave the orders would be particularly unhappy if they didn't. You may like I spent 4 hours playing Battlefield 6 multiplayer and speaking with the creators, and here are my 10 biggest takeaways I've played Battlefield 6 for an afternoon, and while it's a clear successor to Battlefield 3 and 4, I wish there was more destruction Everything announced in the Battlefield 6 multiplayer reveal It's an amusingly unheroic angle to take on modern soldiery. And sure, protagonist Preston Marlowe is a bit generic, but the other three leads are a fun time. Haggard is a good ol' boy redneck who's never happier than when he's lighting the fuse on something, Sweetwater is a terrified dork who's become infatuated with the nameless woman who relays orders down their earpiece, and long-suffering Sarge is desperately counting the days until he's finally allowed to retire, eyes fixed on the fishing boat he has waiting for him. (Image credit: EA) "Contrary to something like Modern Warfare 2, Bad Company was a comment on the casual cruelty and indifference of the army to its own soldiers, its habit of treating them like disposable drones" It couldn't be less patriotic in theme, and I love it for that. The reason for America's war against Russia is left amusingly unclear, and there's a hint of Catch 22 in the exhausted moaning that comes out of the squad every time they're told to go and soften the defenses of yet another enemy stronghold (survival preferred, but optional). But then they discover that the Russians are hiring mercs paid in crates of bullion, and the four realize that they have a literal golden opportunity – to grab as much treasure as they can and bolt from the front lines. After all, their own country is sending them out to die every twenty minutes with zero gratitude or justification. The four of them going AWOL isn't even framed as a bad thing! Bumbling dumbasses though they are, the game holds up this one choice as an entirely rational one. "If somebody is trying to kill you," it seems to say, "whether it's an enemy government or your own – fuck 'em." And when the team escapes in the game's finale with a truck full of lucre and the war still rumbling on behind them, it's presented entirely as a win. Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You're in Bad Company now The cynic in me still loves all this as a counter-argument to the increasingly gung-ho patriotism that military shooters at the time were leaning into, and which has escalated so much in the years since that you can literally donate money to the US Army (surely the most underfunded of organizations) in Call of Duty's in-game store. Contrary to something like Modern Warfare 2, which came out only months later, Bad Company was a comment on the casual cruelty and indifference of the army to its own soldiers, its habit of treating them like disposable drones. Even BC1's trailers were just a series of spoof vignettes making fun of other video games that took the military too seriously, like Gears of War and Metal Gear Solid. Bad Company 2 would come out several years later. It was fun, and had a cracking multiplayer, but in my mind its story was a misfire. Now our team felt boringly competent, the jokes were less frequent, and a narrative about stopping a Bond villain from using his superweapon on America was treated too earnestly to be funny. No longer relatable schlubs, now B-Company now felt like a C-tier A-Team, and consequently were far less interesting for it. (Image credit: EA) It's a shame that military shooters these days usually don't have any real insight to them. Oh sure, the outlandish hero shooters or sci-fi FPS games are happy to be ironic or thoughtful at times, but the era that produced Bad Company and its tonal counterpoint Spec Ops: The Line feels like it was starting to build to something more, only to never go anywhere. There was a promise of an era where you could have a budgeted contemporary shooter that was still willing to think about the world and culture that it was set in, to have vision beyond the end of your gun barrel. When I recently spoke with the devs for Battlefield 6, they told us several times that the Bad Company era was an inspiration for the game's destruction physics – but I just hope it ends up being a template for the story too. Battlefield 6 multiplayer is faster than ever, and while I'm having fun being a speedy soldier, it's playing against the shooter's most iconic feature. See more PS5 Features Xbox Series X PlayStation Joel Franey Social Links Navigation Guides Writer Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and raconteur with a Masters from Sussex University, none of which has actually equipped him for anything in real life. As a result he chooses to spend most of his time playing video games, reading old books and ingesting chemically-risky levels of caffeine. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at USgamer, Gfinity, Eurogamer and more besides. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. I spent 4 hours playing Battlefield 6 multiplayer and speaking with the creators, and here are my 10 biggest takeaways I've played Battlefield 6 for an afternoon, and while it's a clear successor to Battlefield 3 and 4, I wish there was more destruction Everything announced in the Battlefield 6 multiplayer reveal The 10 best Battlefield games of all-time Here's a PSA to all Battlefield 6 beta players: Please don't ignore your medic duties, I promise it'll make this explosive FPS even more enjoyable for everybody I spent hours with the Battlefield 6 beta, and these 5 games are helping me fill the hole it's left behind Latest in Battlefield Battlefield 6 beta's real hero was one streamer who ran around rubbing his evil hands together and gleefully defibbing entire lobbies Battlefield 6 players' complaints about UI are sinking in as devs promise main menu will be "constantly tweaked and refined," plus bigger maps than the beta will definitely arrive at launch Former FPS pro Shroud says he didn't truly appreciate how good Battlefield 6's beta was until he returned to Battlefield 2042: "Either 2042 is that bad or 6 is that good" Battlefield 6 fans won't stop dunking on the beta's teeny tiny maps, especially after Dice's lead producer promised them that "large maps exist" Battlefield 6's second open beta has only been live for 24 hours, but EA is already rolling out the Rush changes after fans said it felt like "an utter clusterf**k" What is Battlefield 6 Secure Boot and how to enable it Latest in Features After 16 years, Jason Voorhees' official comeback is either a soulless hard cider commercial or the setup for the goriest, most experimental Friday the 13th to date, and I can't decide which it is The new D&D Stranger Things crossover is all about continuing "Eddie's legacy" with max '80s "faux-stalgia" Mafia: The Old Country's divisive linearity is telling me everything I need to know about action-adventure games in 2025, and it all comes back to Indiana Jones Nearly 30 years after its release, Princess Mononoke is headed back to theaters – and it’s still a timeless, heartbreaking classic Pokemon Legends: Z-A hands-on: With overhauled battles and denser exploration, I'm shocked at how fundamentally fresh this could feel "There's got to be a game in here somewhere": How Felt That: Boxing quietly became one of the most innovative games in development GAME REVIEWS MOVIE REVIEWS This D&D board game could be the magic item needed to refresh your game nights, but it won't be a critical hit for everyone OFF review: "Undertale fans need to play this RPG that inspired it – I can't believe it took this stellar remake to get me to step up to the plate" Drag x Drive review: "I'm left craving Arms' sauce from Nintendo's twitchy yet shallow basketballer, which feels like a tech demo" Madden 26 review: "The finest entry in a decade by some margin" I'm convinced that this is still one of the best team board games around, and it deserves to be on your shelf Weapons review: "A twisted fairytale that bests Barbarian" The Fantastic Four: First Steps review: "An occasionally thrilling heroic adventure that sits safely within a B-tier MCU range" Superman review: "A triumphant reinvention and a promising start for the DCU" Jurassic World Rebirth Review: "An unscary sequel that needed a little more time in amber" M3GAN 2.0 review: "A bold sequel with a slightly underwhelming conclusion" Peacemaker season 2 review: "Darker and sadder than the first year, but there's still a lot of fun to be had with the 11th Street Kids." 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