The official announcement of a new and anticipated video game is always something we gamers look forward too. Personally, I was ecstatic a few days ago leading up to the reveal of Battlefield 4’s first gameplay. Let’s see what I thought of the presentation and what we’ve seen so far.

The big star of Battlefield.com is obviously the 17 minute “Fishing in Baku” mission. The gameplay says it is recorded from a PC, which can be confirmed by the stellar graphics and the “E” and “F” commands that pop up. Who knows how great the graphics will be on the next generation of consoles, but I expect them to be downright disappointing and maybe even awful on the current gen. Yes, this game is releasing for 360 and PS3 as well as PC. But no, I will not be purchasing it for any of those. Before it was even announced, I knew I would be purchasing BF4 for the next Xbox, and I’ll stick to that, whenever that may be.

Back to the mission and what we can see. First of all, yes, the graphics are stunning. They don’t nearly make as big of a leap as Frostbite 2 did, but the new Frostbite 3 engine still looks incredible, with some significant changes leaping out immediately. There are more particles, more things on screen to render, and even better lighting than BF3. Gone are the insane amounts of blue tint and sun flare, at least for the mission shown. One of the many complaints about BF3 (and I stand behind this) was that everything was too saturated with blue tint and that nothing had real color. Of course, war is seldom colorful, but the monotone of BF3 was boring for so many people.

Destruction looks just average in the gameplay. I didn’t see anything done that we couldn’t do in BF3, which is extremely disappointing given how lackluster the destruction became when switching from Bad Company 2 to BF3. Yes, some things collapsed, but it was all part of the set pieces of the mission. I want to see some true destruction that is not meant to happen at a certain point. I’m sure we’ll (hopefully) get that thirst quenched when they show some multiplayer, but I was sad when all I saw was cinematic destruction in the gameplay. Other than that, small walls, wood, and concrete can all be blasted away with explosives or peppered with bullets till they crumble.

Enemies look exactly the same as in BF3. I mean exactly. Also, the knife killing animation is exactly the same. I know this is probably Alpha footage, but wow that felt lazy. At least the enemies looked very impressive in the way they moved and tripped and repositioned themselves when the player entered the house; that was pretty cool and realistic.

I watched this gameplay to see some basic aspects of the game, not to care about the single player. Battlefield is a multiplayer game, and that’s what I really care about. Seeing what I have so far though… all I have to say is that I really hope some things change or some things are at least added. I want this to be a revolutionary Battlefield that fixes all problems of BF3. It’s up to DICE to listen to their fans on this one, so only time will tell.