September 12, 2014
Hi there, Metallicat here, with my take on the Dragon’s Teeth DLC and the future of Battlefield 4.
Dragon’s Teeth — New Maps And Things For Summer 2014
Dragon’s Teeth came out in July, the 2nd to last DLC for Battlefield 4. Four beautiful new maps, new weapons, and a new game mode.
Lumphini Garden from Thailand, Pearl Market and Sunken Dragon from China, and Propaganda from North Korea. All four are open urban maps, delightfully detailed. Two are infantry dominated maps — Lumphini and Pearl Market — while Propaganda only has land vehicles, and Sunken Dragon has helicopters. Sunken Dragon and Lumphini have lots of water action, and water based Levolution. The other two have no large scale Levolution, but lots of nice smaller action and destruction.
New Maps
My first impression, starting with Lumphini Garden, is breathtaking views and wonderful scenery. The park with its gardens and waterways is a pleasantly relaxing environment for intense combat action. The map is very open, but with enough cover and structures to make engagements at all ranges practical. There is an elevated railway across the map center, which offers a nice overview, but one of the Levolution elements is a demolition charge to destroy part of it. The other Levolution causes a one time flood to pass through one side of the map, devastating the area and making it a real mess. The garden portion remains relatively pristine, and a light rain falls throughout the match.
Sunken Dragon is a fight set around an elegant floating casino or club, which can be flooded by the Levolution on the map. This map has helicopters in conquest, and offers the greatest use of vehicles in this DLC. The Sea Dragon is the center of much of the action, with the main floor area alternating between dry land and a swimming battle depending on the state of the water level control.
Propaganda is a winter urban map, with some armored vehicles but otherwise purely infantry. The railroad that divides the map has a train pass through periodically, acting a nice moving obstacle. Many buildings can be destroyed, but there is no large scale Levolution. The urban environment has lots of cover and flanking routes to keep the infantry action close and intense.
Pearl Market is an intense multi-level tight city street fight, with loads of routes up on the rooftop, between buildings high and low. It reminds me much of the Flood Zone map, or MW2’s Favela, with all the rooftop action and athletic jumps. There are few vehicles in this map, making it strongly infantry-centered. It gives you a chance to non-stop close quarters action, while remaining open and with flanking paths up, down, and around to be found everywhere.
Fast Paced Chaos Mode
The new Chain Link game mode is good news for player who want lots of close infantry action, but not be restricted to a few claustrophobic maps. It is sort of like a cross between domination and conquest. You capture flags, but the more flags you have which are adjacent — linked — the faster tickets are used up. This focuses combat intensely around the contested flags. It is both very tactical and chaotic. The obvious advantage of going after flags to make links will make both teams concentrate fights around them. But you can take any flag, and it pays to take enemy flags out even if you don’t make links of your own.
The action is so fast, though, that when you spawn in it can be hard to figure out which flag to go after. A squad leader giving orders and spawn beacons can help avoid this. Splitting up your squad on purpose can be useful in order to keep some alive as spawn points, as the intense combat can wipe everyone easily.
Often, I found it made sense to simply go after the closest flag regardless of whether it would make a link or not, rather than chase after the more valuable prizes. Sitting quietly defending a point is difficult because flanking is easy, with many routes available on all of the Dragon’s Teeth maps.
I’d like to see how Chain Link would work on other maps, but I definitely recommend it in Dragon’s Teeth if you are looking for intense, non-stop combat action. Capture The Flag game mode is available as well, and feels fairly well balanced here.
New Weapons
As usual, new weapons come with the DLC. Three of them, the Mateba Unica 6 .357 revolver sidearm, the Bulldog assault rifle, and the MPX PDW, are new weapons filling roles similar to those already available in the game – similar to the MP412 Rex, Scar-H, and MX4 respectively. The CS5 sniper rifle comes with its own suppressor, which is nice but is otherwise another, relatively short ranged, bolt action sniper. You can detach the suppressor, but the gun’s low muzzle velocity makes that less beneficial than with other snipers,
The Deagle 44 – the Magnum Research Desert Eagle – is a stand out as the only non-revolver with high damage and fast, semiautomatic fire, though accuracy suffers if you try to shoot it fast. Last, the Ballistic Shield support gadget can give you mobile cover to help get through heavily defended points. You can’t fire while having it out, and it only offers full coverage when crouching. It seems best employed with teamwork, providing cover so team mates can move up and engage the enemy.
The new weapons were tested on CTE, and some changes for balance were made, a nice benefit of the new CTE test program.
The RAWR pick up gadget is interesting. A well armed remote controlled weapons bot, with an M240B machine gun and grenade launchers, it adds another tool to push past well defended locations. While well armed, it isn’t much harder to take out than the EOD bot.
How Is It?
As a whole, I find Dragon’s Teeth to be an excellent addition to Battlefield 4. It offers players who favor infantry more outdoor, urban action, with vehicles present but playing a lesser role than most BF4 maps. As always in Battlefield, squad and team coordination can make victory easier, and the Chain Link game mode is like a speed chess variant, giving orders and executing plans as you try to mow down enemies and issuing split second decisive orders.
DICE has succeeded in creating a set of interesting — both in game terms and artistically — maps which play well. The Final Stand DLC has been revealed for CTE players, and offers an exciting conclusion for the current Battlefield 4 game. The September patch changes and improves so many things, it is practically a whole new game — albeit almost a year after release. And DICE (especially DICE LA) aren’t done yet with Battlefield 4.
So what is the future of Battlefield 4, and the Battlefield franchise? Stay tuned….
