BattleBit Remastered Preview – LowPoly Bonanza

Multiplayer shooters on the PC are legion. Extraction shooters and battle royales are dominating the modern battlespace, lately taking precedence over more traditional forms. When was the last time you thoroughly enjoyed a massive conquest match? Battlefields 3 and 4 offered the pinnacle of objective-based, team-oriented combat, but the popularity slowly waned as the audiences started experimenting with new substances. After the debacle that was Battlefield 2042, doomsayers were convinced that the entire concept is dead – for a time, it mostly was. However, two years’ worth of patches somewhat rebounded the old workhorse, fixing it up to a passable level. Audiences returned too, showing that the demand wasn’t gone, it was merely hibernating.

Turns out, revitalized Battlefield 2042 was just a warm-up for something completely unexpected. BattleBit Remastered, the indie multiplayer game made by just three people, appeared out of nowhere and became an overnight sensation. The fact that it’s still in early access didn’t stop it from selling like hot cakes. The game successfully scratches that Battlefield itch many players have. It provides a stable performance, character progression, and tons of maps, modes & weapons for a very reasonable price.

A star is born

It also looks cute, in a most unusual way. Its low-poly aesthetics reminded me of Roblox, the gaming platform my nine-year-old daughter enjoys on her Android tablet. The graphics are simple, but extremely clean and the level of detail is surprisingly scalable. Weapons, uniform decals, skybox, and other elements aren’t painted with the same flat brush as the swathes of terrain, for example. There are destructible buildings in the game, which provides an avenue for heavy weapons to shine. Visual simplicity can be misleading, but the game is serious as any Battlefield, offering everything you expect of “big” traditional shooters and more.

BattleBit Remastered hardware requirements are pretty modest, enabling you to experience generous framerates with a half-decent rig. For most of us, the great promise of three-digit framerates on e-sports graded gaming monitors was always a carrot on a very long stick. We either lacked the hardware or that glitzy new game pushed the requirements boundary just when we obtained a PC powerful enough to satisfy its predecessors. Now, with a compatible monitor, you can enjoy 120+ fps on a PC that can barely sustain 60 fps in the latest Call of Duty, living the power fantasy that is your birthright.

254 players per server

BattleBit Remastered supports three match sizes: 127 vs 127, 64 vs 64, and 32 vs 32 on more than twenty maps! Mods are insanely plentiful too. There are seventeen so far, including BF staples such as rush, conquest, and domination, as well as classic team deathmatch and a plethora of exotic ones like catch game and suicide rush. There’s a server browser and automatic matchmaking for each desired match size. The game could use a more detailed matchmaking filter, but that’s probably in the pipeline for future updates. As of yet, you can’t set up a private server and play exclusively with your guys and/or clan. I reckon that will change soon too.

Classic Battlefield modes such as conquest are the ones where BattleBit truly shines. Vehicular combat, destructible objects, varied terrain, and class-based combat evoke the best days of Battlefields 3 and 4, before the series abandoned modern military settings (BF Hardline, 1 and V). Ground vehicles, such as tanks, behave somewhat unrealistically, gliding over terrain almost without any inertia, but I guess, early access and all… Combat coordination greatly benefits from proximity-based voice chat. Its masterful implementation makes coordinating with pickups a total breeze. You can even talk when incapacitated, screaming for medic and warning nearby friendlies about that asshole sniper.

Class-based gameplay

There are six classes in BattleBit Remastered: Assault, Medic, Engineer, Support, Recon, and Commander. Each has a role to play and a unique arsenal of customizable weapons and gadgets. The game has two hundred grindable levels and a prestige system that goes beyond that. Prestige is similar to the system used in Call of Duty. If you decide to activate it, you will essentially reset your progress, but you’ll gain unique cosmetics and other rewards. Grinding XP and dinging unlocks weapons and gadgets, but using a specific weapon earns you parts for its customization. Again, this is a classic system adopted by many modern multiplayer shooters. Every piece here seems legitimate and accurate. I don’t know the details about licensing or whether it is necessary for console releases only, but I prefer to use Kalashnikov instead of Kastov rifle. Yes, I’m looking at you, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.

Tiny teething problems

BattleBit Remastered is a work in progress. New stuff is constantly being introduced – there were two substantial updates since the early access debut. The element needing the most improvement is the weak sound of gunfire. Every weapon sounds lame, especially high-caliber RPGs and tank cannons that sound completely underwhelming. I realize that devs had to find the balance between a cacophony of explosions and proximity chat. But the chat overwhelmingly won, which is a shame. Just make people yell if they wish to communicate during a firefight. I’m sure no one would complain about the tiny touch of realism.

The only classic multiplayer shooter immune to shifting trends is Counter-Strike. Everyone else has to work for a living, which goes doubly so for an indie game made by tiny studio. BattleBit Remastered masterfully pulls its own weight. It has teething/evolving issues same as everyone else, but the spark of genius is more than visible through all that scaffolding. The future seems bright for this one.