Battlefield 4's latest DLC, China Rising, is out now for Premium members, and will be ready for the plebians on Dec. 17. To both celebrate the premium members and shame the rest, a new trailer is out for the DLC, as well as some gameplay footage to show players what they'll experience. Get ready, because there's a lot of video coming your way.
First, the trailer...
The DLC's producer, Craig McLeod, detailed some of the maps to VG247, saying they're meant to "show off the majestic Chinese mainland, primarily the variety that China has to offer."
"Silk Road and Altai Range are geared towards the use of big vehicles. Guilin Peaks is designed for infantry combat, and then probably our broadest spectrum comes in Dragon Pass, which is a re-imagining of Dragon Valley from BF2, where we've included water play as well."
Battlefield 4's Levolution feature also comes into play in the new maps. "We wanted to show a different side of Levolution, because Levolution is a huge range of things," McLeod emphasises. "Not just collapsing helicopters or boats crashing in, but smaller gameplay things that create a tug of war situation. We put bollards in the radar station, so that when you approach it you don't know what state it's in. There's terrain destruction on the sand dunes as well, leaving craters after big explosions.
"We've also done Levolution on a smaller scale for weather: on Altai Range it starts snowing, on Dragon Pass it rains and fog rolls down the hills of Guilin Peaks."
You can take a peek at Silk Road and Guilin Peaks in the videos below. If you want to see Altai Range and Dragon Pass, best go buy the DLC. Video, ONWARD!
Beyond the maps, the DLC offers 10 new assignments, just as Second Assault did, as well as the return of the Air Superiority mode, a sort of territory capture mode, just taken to the skies. One player wins once he or she has more planes in the air than the other. We last saw this mode in Battlefield 3's End Game DLC.
As always, new weapons will be added, and China Rising features five of its one: the MTAR-21 and MP7 submachine guns, RPK light machine gun, L96AI sniper rifle, and the L85A2 assault rifle.
Players also get to control the UCAV and SUAV drones. The UCAV works similarly to the TV Guided Missile, and is first launched like a mortar round before players can control it in the air. It fires airburst explosives from a range of about 400 meters. The SUAV is slower, and carries a laser designator to mark targets for guided weaponry. Or, you could just crash the damn thing into the target of your choice. Probably not as efficient, but far more surprising, especially since your enemies will be able to see that laser.
As far as vehicles go, dirt bikes return from Battlefield 3, and there's also a new vehicle. This DLC being set in China, the new vehicle is a Chinese bomber, the Xian H-6 airplane.
Battlefield 4 on the PC was recently updated, but the PS4 update was unfortuantely delayed for additional testing. According to an update on Battlelog, "The PS4 game update that was originally meant to go live Dec 3 is undergoing some additional testing and will be rescheduled for a later date. We will get back with final details as soon as we have verification that the update is good to go."
Here's the full list of update notes for the PC version:
-Removed the blur effect on soldiers that appeared when Commanders were using EMP attacks
-Fixed the audio bug where audio sometimes randomly dropped out while playing on certain multiplayer maps (typically Golmud Railway and Hainan Resort)
-Fixed the "one-hit kill bug" where occasionally damage from a single bullet was applied multiple times
-Fixed a common crash that would occur when exiting from the Single Player Campaign to Main Menu
-Tweaked the network and computer performance screen to show proper values. Players can now test their computer and network connection and get recommendations if they need to adjust something to improve their gameplay experience
