I’ve played 1,500 hours of Battlefield — here’s why Battlefield 4 is still the most essential entry in the series
I’ve played a lot of Battlefield. Across the series, I’ve spent more than 1,500 hours running and gunning through its virtual combat zones* — that’s about 0.7 per cent of my entire life.
And as our Battlefield 6 review details, 2025’s flagship first-person+ shooter from Battlefield Studios has put the long-running franchise back in the spotlight after an extended off-season. It even beat Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 to become the best-selling FPS game of 2025.
However, Battlefield 6 didn’t release with a huge amount of content, and not everyone loved the game’s compact maps, weapon balance, or seasonal update cadence. I myself felt let down by the glacial progression system.
Latest Videos FromTechRadar
To its credit, Battlefield Studios announced a roadmap in April 2026, led by a third season designed to stir nostalgia for Battlefield’s previous present-day installments, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4.
Having spent a cool 675 hours in-game, Battlefield 4 is one of my most played titles of all time — for comparison, I’ve put 135 hours into Battlefield 6 since launch. It seems Battlefield Studios is keen to remind us of the good old days, so when Season 3 came around, I plugged in my PS4 to see how far my favorite shooter series has come.
(*675 hours in BF4, 510 hours in BF1, 135 hours in BF6, 50 hours in BFV, and an estimated 200 hours in BF3. Sheesh.)
Back to basics
With my bipod knife equipped, I was ready to jump into Battlefield 4 — but finding a game in 2026 isn’t as easy as pressing ‘Quickmatch’.
Amazingly, there are still a few official PS4 servers, but they’re always empty. The server browser is the best way to find a game via community servers, which means dealing with smaller map rotations, unofficial rules, and the occasional power-tripping admin.
Battlefield 6 has the opposite issue — a server browser is on the way, but for now, your only option to find a game is to quickmatch into a lobby full of randoms. That’s a win for Battlefield 4; I’ve always enjoyed learning the ebb and flow of a server and its residents over the course of a few matches.
Once I got online, I was genuinely surprised by how the game felt. It’s much slower-paced than I remembered; the sliding and vaulting and diving that defines Battlefield 6’s movement system is totally absent, maps are larger and sparser, and it takes longer to get in and out of combat.
All of this speaks to how Battlefield 4 is designed — compared to the infantry-focused corridors and choke points of Battlefield 6, older Battlefield games were built from the ground up as huge clashes between coordinated squads of troops, armored ground vehicles, and air support.
Furthermore, certain weapons are class-locked in Battlefield 4, meaning you can’t use, say, a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher at the same time. It asks for a bit more thought in how you approach your in-game role, which makes laying down suppressive fire as a Support class or rushing objectives as an Assault player feel more considered and rewarding.
As I settled in on classic maps like Dawnbreaker and Siege of Shanghai, I found myself choosing fights carefully and wordlessly working with my teammates to take objectives. In contrast, matches in Battlefield 6 can often feel determined by the skill of each team’s best individual players.
Spice of life
Another thing you notice pretty quickly about Battlefield 4 is just how much stuff the game has to offer.
The Premium edition, which includes all five paid DLC packs released in the year or so after launch, has a total of 33 maps and 107 primary and secondary weapons, more than any other entry in the series.
The differences between each weapon are less noticeable than in future games, but this means that gunfights aren’t always decided by who happened to pick the right weapon for a certain engagement distance, or indeed whose split-second reactions were fastest.
And then there’s the destruction that Battlefield 4’s maps offer — while Battlefield 6 will let you knock through a wall or blow up the odd building, Battlefield 4’s maps come with ‘Levolution’ gimmicks that range from leveling a skyscraper to flooding the entire map.
Some of these maps are amongst the most creative in the series history – the jungle terrain of Guilin Peaks, locked-down streets of Propaganda, and crashing waves of Paracel Storm are as inventive as Battlefield gets.
Fidelity and fiction
Battlefield 4 looks pretty good for a game released in 2013. The game’s art direction shines on maps like Hainan Resort and Giants of Karelia, but its low-poly terrain and flat lighting are getting harder to ignore as time goes on.
There’s no real contest with Battlefield 6, which is simply one of the best looking games I’ve ever played. Season 3’s revamp of Battlefield 4 map Golmud Railway is a great example – its vibrant fauna and detailed villages provide a great contrast to the carnage.
The way I remember Battlefield 4 looking is the way Battlefield 6 actually looks — playing both games in sequence makes it clear just how far we’ve come graphically in the past decade.
Somehow, Battlefield 6’s campaign kicks it up another notch – an early-game paratrooper sequence had my jaw pinned to the floor. From a writing standpoint, though, that campaign is more of a mixed bag, with a noticeable lack of real-world grounding.
Battlefield 4 saw the USA, Russia, and China locked in a tense conflict. The characters in its campaign always felt secondary to the overarching geopolitical threat — a smart choice when you’ve only got a few hours to develop your story.
As such, Battlefield 4’s online matches gain another layer of emotional investment from its worldbuilding.
In contrast, Battlefield 6 features a vaguely American NATO, and the fictional Pax Armata private military company engaged in seemingly random skirmishes across the globe, which doesn’t have quite the same gravitas.
Warfare, modernized
Battlefield 4 is still the quintessential Battlefield experience, the benchmark from which the series’ future efforts are measured. Despite its slower gameplay and aging visuals, it still offers a rewarding mix of arcade and tactical shooter elements that subsequent entries haven’t quite matched.
I’m still a huge fan of Battlefield 6’s faster, more constrained experience, and I’m keeping a keen eye on upcoming seasons, which promise five new maps and the introduction of naval combat by the end of 2026.
I think it’s important that Battlefield Studios makes this mix of vehicle and infantry a priority. There’s no denying that the rebooted Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series had a massive impact on the series’ latest entry, and with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 set to land later this year, Battlefield would be best served by updates that emphasise its difference from Activision’s champion franchise.
If you’ve yet to experience Battlefield 4, I’d suggest picking it up as soon as possible – the multiplayer servers for spin-off Battlefield Hardline shut down on 22 June, and while Battlefield 4 is still supported, there’s no knowing when that could change.
