The other day I wrapped up the campaign part of Battlefield 4 (which is really the only part of most games I play).  I was originally thinking that it would pick up from Battlefield 3, but this game seems to be (more or less) self contained.  With the exception of meeting "dima" in one of the stages in the middle part of the game.  Dima being one of the characters involved in the previous game.

The game does, in theory, build upon the world that was setup by Battlefield 3, but since this game takes place six years after the events of the original you don't follow your original team.  Instead  you follow the exploits of Tombstone, your new team of Marines, and you are in the role of Sgt. Recker.  In this world, the world of "the war of 2020", the current Chinese military regime suppresses one of their elected leaders, and make the claim that the US assassinated him.  With that, they start war, and it's where you start.   You exfiltrate some dude and "his wife" (who is really this elected official and the soldier that is protecting him), and things keep going from bad to worse as the world is at war.  In the end, you end up saving the politician, the Chinese stop the war, but their General is on a suicide mission going after the aircraft carrier you are assigned to, so you need to make a choice - who will drop down the Suez canal to detonate the C-4 on the side of the General's ship?  Your tombstone teammate?  Hannah (the Chinese soldier who's been fighting with you all this time), or do you let the ship sink? I chose to have Irish (my teammate) do it even though it meant certain death.  In the post-game sequence it sounds like he made it, but we aren't sure.  I am wondering why the game developers didn't consider option #4:  have Recher detonate it.  Yes, killing the protagonist is not that great from a game point of view (you've developed an attachment as a player), but it makes for a good story. As an aside, it was interesting to see the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system used in a game (it was part of one of the stages) other than metal gear :-)

The story itself seemed short, but it progressed without feeling like it was a little long in the tooth.  Even on the hard setting that I played the game, I was able to complete it in about 10 days playing it part-time. The game play really built on Battlefield 3, and there were some interesting new features which made this game feel like an improvement over Battlefield 3. I don't know how much of an aim assist exists in this game at the hard level I have either gotten better at military simulations, or this game has a better aim-assist at hard mode than I was expecting (I guess I was expecting that I'd need to fine tune my aim more than I actually did).

As far as achievements go, I ended up earning 14 achievements (or 18% of the total amount of achievements). I guess I could back in the future and try to earn more points, but maybe it's something for the future.  Overall I'd say that this game is an 8/10.

Have you played it? What do you think? (oh yeah, plot synopsis can be found at wikipedia)