The Case

EA loves operating on a schedule no matter what. Battlefield 4 was released with many issues, making it barely playable during the first week. While a month of fixes has brought the game to a much more playable state, those issues have not postponed the DLC release even by a single day. So let’s see if China Rising is worth getting and how good or bad that pre-order bonus is.

The Trial

China Rising does not deviate much from a standard Battlefield DLC delivery. There are 4 new maps with a common theme, some new guns, some new game modes and some new stuff found only on these new maps. Maps use real locations in China as inspiration for their geographical design, which provide some interesting vistas. Disappointingly, all of them have much less interactive elements or dynamic weather, compared to the base game. This is very strange, considering that the Second Assault DLC composed of remakes of popular BF3 maps had a lot of dynamic elements added to them. Lastly, it seems that the new fashion of BF4 DLC is the 10-rank extension of the old 100-rank maximum. The one star general is the new top rank now, which is shown in-game as a colonel with an ugly purple text for some reason.

Guilin Peaks is the smallest map of the package with interesting sights and a multiple underground caves. Its size makes it more infantry focused, with only light vehicles and helicopters available for transport. Fortunately, it never feels too small, and the caves provide many additional paths for interesting conquest matches. The biggest problem with this map is the tendency for very noticeable FPS drops.

Altai Range is a large map dominated by a wide central mountain. It has a majestic look to it, and the scale favours the use of both ground and air vehicles. The central capture point on its slope gives access to several bonuses and becomes an important place to fight for. The usefulness of a mountain as a large sniper nest also adds another reason to keep enemies away from it.

Dragon Pass is a very diverse map, with several steep mountains and rivers carving large islands. Such terrain favours a wide variety of weapons and vehicles to fight over every location. When both teams are evenly matched, most of the fighting happens around a few central points with the occasional lone soldier capturing the outlying points.

Silk Road is the least special map of them all. A desert map filled with medium sized sand dunes leaves little long range visibility and very little high ground. Almost all action happens at the capture points, with a few accidental encounters in-between.

To make transportation around maps faster, the dirt bikes are back with several rams on the maps to encourage some extreme drivers. All maps also have a ground-controlled bomber plane, which can drop 8-12 bombs on the ground or carry another cruise missile. The presence of the bomber also means that all CR maps give commanders a cruise missile instead of a gunship. The large delay between bomb targeting and detonation as well as the limited visibility makes the bomber an extremely situational weapon. The queues near the bomber control booth usually means that you will fly it when you can instead of the situations when you need it.

The new weapons include several guns for the troops and several new gadgets. The Recon’s SUAV is a small plane that can spot enemies and laser tag vehicles. These abilities make it quite useful on larger maps. Support players get a different radio controlled plane – UCAV, which can be used to blow up enemies out of range for more traditional weapons, with more precision than the mortar. Unfortunately, unlocking most of them requires 3 jet fighter ribbons, which isn’t easy for most of the BF4 players and can cause a lot of frustrating moments as jet newbies take to the skies just to get the ribbons.

The Air Superiority gameplay mode from BF3’s End Game DLC is back with a few changes and some old problems. There is still a conquest for the jets, where you battle over the control of 3 points. It’s also still limited to 24 vehicles, which makes the experience on some servers very boring. Another mode is the King of the Hill mode for attack helicopters. This mode has its merits, but it is also jammed together with jet rounds in Air Superiority. Unless you find a specifically configured server, the constant switching between helicopters and jets in Air Superiority gets annoying fast. It is unfortunate that while adding some new features for this gameplay mode, DICE has ignored the old problems and instead opted to adding new ones.

The Verdict

China Rising brings the standard assortment of additional stuff for the base game. While the new maps are nice, they are more barebones than the base maps of BF4. There are a few interesting new gadgets, but they are not enough to justify the price. It’s not a terrible DLC, but it does not seem like a sure buy and is certainly not decent compensation for those who pre-ordered BF4 and had to endure an unplayable game for the first few weeks.

Case Review