You can assault an aircraft carrier in EA DICE’s Battlefield 4: Naval Strike DLC (hands-on preview)

Electronic Arts’ DICE studio is launching a new expansion pack dubbed Battlefield 4: Naval Strike. We played hands-on with the downloadable content (DLC) that is arriving shortly on the consoles and the PC.

Naval Strike is the second in a series of DLC expansion maps that are aimed at keeping players engaged year round with Battlefield first-person shooter military games. As its name suggests, the map introduces some dramatic and intense water-based combat with four scenarios set in the South china Sea.

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“The big feature of Battlefield 4 was we were expanding from land and air and we brought the battle to the sea,” said Dennis Brännvall, a lead designer on Battlefield 4 at EA DICE, the Stockholm-based game studio that makes the Battlefield games. “We haven’t seen these kinds of maps in any Battlefield game.”

One of the wildest new modes is Carrier Assault, where you try to take over your enemy’s aircraft carrier and sink it.

“This is like a spiritual return of Titan mode from Battlefield 2142,” Brännvall said.

You can fight massive battles among the islands to take control points. If you take half of the control points, then the artillery on the maps fires at the enemy’s aircraft carrier. When the carrier hits half strength, you blow a hole in its side. Your team can then assault the carrier through the hole in its side. Once you go inside, you find that you have to fight through the vertical levels of the aircraft carrier.

“It’s basically a level within a level,” said Brännvall.

Once you blow up two points within the carrier, you win the game. A team that is vulnerable can lose the game by failing to defend its carrier, or by losing all of the points on the map. That makes for a wide variety of coordinated strategies for players on both sides.

The maps include Lost Islands, Nansha Strike, Wave Breaker, and Operation Mortar. You have to do things like capture fishing villages in Lost Islands, drop a submarine on foes while you infiltrate a naval base in Wave Breaker, fight in a storm in Nansha Strike, or fight in a cliffside resort in Operation Mortar.

There are five new weapons and a new amphibious hovercraft vehicle (AHV). The latter is a quick way to move around on both sea and land. You can move around fast enough to surprise the enemy and take over control points. The hovercraft isn’t as bulky as an attack boat, which can wreak havoc on enemies on land, sea or air. But the AHVs have the advantage of going places where the attack boats can’t.

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In Lost Islands, there’s a crashed airplane in the middle. You can blow it up and hide inside. I was inside the airplane and an attack boat cruised by. I figured I was safe, but the attack boat opened fire and its bullets went right through the walls of the aircraft and killed me.

With Nansha Strike, the battlefield has dynamic wind. The trees flap and the waves go crazy. You can hide in the troughs of waves.

Battlefield 4 Naval Strike will be available on March 24 to Battlefield 4 Premium subscribers and as a separate add-on pack. EA previously launched Battlefield 4: Second Assault DLC in February.

DICE engineers have been busy making the DLC, but they have also had to deal with server issues that hobbled the performance of the multiplayer version of the game during the critical holiday season. Brännvall said, “We consider Battlefield 4 to be a persistent service to our players. We continue to improve at all times. We had some bumps in the road early, but we continue to work diligently to monitor them.”

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