Battlefield 6 Metacritic score is the best the FPS series has had in years, but still can't match the likes of Battlefield 3

Our Battlefield 6 review is live, and so are a bunch of others, pushing DICE's latest FPS to the dizzying heights of "Generally Favorable" on industry aggregate Metacritic, which is actually a substantial step up over the studio's recent output.

At the time of writing, with 43 critic reviews accounted for (and some in-progress or campaign-only critique not yet fully factored in), Battlefield 6 is sitting at a score of 84 on Metacritic for both PS5 and PC. The game's Xbox Series X reviews, with a sample size of just six, are abnormally higher at 88, but not enough to skew the average.

This is the highest score DICE has notched in nearly a decade. Battlefield 6 was always billed as a comeback after the letdown of 2021's Battlefield 2042, which holds a 68 on Metacritic. Prior to that, 2018's Battlefield 5 landed more solidly at 81.

2017's Star Wars Battlefront 2 is an interesting one. It launched to poor reviews, settling at 68 on Metacritic, but over time it's actually recovered and snowballed into one of DICE's best user-rated games, particularly on Steam.

Battlefield 6 is tracking slightly behind some previous peaks in the Battlefield series. Battlefield 1 sits at 88 on Metacritic, while Battlefield 3 and 4 – often discussed by Battlefield fans and developers as pinnacle, aspirational entries in the series – sit at 89 and 81 respectively. Better than Battlefield 4 but shy of Battlefield 3 feels like a pretty decent turnout for Battlefield 6.

As our own Joel Franey put it: "It might not have an original idea in its head, taking the safer choice every time one had to be made, but as might be expected with the backing of four studios, it presents itself incredibly well and has been refined into a very pure experience."

Dropping PS4 and Xbox One was a "magic trick" for Battlefield 6 and its improved destruction, technical director says: "We've kind of raised the floor of what we have."