Battlefield 1 has finally released its second bit of DLC, In the Name of the Tsar. It follows the Russian theatre of WWI, and as someone who's admittedly a sucker for a good snowy environment and has a fascination with oft-crazy Russian history, I suspected I might like this. Happily, I very much do, but for reasons well beyond my predilections.

Quietly lost among my DLC hype was the release of a patch enabling HDR. Having just bought my fancy new 4K HDR TV last week (it's this one, and it rules), the timing on this was perfect. Damn, it's pretty. The new levels are already pretty great visually, but the skyboxes are amazing in HDR. In fact, I made an effort at maximizing immersion by disabling the HUD entirely, which was really an interesting way to play the game. It puts you at a severe disadvantage in a lot of respects (e.g. not being able to easily distinguish teammates from foes, not having objective markers, not fully knowing when you hit/killed someone), but as an experience, it's really cool to do for a little while. It was disorienting and mildly disconcerting in ways I didn't really expect, but likely more closely approximates an actual battle. It's just you and a gun, and it's fairly terrifying. Playing like this, I got kinda lost in the Eastern Front a bit there in a neat way.

Map-wise, I'm enjoying the new additions. I have to give a shout out to the new Tsaritsyn map. It's not particularly sizable, but it's action-packed. The center of the map is a giant, circular church that is pure anarchy because it is the key control point. It has multiple points of entry, so when you're trying to hold it, it feels like a horde mode, and when you're trying to assault it, it's just basically your team throwing bodies at it. I will admit I found the latter frustrating for because my first match on the map was with a largely useless team against a very well-organized opposition that was just kicking our asses and defending the church very well. However, after a few matches on the other side of the coin, I began to appreciate the map more, and my last match was a loss featuring multiple failed assaults on the church that was still quite fun.

The new maps are mostly huge, though, and for me, that's a good thing. Conquest is arguably Battlefield at its most Battlefield, and the sprawl adds to the experience. Galicia is a great map. It's basically a giant field, which added a layer of constant fear that you're about to get sniped in the head. Indeed, you often did, but I was weirdly enjoying it. I typically hate sniping because I find it boring to do and annoying to die from. On smaller maps, sniping is mostly the domain of lame campers who lay down and aim down some corridor, which is just the worst. Out in the open nightmare that is Galicia, though, skill is definitely required to actually get hits and kills based on the sheer distance and the fact that it's being done on console joysticks, so I wasn't even really getting mad when I got domed from way off because it was often at a range I couldn't help but be impressed and amused by. Conversely, dropping someone who you can barely see in your scope is extremely satisfying. Even misses can be fun, as being the guy sprinting across an open field while bullets whiz by from multiple directions is the right kind of terror.

And in case you were wondering, yes, Battlefield still happens. I laughed hysterically at that bit of kamikaze warfare. The bombers are giant and slow, so I have to figure that the pilot got bored and decided to nosedive into the nearest structure he could find just for the hell of it. I love so many things about what transpired here. Poor biplane guy was majestically flying around and gets unwittingly plowed into the building in spectacular fashion, and our kamikaze pilot successfully bails at the last second, too, which makes it even better. I would pay money to see what that looked like from his screen. I ended up killing the pilot about 20 seconds after that video, but I honestly felt a little bad about it based purely on the joy he brought to my life. Wherever you are, you glorious agent of chaos, I say thank you.

Another thing on the bombers: they are fun as hell to shoot at from mounted turrets. It's almost prohibitively difficult to try and shoot at some of the faster planes because you have to lead them so much, but you can blow pieces off the slow-ass bombers and it feels awesome. They're also tough enough to withstand an onslaught of bullets, so bringing one down feels like a real achievement, and it also just looks cool as shit when the giant aircraft crashes to earth. I haven't unlocked the new guns yet, so I can't really report on those, but there were certainly people using them effectively, so I suspect I'll find a few I like in there. The Fedorov Avtomat was being used pretty heavily, and I imagine it's largely because it's an assault rifle in the medic class, which sounds pretty good.

The rest of the maps I haven't mentioned yet seem solid. I had some fun battles with tanks on Volga River, Albion is a different and interesting layout that feels like a preview of the next naval-focused DLC, and Brusilov Keep is fairly hectic in ways I like, although I could do with a bit fewer buildings in that. I'll probably spend a bunch of time on that on destroying buildings with the AT rocket gun to bury attic-dwellers in rubble. If I had to pick one I'm not a huge fan of, it would be Lupkow Pass, just because the verticality is often annoying to navigate and highlights the often poor mantling in the game, but even that one has its moments.

Overall, I'm really pleased with this DLC. They took their sweet-ass time with this one, but it thankfully seems like it was worth the wait. The HDR is something to behold, so now I really can't wait until I get my hands on my Xbox One X for the full 4K HDR experience. Battlefield 1 is still fun, and this DLC is significant and quality to where I feel like they're doing right by the Season Pass. DLC for me needs to be quite impressive to justify its cost/existence, and in this case it is. I was hoping this expansion would be good enough to allow me to skip CoD: WWII because I'll be busy having fun with this instead, and it's looking like I will do exactly that. I strongly recommend picking up In the Name of the Tsar if you're into Battlefield or might want to revisit it, especially if you've got the means to enjoy the HDR beauty.