After replicating the chaos of the two world wars in their last pair of games, the Battlefield series has jumped back to the future with the release of Battlefield 2042. Making their debut on the newest generation of consoles, fans of the series have been especially excited to see what DICE can do with the added capabilities of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Being such a massive game with so much to experience, the reviews have been coming out for the newest Battlefield installment over the past few days. From the critics, it appears that there is definitely a lot of fun to be had with Battlefield 2042 if players can withstand some technical bugs and design flaws along the way.
All Out War
Compared to its contemporaries, Battlefield has always been the place for massive-scale combat encounters, and that trend continues with Battlefield 2042. Vic Hood of TechRadar wrote that "perhaps the biggest benefit of Battlefield 2042's increased player size in All-Out Warfare is that there's just no letting up. While you won't constantly run into a plethora of enemies, you will nearly always come across someone wherever you are. Sure, the map has scaled with the player size, but we never struggled to find an enemy or a teammate when on foot, and there are so many players that the action never stops - though this is more true of Breakthrough than Conquest."
Other critics did not have quite the same amount of fun on Battlefield 2042's vast set pieces. For Eurogamer's Martin Robinson, "the maps can sometimes seem counter to an enjoyable Battlefield experience too. It's no doubt down to the 128-player count that means when it comes to marketing points Battlefield 2042 can go toe-to-toe with the big Battle Royale games, but those wide open spaces only exacerbate the problems newcomers tend to find with the series; that you're running endlessly from one point to another with not much by way of action in between, only to be cleanly sniped as soon as you reach your objective and you're made to sprint endlessly again."
New Additions Hit and Miss
As well as familiar Battlefield staples, DICE included new features into this newest installment of the series. Players can now be Specialists when selecting their loadouts, with Liam Croft of Push Square noting that "repair tools, ammo and medical crates, and insertion beacons can be equipped by anyone, blurring the lines between the traditional roles previous titles have subscribed to. Each Specialist has their own unique perk, but they're hardly a replacement for the defined tasks of soldiers past. While you could argue this is a more freeing implementation, it also means those all-important tools could be left behind...It's not a change for the better."
DICE has also added new ways to play, like Hazard Zone, which has been compared by many critics to Escape from Tarkov. IGN's Stella Chung highlighted that "what makes Hazard Zone great is its progression: when loading into a match for the first time you can pick any Specialist, but your loadout of weapons, gadgets, and tactical equipment is limited since you won't have enough credits to get anything other than the freebees. Play a few more matches, though, and maybe even successfully extract once or twice, and you’ll earn enough credits to buy some sweet items for your next drop...I found myself eager to queue in for another match of Hazard Zone even if I had been absolutely demolished at the beginning of a previous game because I wanted to rack up points to get my best loadout in the next round. The feeling of accomplishment when you steal the extraction helicopter or plane from enemy teams in the last extraction point is exhilarating, and it naturally pushed me to queue in for more matches to ride that high."
Another addition to the game is the Portal mode, where players can play games lifted straight from past Battlefield titles. Martin Robinson at Eurogamer reflected on the fun they had "pitting a mass of WW2 soldiers against a smaller squad kitted out with modern day equipment" and jumping to "a round of Rush at Arica Harbor with Bad Company 2's tools and rules, or Conquest at Noshahr Canals using Battlefield 3's toybox." For Robinson, "playing around with these much loved old toys, now all polished to a modern sheen, is more than just a nostalgia rush. It's a reminder of the potency of the Battlefield formula, the reason so many players endure the series' sometimes rocky patches and the reason it's always maintained such a strong community."
Technical Difficulties
During their time with the game, critics have encountered several notable bugs. Push Square's Liam Croft noted that "there's a long list of technical flaws mostly revolving around graphical glitches. Aircraft can become suspended in mid-air, vehicle pieces float in the air once they've been destroyed, and dodgy killcams fall underneath the map. Matches become stuck on the map screen and never start, redeploying in the middle of a match is prevented by bugs, and even Trophies don't unlock correctly."
Furthermore, Alan Van Aken of Game Informer added that "while most bugs I encountered are minor, each one dilutes the fun I have when playing...More serious glitches can negatively affect gameplay, like when sniper scopes lose their magnification after interacting with gadgets like Irish’s mobile barricades." With all these bugs in mind, Van Aken judged that "unfortunately, Battlefield 2042 currently feels underbaked."