Battlefield 2042 is a good game at its core. It’s fun, frantic, and as engrossing as Battlefield has ever been. While the launch has been filled with a myriad of technical issues that I failed to mention in this review, those are sure to be ironed out over the next few months. The majority of maps are too large to be impactful, the Specialist system has taken away a core aspect of what makes Battlefield work as a franchise, and the tone of the game is often at odds with itself. But through it all, I’m still enjoying my time blowing things up, screaming and laughing with friends, and making more of those Battlefield memories.
First-person shooters are in a weird place right now. The Warzones and the Fortnites of the world seem to have a firm grip on the game industry, with similar looking games seemingly releasing every single week. Even Halo: Infinite, a game many assumed would be a doomed release when it was revealed mid-2020, is shaping up to be one of the most impactful releases of the year. Enter Battlefield 2042, the latest entry in EA’s beloved franchise, as it tries to stake its own hold on an ever-evolving FPS landscape.
The good news first: Battlefield 2042 is a lot of fun when it’s working. Chaotic set pieces, frantic pushes to final objectives–this is classic Battlefield. While other games strive to have exciting solo moments that leave an indelible mark on the player, Battlefield has always strived to create moments involving the entire team and not just a single player. I had those moments in spades with 2042, with plenty of laughs and “oh shit” moments with friends. But that’s where Battlefield 2042 stumbles.
Battlefield 2042, at least in its launch state, is going through an identity crisis. As with most games, a couple of modes can make or break a game, especially for a game that is solely reliant on its multiplayer modes. On one hand, modes like Breakthrough and 2042’s Portal mode are absolute knockouts that encapsulate why people love the Battlefield franchise. On the other, Conquest and Hazard Zone feel confusing and disjointed to the point that it seems as though Battlefield 2042 is trying to be a different game. Add in a convoluted Specialist system and Battlefield 2042 loses all sense of what it’s trying to accomplish.
The Standouts
Battlefield 2042 has two standout modes: Breakthrough and the much-anticipated Portal mode. Breakthrough, which is essentially the Rush mode of yore, is a frantic fight to capture or defend objectives against 63 opposing players in focused sections of 2042’s larger conquest maps. Seeing each army clash on the battlefield to control individual points solicited a feeling I haven’t felt since the Battlefield 1 days in playing the Operations mode. Firefights breaking out in every direction, team members assuming roles of medics to ensure the team’s victory, and a sense of camaraderie percolated throughout every match.
Breakthrough at launch is absolutely unbalanced in favor of defenders. In close to 50 games of Breakthrough, I only encountered two rounds where the attackers ended the game in victory. While it does make sense that attackers are at a disadvantage, as they often are in real life, defensive positions baked into each map’s overall design allow even the most beginner defenders to hold down objectives. We’ll see if DICE balances Breakthrough more in the future but as it stands, only the most adept attackers will prevail.
Battlefield 2042’s Portal mode is another standout addition to the game’s overall package. As promised, fan-favorite maps from across Battlefield 1942, Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 3 make a return, allowing nearly endless customization options through the Battlefield Portal Editor online. While I didn’t have a chance to try any fan-made servers, the pre-baked 1942 Classic Conquest, Bad Company 2 Rush, and Battlefield 3 Conquest mode have been nostalgic trips into Battlefield’s past. Each mode has been updated with a lot of 2042’s UI elements, but weapons, gear, and the class system make a return to recreate some of those classic Battlefield moments. It’ll be interesting to see how Portal shapes up going forward, especially as fan-made modes/maps start to be crafted, but at launch it stands as a fun trip down memory lane to see how far Battlefield has come.
The Not So Greats
Battlefield 2042’s biggest issue is offering so much that it doesn’t have a clear vision of what it wants to be. On its face, it wants to offer those classic Battlefield moments, but with more players in bigger maps and with more customization than ever. While that sounds amazing on paper, in practice it devolves into a chaotic mess that tends to confuse more than excite. First, let’s look at Battlefield 2042’s newest mode, Hazard Zone. Acting as a pseudo-Battle Royale with squad-based gameplay only, players are tasked with retrieving hard drives that are planted throughout the map and then exfil with those hard drives. The mode is crafted around 2042’s new specialist system and relies on each squad to communicate with each other to ensure they have the right loadout selected and a well-rounded squad.
With friends, Hazard Zone is a strategic and tense journey to locate each hard drive and make it out alive. Without friends, Hazard Zone turns into another confusing mess with random squadmates tending to try and lone-wolf objectives. And that is where Hazard Zone falls flat: it feels as though this mode is as disconnected with what makes Battlefield special. While strategy is key in Hazard Zone, playing with randoms often came down to who was more interested in racking up kills than actually trying to obtain the hard drives. The one mode that seems to be solely dedicated to teamwork often resulted in everything but.
Conquest, a staple throughout the entire Battlefield franchise, has been a pretty big letdown in this first launch week. With a combined 128 players in every match, with AI bots filling out slots if matchmaking cannot find players, every Conquest map has been crafted to be large enough to accommodate the vast player count. While the larger player count is a welcome sight, especially in modes like Breakthrough, the larger maps to go along with it often result in matches feeling too thin and stretched out.
Maps such as Discarded and Hourglass almost always end up culminating in a fight over one single sector, with all of the other surrounding sectors being ignored save for some small firefights between one or two squads. Add in that vehicles are absolutely necessary to traverse the expansive maps, and it just feels like the space between objectives is largely meaningless to anyone who isn’t playing as a sniper. I would have liked to have seen more dense maps, akin to the Manifest map, a cargo container map that really emphasizes both verticality and CQB. Maps like Kaleidoscope, a wide-open map set within the park of a major city, feel uninspired with its objectives and set pieces, even when a massive tornado comes tearing through.
A New Levelution
A big new feature within Battlefield 2042 is its inclusion of dynamic weather effects. Between sandstorms and tornadoes, Battlefield 2042 can get exciting when these new weather effects take hold of a map. The only disappointing aspect of these elements is how non-impactful they are to the overall map. While players can get swept up into a tornado or blinded by a sandstorm, their effects don’t seem to serve anything outside of a random visual spectacle during a match. I was expecting much more impact from these storms, such as sandstorms covering up certain buildings or a tornado opening up new lanes of combat; but instead, they are just set dressing to sell the theme of the overarching story Battlefield 2042 is trying to tell.
Speaking of destructibility, Battlefield has been known for its destructible environments going back to the original Bad Company. Hitting its peak with “Levelution” in Battlefield 4, the series has strayed away from allowing players to completely level a map to the ground over the last several entries. Battlefield 2042 has the least destructible Battlefield modes to date, to a very noticeable scale. While some walls can still be destroyed to open up new paths of combat, it’s much more predictable now to know which walls can be blown up and which cannot. This lack of destructibility, in my opinion, is why many of the game modes feel unbalanced between attackers and defenders. With players easily able to decipher which buildings are safe to hide in and which are not, players know which areas to hole up in so they have the strongest defensive position.
What’s so special about Specialists?
Arguably the biggest game design addition in Battlefield 2042 is the inclusion of its new Specialist system. Taking inspiration from hero shooter FPS titles like Overwatch and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3’s specialists, the new specialist system allows players to create any class they wish with any specialist they wish. Weapons, tools, and equipment are all class-agnostic this time around, with Specialists each having a single ability that allows them to do various things across the battlefield. Want to have a grappling gun to reach new heights on a whim? Choose McKay. Want to play more of a traditional medic role? Choose Falck, who possesses a healing dart gun.
It appears the Specialist system was crafted for Hazard Zone specifically, as the combination of certain Specialists offer an added strategic element, and makes the most sense for a squad v. squad mode. However, when placed within the larger, more traditional Battlefield modes, the entire Specialist system tends to fall apart. Firstly, the class agnostic weapons and gear that come along with the specialist system sounds wonderful on paper for game modes that rely on an entire team to work together to capture objectives. In practice, the Specialist system adds an unnecessary level of complexity to beautifully simple game modes and introduces the concept of “meta builds” in Battlefield.
In Battlefield’s past, while certain “meta builds” were always built upon within each class, each class was still viable within any given mode. Now with the Specialist system, it appears that only one or two builds will rise to the top in hardcore play, at least if this first week is any indication. It’s nearly impossible to determine if a player right next to you can revive you while you’re calling out to be revived, or if they have an ammo crate equipped to resupply their teammates around them. Since everyone can carry ballistic armor plates, it lowers the value of dedicated medics or assault ammo suppliers. The Specialist system reinforces the idea that players can and should play as lone wolves, and actively dissuades players from playing as a team.
Specialists are an experiment to give players more control and customization over how they play as an individual. Classes in previous Battlefield games encouraged people to play as a team because each class had a specific role on that team. Allow the roles to become merely a suggestion and Battlefield 2042 starts to feel like a game it desperately tries to convince you it’s not.
It’s Still a Battlefield
Battlefield 2042 is a good game at its core. It’s fun, frantic, and as engrossing as Battlefield has ever been. While the launch has been filled with a myriad of technical issues that I failed to mention in this review, those are sure to be ironed out over the next few months. The main issues I have with 2042 are some of its inherent design decisions. The majority of maps are too large to be impactful, the Specialist system has taken away a core aspect of what makes Battlefield work as a franchise, and the tone of the game is often at odds with itself. But through it all, I’m still enjoying my time blowing shit up, screaming and laughing with friends, and making more of those Battlefield memories.
