Battlefield 2042 Review

Battlefield is a historical series if we talk about shooters and, more specifically, multiplayer shooting games, an area that revolutionized with its first installment and that has taken a step further on many occasions thanks to significant mass battles in gigantic scenarios with many elements that the players can destroy, giving us almost better than any other video game the feeling that we were in the middle of a warlike conflict.

Now the series returns to us with Battlefield 2042, a delivery that comes from the hand of EA and DICE and that bets everything on multiplayer, leaving aside the campaign to focus, according to its creators, on what they do best, offer a fun and challenging combat experience between players that immerses us in an all-out war. We have already been able to start playing for a few hours and, during the following few lines, we are going to tell you what we are looking for so far in the absence of further exploring its maps and being able to play in natural conditions, with thousands or perhaps millions of people accessing your servers.

All-Out Warfare

Battlefield 2042 offers us a total of three different experiences starting with All-Out Warfare or Total War, as its creators call it. A “classic” experience of the series that we can enjoy in the seven new maps that arrive with this installment and that is composed of the Conquest and Advance modes well known by the community that will allow us to enjoy large-scale combats with games of up to 128 players (on PC and consoles of the current generation and 64 in those of the past) on gigantic maps that we will talk about later.

It is a continuous experience in both modes, especially in Advance. We will find the typical experience of an attacking team and another defender. They lead the offensive to conquer various points on the map to conquer the sector and push behind the rivals. In contrast, the defender, as the name suggests, tries to avoid it, offering chaotic battles full of players with straightforward action and quite spectacular moments that efficiently exploit the maps.

For its part, Conquest is also a reasonably classic mode in which both sides will fight to conquer the maximum number of sectors on a map that appears “clean” at the beginning, with the exception that now there will be sectors that will be divided into several flags (even in three) causing some exciting combats and giving more dynamics to this mode than in previous installments it could become a walk from one side to another depending on the situation of the game, something that changes due to this modification made with an excellent criterion by DICE.

For us, Conquest is the most satisfactory way of this experience and in which the characteristics of the new Battlefield 2042 maps are best exploited with hilarious situations and the correct dose of action to enjoy the game, create a good strategy and make the good make the maps not get lost in the too chaotic battles that Advance offers us for us.

Hazard Zone

The second experience that Battlefield 2042 offers us is Hazard Zone, a mixture of survival mode (we can only die once, although there is resurrection mechanics a la Apex Legends ) spiced up with classical Battlefield mechanics in which 32 players (on PC and this console generation) divided into teams of 4 members will have to jump to the seven maps of All-Out Warfare to recover specific data discs scattered randomly throughout the Battlefield. To achieve them, we must eliminate rival teams that will want to recover them … and also hostile forces controlled by the AI ​​(quite intelligent, by the way) that they turn this PvP mode into a PvPvE in which we have to face against other players and against “NPCs”

This mode, in turn, is divided into four different “phases,” starting with the preparation phase. We have to select the operator and the equipment we will use during the game before deploying on the Battlefield. There are already some exciting things here, such as that there cannot be repeated operators on the same team and that our arsenal is limited to what we can buy with a few black market credits … which we will obtain depending on our role during other Hazard Zone games, being very. It is essential to form a balanced team and manage our economy well if we want to have more options to win since after each game, we will have to buy all the equipment again.

The next phase is the deployment phase, in which we arrive at a random point on the map that we have had to play. Here, our task is to locate the data disks on the map (thanks to a scanner that we can equip as an accessory) and try to recover them, facing hostile forces to achieve it. In addition, when we recover one or more data discs, other players can detect them, so we automatically become a potential target for our enemies.

A few minutes after deployment comes the next phase, the first of the two available extractions during the game. These extractions are the two opportunities we have to leave the map alive and bring those data discs to our unit, obtaining juicy credits from the Black Market … which help us to come back with more strength in the next game. After a specific time, we are told that this extraction window opens. We are shown a random point on the map where it takes place, which causes that, if we decide to exit the game at this stage, we are almost entirely involved in security in intense combat around the designated area for the air transport to land, pick us up and take us home.

If we manage to access it, the game ends here, but if we don’t, we reach the fourth phase in which we can recover more data disks that fall on the map .imply hide and survive until the second is announced. Point of extraction of the game, leading us to a final battle in which we must fight to flee and stay one more day in this gloomy 2042.

With our games in Hazar,d Zone, we could not be more satisfied with what this game mode has offered us; fact, it seems to us one of the most attractive assets of Battlefield 2042, a mode that maintains the tension at all times, with games that do not take long (approximately 20 minutes maximum if we decide to go to “Extraction 2) and in which we have something to do at all times, being able to draw different strategies, having to fight quite frequently and being in continuous tension because we only have one life (although they can resurrect us if we have bought an object in the Black Market) and because almost anywhere we will have an enemy ready to finish with our life. It is then an exciting eating experience that we think will work very well among Battlefield players, especially if we enjoy playing with other friends this way. It can be very frustrating if we do it with strangers who avoid teamwork.

Portal: classic maps and exciting tools for the community

The third experience of Battlefield 2042 is called Battlefield Portal, a kind of community center where we can enjoy some maps and weapons from some historical installments of the series, as well as a lot of tools for the community that will allow us to create and play all kinds of custom games that we can access quite easily.

Starting with the classic content, at launch, we find remakes with the current engine of six maps extracted from Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 (two per delivery), as well as a selection of weapons and vehicles from these games and also some Classic modes like Rush or the Conquest or Assault variants of these installments. Playing these maps and modes with a 2021 Battlefield has been an enjoyable experience that we are sure the veterans of the series will love.

On the other hand, we have the tools of the community, starting with a web manager that will allow us to create a game with our style, being able to select the number of players, the maps in which we will play (or small areas of each map in which to do it ) and alter all kinds of rules so that other members of the community or we unleash their creativity. They can enjoy very crazy modes and experiences in Battlefield Portal, for example, a free-for-all mode that we could play in the that we could only use a rocket launcher … that it only recharged if we gave five jumps with our soldier.

Classic gameplay with a few tweaks

At the gameplay level, we find a classic Battlefield experience in the shooting mechanics, with ease to move and aim as well as a pretty forceful recoil in weapons in those that use heavier calibres, an apparent realism that is compensated with a movement faster of the soldiers as well as a “time to kill” or time to kill the enemy that seems to us superior to other deliveries(something that on a personal level we do not like too much since we prefer a somewhat more realistic approach than other Battlefields have had). To all this, we must add, of course, the vehicles that we have available to travel through all the maps and the usual arsenal of weapons that we find scarce for the main game experiences.

To give an extra twist to this classic gameplay, we have the so-called Plus System, a tool that we can access by pressing the T key and that allows us to modify the accessories of a weapon on the fly in the middle of the game, especially to When choosing the sights, being able to change it easily before entering a closed area in which we have close combat and, when we clean the room and go outside, to be able to switch to another with more magnifications for medium and long distances. This tool gives enough versatility to combat, and we find it very interesting.

As for the specialists, this time, we have a total of 10, with each of them having an extraordinary power or gadget that makes them unique as a hook to climb roofs with ease, a spy drone, a healing gun … For the rest, there is no difference since each specialist can equip himself with any weapon or grenade that is available to him, so this “special power” will be the only factor that will differentiate him from the rest at the playable level, diminishing enough importance to these ” character classes.

There are also some aspects at the gameplay level that have not finished convincing us, such as some physics of both the bullet and the somewhat strange grenades (for example, we throw a grenade against a glass … with the grenade bouncing towards us while the glass is was breaking anyway), a completely broken respawn system that is particularly frustrating to appear next to various enemies (in addition to other bugs within respawns that DICE is already aware of) and some minor aspects that have some room for improvement such as, for example, to be able to zoom in certain areas of the map when we consult it.

Detailed maps

One of the strengths of each Battlefield installment is the maps, huge well-designed battlefields in which we can stick with dozens or hundreds of players in epic confrontations. At the same time, we see how many of its elements are destroyed and change as the game progresses.

In Battlefield 2042, we find the best of the series in certain aspects and the worst in others. There are maps such as Orbital, Kaleidoscope or Discard that are hilarious, while other maps have a less successful design such as, for example, Renovation, which with its large wall and the distribution of Conquest points invites only to play in the middle of the map or Ruptura, the most extensive map in the series … with many empty areas and some uninspired moments that remind us, again, that bigger does not always have to be better, something that we have already seen in other games with large maps During the last years.

There are also random events and some charming details during the maps, such as sandstorms or electrical storms, everything surrounding the rocket in Orbital or the large pieces of the ship falling off in Discard. However, as we play, we realize that they are more anecdotal elements that are not reproduced frequently during games.

In addition, we also find remakes of the six classic maps that we see in the Battlefield Portal. In this case, returning to Alamein, the Battle of the Ardennes, Valparaíso, or the Caspian Frontier in this installment is an enjoyable experience. These locations look and feel better than ever in this installment, incredibly obviously with the oldest areas from Battlefield 1942

Lack of content in the main modes

One of the biggest problems that we see in Battlefield 2042 is an evident lack of content in its main experiences, All-Out Warfare and Hazard Zone, modes in which we have only seven maps relatively fairly modest arsenal of weapons to finish with the lives of our enemies. More modest than in the rest of the Battlefield installments that we have had so far, something that, together with the number of maps, notably affects the playing time since we will find ourselves playing on the same Battlefield over and over again with too much assiduity, wearing down the repetitive playable formula of this Battlefield 2042 very quickly.

Yes, it is true that we also have the Battlefield Portal that offers us classic maps and weapons and the freedom to create our expert. Still, but we believe that it excitingesting tool with which EA and DICE cover their, backs leaving the task to the community to add more variety to a game with little content at launch, a mistake they already made with Battlefield Vand that it is a new stone that they stumble over in this installment … and yes, it is also true that DICE itself is going to add some random game modes in Portal … but if they follow the VIP Party line, a mode not at all inspired by the one that will be released, it will be the community that has to put all the meat on the spit to expand the experience, dynamism and fun of Battlefield 2042.

Spectacular on a visual level … with bugs in its optimization and concurrent bugs in the game

Battlefield 2042 is, of course, a spectacular title at a visual and artistic level, everything entering very well through the eyes, with an excellent map design, stunning effects and weather or destruction situations that we will not see in other titles and that we They make for a very satisfying experience.

However, we are not satisfied with the new Battlefield’s experience at the optimization level. With a team armed with an RTX 3080 Ti, Ryzen 5900X processor, 32GB of RAM, NVMe SSD and Windows 11, we should be able to enjoy a stable experience … something that has not happened at any time, with constant fps drops ( the average at 4K and with high graphics has been in 85/90 fps in quality mode with continuous lows) and a practically non-existent gain of images per second reducing the resolution to 1440p or lowering the graphic options, which already indicates that something does not do well in this regard in the new Battlefield that needs more time on the stove to offer an optimal experience.

To this must be added the problems that we already told you in the respawns, matchmaking failures, lag problems during games and a bug that has happened to us on some occasions that did not allow us to target accurately, something that can be particularly frustrating in the middle of a fight.

Final thoughts

Battlefield 2042 is a compliant game that will be enjoyable for lovers of the series but needs more time to exploit its full potential, which is far from its best level today.

Is it fun? Yes. Do you have good maps? Yes. Am I going to like it if I’m a fan of the series? Yes. Does it have bugs in its launch? Yes (although it is fully playable and we have had a good time playing it, be careful). Missing content? Yes. We do not doubt that Battlefield 2042 comes out earlier than it should, that it is a game with a lot of potentials that still needs a few months of development to reach its maximum level.

We are sure that as the weeks and months go by, the quality of the title will increase. We will find a special delivery for fans of the series but, for now, we have a few game modes with Hazard Zone to the rescue, a limited variety of maps in its main experiences and fun that remains in the hands of the community, thanks to Battlefield Portal, the lifesaver of this delivery level of content that will sustain it for the next few weeks thanks to the work of fans.

We prepared this review with a digital copy of the PS5 version of the title provided by EA