Battlefield 2042

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Battlefield 2042 is a 2021 first-person shooter game developed by DICE and published by Electronic Arts. Its Gold and Ultimate editions were released on November 12, 2021, while the standard edition was released on November 19, 2021. It is the ninth main installment in the Battlefield series and the 17th installment overall.

Battlefield 2042

"Don't be sad, this is just how it works out sometimes!"
— Constantin "Angel" Anghel

Genre(s):	FPS
Rating(s):	ESRB: M PEGI: 16 USK: 16 ACB: MA 15+ NZ OFLC: R16
Platform(s):	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release Date:	November 19, 2021
Engine:	Frostbite
Developer(s):	DICE
Publisher(s):	Electronic Arts
Country:	Sweden United Kingdom United States
Series:	Battlefield
Predecessor:	Battlefield 4 (chronological order)^[1] Battlefield V (Release)

"It really goes to highlight that 2042 absolutely should've been delayed. It was apparent from the beta, it was apparent from that PC trailer that showed just how roughly the game ran."
— YongYea

"It's not Battlefield, IT'S HOVERFIELD TWENTY-FOURTY-HOVERCRAFT! There's too many fucking hovercrafts in the game!"
— AngryJoe

Setting

Unlike recent Battlefield games, Battlefield 2042 lacks a single-player campaign, so the lore is told through multiplayer. As stated in the title, Battlefield 2042 takes place in 2042, when the Earth is in a state of despair caused by global economies collapsing, the rising sea level, satellites shutting down, and increasing tensions between the United States and Russia.

Why It's Not Your Battlefield (again)

Just like Battlefield 4, the game was heavily rushed. This led to the game being released in a horrible state plagued with many glitches and other problems.
- The game was developed in 15 months. In March 2021, 6 months into development, DICE realized they were having trouble with the Frostbite engine. Several senior developers had left the company between 2015 and 2018.
The graphics and visuals feel downgraded even compared to previous titles such as Battlefield 1. An example would be the frame rate that runs lower than a standard frame rate number (to exaggerate, 10 frames per second). The latter of which is pretty unacceptable by today's standards. The animations can be pretty poor too.
A lot of features are missing, even basic ones as well as staples in the franchise.
- There's no single-player campaign at all.
Playing only as the specialists takes away the unique gameplay feel of the Battlefield franchise and makes it feel more like a class-based shooter like Overwatch, Paladins or Team Fortress 2 instead. There's also the fact that the specialists are unbalanced with some being overpowered while others are completely useless.
This is the first Battlefield game in nearly a decade to lack a single-player campaign much like Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and for the console ports, you have to pay a subscription for online play to use it, especially with the disc versions. What's worse is that the setting and story are both interesting-sounding and worthy of a campaign to see how it all plays out.
Speaking of the setting and story, the game tries too hard to be lighthearted and funny at times with the highlights at the end of a match which are instead too cheesy and stupid. #What makes even less sense is that Battlefield is known for its serious and dark tone, and the setting's tone of this game is no exception.
- DICE later added Santa skins which received backlash due to the inconsistent tone.
There are barely any weapons and other equipment compared to previous games. There are only 22 weapons available (compared to Battlefield 4, which had nearly 70). What's not helping is that the weapon statistics in each weapon class are all too similar to each other.
The physics are incredibly wonky and broken, which also adds to the mention of poor programming.
Similar to Call of Duty: Vanguard, there's a noticeable lack of destructible environments. Players can fire a tank at a building and no damage will be done to the building.
When a player gets shot down, the prompt to revive them often doesn't show especially if a downed player is next to something like a wall and not out in the open. There's also the chance that the shot-down player won't die either, rendering them stuck in said state for the rest of the match.
The controls are unresponsive. The players are oftentimes unable to crouch (or vice versa, where they're stuck crouching) or switch their weapons.
The UI is handled poorly here, most notably being vague regarding displaying information.
Crashes are common with many of them even crashing one's console. There have even been reports about the game crashing before reaching the startup menu.
XP farming is rampant due to the game not having restrictions on custom maps and game modes to prevent it. This results in ludicrous scenarios such as a small group of players fighting against large groups of unarmed players (or bots) who have minimal health, while the small group is overpowered.
The aforementioned frame rate issues are rampant, even on the most powerful of PCs. The official Nvidia trailer for the PC port even had frame rate issues within the gameplay as pointed out by many commenters.
Not only do the graphics see little improvements from previous Battlefield games but they also have their share of glitches and other issues as well.
Player progression is awful since most of the weapons and attachments have almost if not completely identical stats to one another, which makes them more like cosmetics. The requirements for some of them are quite ridiculous as well such as having to kill 240 players just to unlock a certain suppressor.
The audio is lacking in detail. Footsteps all sound the same regardless of what surfaces you're stepping on. The surround sound is also poorly implemented which makes it difficult to tell what direction a sound came from.
One of the game's few good features is that up to 128 players can play on the same map (except for the PS4 and XBO version which has 64 maximum). However, in May 2022 a patch was released and removed it for Breakthrough, reducing the count to 64 on all platforms for said mode.
The soundtrack by Hildur Guðnadóttir (who won an Academy Award for the soundtrack for the 2019 movie Joker) and Sam Slater is far too focused on sounding electrical and glitchy, which makes most of the tracks screechy, obnoxiously loud and overall awful to listen to. Even the main theme of the franchise sounds terrible here.
The call-in system is far too overpowered. Players can request any vehicle they want to be quickly dropped off next to where they are and the cooldown is too short, lasting about only a minute.
With all of the above problems taken into consideration, charging $60 is far too much for this game. What's worse is that next-generation ports and the Gold and Ultimate editions cost $70, $90 and $110 respectively.
Overall because of all of the issues above, EA already started working on the next Battlefield game, meaning it's most likely going to be abandoned with season 7 being the final update.

Redeeming Qualities

While the premise is poorly executed due to the Specialists breaking down the franchise's serious and dark tone, the Story Cutscene shows the massive consequences caused by devastation events after Battlefield 3 and 4 campaigns (as mentioned on the Setting section).
Close-range combat is still pretty fun, and using weapons and killing players feels more impactful this time around.
While there are only seven maps to choose from, all of them are pretty large and offer a good amount of variety. They also offer more verticality compared to previous Battlefield games as mentioned above.
- There are now weather events that can happen on the maps to try and shake up the gameplay, which ranges from tornadoes to sandstorms. Even if their impact isn't that much it's still a nice touch to the gameplay.
Although there are only three modes, the Breakthrough and Conquest modes have a lot more focus here thanks to the large maps and huge number of players. This minimizes any repetitiveness as a result.
Despite its issues and not improving that much from previous Battlefield games, the graphics are still pretty good. The visuals of the maps are excellent and they contain a good of detail.
Ignoring the rampant XP farming lobbies, Battlefield Portal allows for plenty of fun custom game modes, with featured modes being rotated from time to time to experience more custom modes all while being able to play on maps from older Battlefield games to try and recapture those games' feel.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, DICE said that removing Russia from the game would make the plot irrelevant.
Although the game was not good by any means in the launch state, it still has some fans who enjoy this game. Because of this, DICE have updated the game, making it completely almost playable.

Reception

"You fucked it up!/You done fucked it up!"This game was given a 4/10 by AngryJoe.

The beta of Battlefield 2042 was heavily criticized for its very buggy state. Many pointed out that the game needed to be delayed and showed their concern for the full release of the game. According to one of the game's developers, the build that was released for the beta was a few months old meaning that an outdated build was released.^[2]

Upon release, Battlefield 2042 was met with mixed reception from critics and mostly negative-to-panned from the player base. It is widely considered to be the worst main Battlefield game in the series so far surpassing Battlefield V for that title. The game has received many unfavorable comparisons to past Battlefield games with some even comparing the game unfavorably to its predecessor.

Instead of releasing a review, AngryJoe made an "Angry Rant" about the game where he heavily criticized the game's unpolished state as well as comparing the game unfavorably to Halo Infinite's beta. AngryJoe would later give the game a 4/10 and feature the game as #1 and #7 in his top ten disappointing and worst games of 2021 lists respectively.

The game reportedly sold 4 million copies in the opening week, but the game almost immediately lost most of its players eventually falling below the number of active players Battlefield V has. In January 2022, Steam began allowing refunds to players regardless of playing time. There is a petition on Change.org demanding EA to allow refunds of the game on all platforms. The petition has received over 200,000 signatures and made itself one of the most signed petitions on Change.org.

Because of how sharply the game's player count and sales plummeted, EA has considered making the game free to play.

Videos

References

↑ Story Cutscene mentioned 2024 going through 2042; sets four to twenty-two years after the end of 4's campaign (which is the "War of 2020"). It is clear with Irish and Pac appearances in the Exodus Short Film.
↑ https://gamingintel.com/battlefield-2042s-troubled-development-and-identity-crisis/

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[1] Story Cutscene mentioned 2024 going through 2042; sets four to twenty-two years after the end of 4's campaign (which is the "War of 2020"). It is clear with Irish and Pac appearances in the Exodus Short Film.

[2] ttps://gamingintel.com/battlefield-2042s-troubled-development-and-identity-crisis/

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