BATTLEFIELD 7

The “drama” around Battlefield 2042 stems from the gargantuan letdown the game was at release (and continues to be, about four months post-release).

Now, if Battlefield 2042 is the first Battlefield game you’ve ever played, I can understand your confusion. In a vacuum, Battlefield 2042 is a playable, large-scale first-person shooter game with weapon and vehicle customization, and playable operators with different outfits and abilities to choose from.

However…

Battlefield 2042 does not exist in a vacuum. It is the latest in a long and renowned lineage of previous games. This means, among other things, that it has big shoes to fill and a reputation to uphold and live up to.

In comparison to its older siblings, Battlefield 2042 stands out as the one that is clearly adopted. It very obviously does not have the same appearance or lifeblood as its siblings. (Nothing against adopted people; just making a point here.)

This is a critical issue. The Battlefield fan base has played older Battlefield games and developed an appreciation for what those games offer the player, and it is this appreciation for what the games offer that results in loyal fans who continue to back the franchise and purchase the games. Battlefield fans know what the franchise has offered in the past, and keep coming back to new games for the promise of more of that amazing Battlefield experience.

So, when the fan base (which had been conflicted about Battlefield 5 for a while) was told that Battlefield 2042 would be a return to the franchise’s roots, i.e. the core gameplay and stylistic elements that genuinely make these games what they are, people had high hopes. The differing opinions about Battlefield 5 caused some disruption in the community, but a return to the classic look and feel of the franchise should offer fans a game that everyone would enjoy. In other words, this “love letter to the fans”, as the creators referred to it, would once again unite the community and allow everyone to have fun playing the game together once more.

And then…Battlefield 2042 happened.

The game which was touted by its creators as being a fantastic return to the franchise’s roots ended up being something completely alien to anybody who’d been a long-term fan.

There are so many things wrong with Battlefield 2042 from a franchise veteran’s perspective that it is almost painful to think about. Some notable issues are the sometimes-confusing user interface, few available weapons, progression system, lack of any story to give the game soul and direction, poorly-designed maps, poor optimization, serious connectivity, and de-sync issues, and the addition of playable “operators” with skins and outfits available for purchase in a shop.

Those are just the big-picture problems the game currently brings to the table. Far more comprehensive lists can be found online in other forums where franchise veterans have expressed their dissatisfaction with Battlefield 2042.

In my opinion, the worst part of Battlefield 2042 is that the game does not actually feel like a Battlefield game. It must be some combination of the clunky UI, cheesy graphics and design choices, terrible vehicle movement and controls, and overall lack of enjoyable gameplay experiences.

Whatever it is, Battlefield 2042 is not a true Battlefield game.

It is not a return to the franchise’s roots. It is not a love letter to the fans.

It is a deeply flawed game, with no true soul to speak of, which was masqueraded as a Battlefield game to secure sales. That is all.

And that is why there’s drama around Battlefield 2042

Battlefield 2042 is… not the same story. Battlefield 2042 is a massive mess of a game. From the actual gameplay aspect of it, it’s regressed. The guns feel cheap, and compared side-by-side to Activision’s Modern Warfare(2019), they look like they’re trying to copy the animations of said game. The sounds of the game have all regressed. Everything sounds spongy and too quiet. You don’t hear enough. Something that made Battlefield iconic is the dramatic, exaggerated loud sounds of gunfire and the ensuing echoes. It made you feel smaller and the map feel bigger. Indoors, you had these deafening gun battles with even more dramatized echoes than the previous example. Vehicle engines don’t sound as proactive. I used to scare myself shitless when I’d be holed up in a building in Battlefield V and hear the loud roaring of a tank march up the road.

Battlefield 2042 also ruined arguably Battlefield’s most precious element of what had made it so great: teamplay. Teamplay has been thrown completely out of the window in this installment. Squads are worthless. Teamwork is not encouraged. Classes have essentially been stripped of all restrictions; and thus, their value. Vehicles have been stripped of their scarcity; and thus, their value. No one sticks together. Everyone just runs off with their unrestricted, custom class, or their vehicle to get as many cool kills as possible. I have not seen a single game where anyone sticks together as part of a bigger effort. Everyone spreads out and tries to find any other person to kill if possible in these weirdly laid out maps.

That type of gameplay was usually left for Call of Duty in the past. That was the place where you’d try to go on as high of a killstreak as possible and go off on your own. Doesn’t mean either style of gameplay is better than the other… if applied correctly. That type of gameplay only works for Call of Duty and the like. They have smaller maps, small match sizes, and quicker games. It’s styled as an arcade shooter.

Battlefield was always branded as the realistic shooter that was far from a milsim, and far from an arcade shooter, it was supposed to be the best of both worlds. Large maps, and long engagements, but with fun game modes that have points, not anything physical or material as the objective.

There is no longer any value in playing as a squad because it’s virtually impossible in this game. There used to be value in that type of gameplay in that you were forced to spread out your squad’s abilities(medic, heavy gunner, sniping capabilities, etc.) and find the right balance. As a team, you had to spread out vehicles and firepower in general. It wasn’t all entirely forced in a manner where you had direct coordination between squads and the team in general. It was all laid out for you through the game itself, it was self-explanatory where everyone had to be. If you saw your squad without a medic, you’d spawn in and make your war towards them. If you were in a plane and spotted a large congregation of armor and troops trying to take an objective or choke out a group of your teammates, you’d use your firepower to relieve them.

In this game, there’s none of that. Everyone is everywhere, and to add on top of it all, there are these uncalled-for distractions in maps like the tornado that just look cool, but at the cost of people trying to fool around in it instead of playing the game.

Even the UI is a screw-up. It doesn’t feel realistic and ends up being distracting, especially in vehicles. The UI in a shooter game is supposed to be seamless. You need to be getting as much screen real estate as possible while fitting as much useful information as possible. I shouldn’t be able to notice an effective UI if I’m not using it at that moment. In vehicles, you have this teal gunner view with glowing lines and a bunch of other junk that’s distracting and fills up the screen with junk you don’t need. It doesn’t feel like you’re in control of an Apache’s gunner(which doesn’t even fire the right weapons Apaches normally carry in real life) with the whole forced futuristic aesthetic.

To cap it off since I don’t feel like writing further about this wasted opportunity of a game, Battlefield 2042 has way too much going on in many areas, and way too little going on in other parts. It’s a confusing game and has an identity crisis. It tries to be so many things at one time and is none of the things it’s trying to be. Gunplay feels spongy. Teamwork has no value, and the game values aesthetic over functionality, even the mere existence of the problem-ridden KA-52 in the game, and the would-be-antiquated M1 Abrams(which would be 62 years old in 2042) that just has some extra cool-looking lights on it just shows they just picked out anything that looks cool and put it in there, regardless of actual functionality or research. Why would anyone adopt a rotor-less version of a knockoff Osprey that relies purely on jet propellors in a world that’s supposedly undergoing a massive resource shortage according to the limited lore they’ve put out?

Nothing about the game makes sense. Waste of money, thank god I didn’t pay for this and played through a playtest, and now, a free trial