Battlefield 2042

DA VONTADE DE RASGAR O CU ESSE JOGO

As it turns out, you’re never too old to go to war. I jumped into this, my first Battlefield game, about a year late, at the beginning of Season 3. I can’t compare it to previous Battlefields and I don’t know how much it’s improved since its extremely rocky launch, but as of December 2022 it’s a perfectly competent shooter – albeit one that’s also undermined by the very foundations of its design.

Here’s the thing. As a player, I crave tension in my games. I want my actions to matter, to have consequences. And, especially in competitive multiplayer games, I want my successes to feel validating and my failures to hurt. When it’s down to two squads in a match of Apex Legends and my fallen teammates are counting on me to score the final kill, my id knows that within 15 seconds I’m either gonna be on cloud nine or gonna feel like I was just kicked in the nutsack. The pursuit of that moment of do or die is what keeps me coming back for more.

Battlefield, in comparison, never feels anywhere near as intense – at least not when playing Conquest, the mode in which I spent most of my time. Even when the matches are close, and the deep-throated Shepard tone is blaring like it’s the climax of a Christopher Nolan film as my team’s reserves near zero, victory and defeat feel distant, experienced but hardly influenced.

Dig beyond the surface and you’ll soon unearth the contradiction that lies at the heart of Battlefield. On the one hand, the game’s conflicts are meant to feel epic – bombs exploding underfoot and jets whooshing overhead while tanks chew through the scenery and hundreds of soldiers fill the air with hot lead. But the more players you throw into a server, the less crucial each individual’s contributions become. You’d think that adding more players would make the game more epic, but in reality it dilutes it into a free-for-all with loose teams. If even very good players struggle to swing the balance of victory, what chance does a washed-up FPS veteran like me have to make a tangible impact?

So why play? I suppose it’s for the spectacle – there is something undeniably exciting about two teams of 64 going at it. Ultimately, though, being but a single cog in a blender of death can’t compete with the thrill of vying to be the one true champion.

Battlefield has always been a really stupid game, and nobody really wants to say this. People always act like it's really tactical, has all this teamplay, a dizzying amount of intricate milsim-esque mechanics. That's all bullshit, because Battlefield is a really stupid game meant for having a really stupidly good time. Battlefield 2042 is the most stupid game in the franchise, as you can thrust your C5-strapped (yes, C5) hovercraft full-speed into a raging tornado to hurl yourself to the top of a hostile skyscraper so you can pull the pin on your inflated bomb. It's really stupid. And it's fun! There are a ton of bugs, performance issues, and missing features (and all of these need to be fixed ASAP), but it's a damn lot of fun. So for anyone complaining about the specialists or the setting or the vehicle balancing, suck it up and have some fun for once.

- No single-player mode
- No server browser
- No general, team, or player scoreboard, only your own squad is shown.
- No general chat, only team, squad, and party
- No VOIP
- No TDM/FFA
- No leaning/peeking out while in cover
- No score bonuses for headshots, multikills, or hit-based damage XP gain
- No persistent lobbies (back to the main menu after every match)
- No ammo pickups off dead enemies/players' kits, only obtained through specialists
- No levolution beyond the tornado, the sandstorm on the Hourglass map only hurts visibility
- No melee weapon options, though melee is completely discouraged by the bugs and low damage it yields
- No spawning in other players' passenger seats when game is about to start
- No changing teams, squads, or creating a new squad entirely. Squad bonuses, field upgrades, and drop-ins have also been removed
- No self promoting to squad leader by requesting an order
- No battle log/player stats page
- Laughable end-of-match player highlights with voice lines that make these battle-hardened soldiers fighting a global-scale proxy war act like middle schoolers
- Though the soundtrack is just as eclectic and electronic as past "modern" Battlefields, its placement is few and far between and is awkwardly sequenced throughout the match
- HUD is an absolute mess of small icons with large lettering, when an objective is capped a message takes up all of your top-screen real-estate for a good 5 seconds
- Geforce 10 series card owners, even the later released ones, good luck in even attempting to come close to a stable frame rate, as this game is far from optimized and server-end latency is common
- Weapon bloom (randomized spreading of shots) only helps bad players and hurts good ones
- Buildings are not as destructible as previous Battlefield games, rarely will you ever see a collapsed building or create tactical cover through destroying chunks of walls or terrain
- Crouch sprinting, being prone while on your back, and being knocked down from explosions from Battlefield V have been removed
- Reworked class system into hero shooter-like character select
- Can never gauge what height you can and can't climb over
- Customization has nowhere near the depth of Battlefield 4, 1, and V
- Only 19 primary weapons and 3 sidearms-- 4 assault rifles, 4 SMGs, 2 LMGs, 6 rifles, and 3 shotguns
- Shotguns are completely unnecessary as close-quarters combat is never emphasized
- 14 different vehicle types to make up for the maps' large sizes, though you are at the whim of availability and demand, so traversing the maps a majority of the time involves walking great distances for small rewards
- Tarkov-like "Hazard Zone" mode where matchmaking lasts 3+ minutes and crossplay is all but required due to PC's player base