Battlefield 2042

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.