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Battlefield 2042 in the test: Back to the future

After Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 we were allowed to dive into the first and second world war again, now Battlefield 2042 is released. As the name suggests, this part is now set in the future. However, the game unfortunately feels more like an alpha than a finished game.

Story

While Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 focused on the so-called “War Stories”, DICE decided to remove the campaign completely and focus only on the multiplayer. A decision which is quite fair, since most people were only interested in the multiplayer. Still, I think it’s a shame that DICE did without a campaign for this part, as they could have told a very interesting story with this setting.

But to give the all-clear, Battlefield 2042 may not have a campaign, but still tells an interesting story, which was not really well built into the game.

As the name suggests, Battlefield is set in the year 2042, with the world facing the “greatest crisis in human history”, climate change. The consequences: Sea levels are rising and the world is hit by regular sandstorms or hurricanes. But how did the war come about? For that, you have to travel a little further into the past. In January 2034, a global food and fuel shortage broke out.

The resulting lack of resources subsequently triggered a huge economic crisis in the world. This development led to many countries going bankrupt, including Germany. Due to the bankruptcy of many countries, the European Union was dissolved and about 1.2 million people are still considered stateless (no-pats) in 2042. Only the two superpowers Russia and the USA still exist, but the No-Pats can join them.

DICE wants to provide further insights into the story with the Battlepass and, similar to Overwatch, with videos.

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Gameplay & Multiplayer

In terms of gameplay, Battlefield is still the same at its core, but its playability has become a lot faster. The movement even resembles Apex Legends in some places. The big change is probably in the new characters and the class system.

Battlefield 2042 comes with 10 characters, all of which have different abilities. These are no longer tied to the typical class system as from the predecessors, so you can freely choose whether you are Assault, Support, Engineer or Recon. As an example, the character Maria Falck represents the Medic in Battlefield 2042. However, it is up to me whether I give her a first aid kit or an ammo box. I could also turn the Assault character “Dozer”, who carries a shield, into a combat medic who carries a first aid kit instead of C4. In that respect, Battlefield 2042 lets us customize our character.

What is missing, however, is the visual customization of the characters. While you can customize them, the choices aren’t really that interesting. Battlefield 5 was criticized at the time that the visual customization of the characters were too unrealistic, which is why many of them didn’t make it into the game. With Battlefield 2042, however, you now have a setting where you could have incorporated exactly this kind of character customization.

But now let’s get to the actual modes. There are three categories of modes available to us in Battlefield 2042. These are all-out warfare, hazard zone and portal.

All-out Warfare is sort of the heart of Battlefield 2042, and this is where the new features come out. Besides the 128 players, you can also see the new weapon system here. However, All-out Warfare is only limited to the two modes Conquest and Breakthrough. So if you fancy Team Deathmatch or Rush, you’ll have to be a little patient or take a look at Portal.

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Battlefield Portal is a sandbox mode that lets you create your own crazy mode. Elements from Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3 and of course Battlefield 2042 are at our disposal. Interestingly, in Portal you can quickly and easily create a classic team deathmatch, with the elements of Battlefield 2042, and even the maps are all designed or resized to fit it, of course. But Portal offers other crazy ideas like conquest between the elements of Battlefield 1942 and the elements of Battlefield 3, so it pits World War II against the present, which not only sounds interesting, but is also interesting to play. There’s a lot of experimentation you can do with Portal, and it’s my personal favorite in the game.

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With Hazard Zone, Battlefield 2042 tries to be a mix of Escape from Tarkov and Battleroyale. Hazard Zone is about recovering data carriers from crashed satellites in a certain time. There are other squads on the map, which are also looking for data carriers. Of course, they also want to try to take your data from you. After a successful round you get ingame money, which you can use to buy better equipment to be better prepared for the next round of Hazard Zone. Unfortunately, no maps were created for this mode. You play on the new maps of Battlefield 2042, which are unfortunately not very well designed for this mode in terms of gameplay. It remains to be seen whether DICE will deliver exclusive maps for Hazard Zone.

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Graphics, Performance & Destructible Environment

In terms of graphics, Battlefield 2042 doesn’t set any new standards, but it doesn’t have to. The Battlefield series has looked great since Battlefield 1, and that hasn’t changed in the latest spin-off. What does cause major problems, however, is the current performance. While Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 ran without problems for many, Battlefield 2042 has problems and regular frame drops even on high-end systems. It remains to be seen whether DICE will get this under control in the future.

What has also changed, unfortunately, is the destructible environment. Back then, the Battlefield series boasted of a destructible environment. This is still present in Battlefield 2042, but not to the extent that you might remember from Battlefield 4 or that you would have liked. Small houses can still be destroyed without any problems, but the fun stops when it comes to larger objects. In Battlefield 4 on the map “Siege of Shanghai” it was very impressive to see how a complete skyscraper was razed to the ground. It was only a script, but it still made a difference and fundamentally changed the match.

Whereas in Battlefield 2042 it’s just a cell tower falling down and doesn’t really affect the match, other than punishing you with death if you stand near it. The only thing that does affect matches, and is impressive the first few times, are the tornadoes. However, these become more and more annoying after a while and you start to question where they actually come from. In addition, they don’t really do any damage. Both to the player and the environment. So the destructible environment as you know it from the predecessors is only a little present. So it remains to be seen whether DICE will still change something about it.

Conclusion

It’s really hard for me to classify Battlefield 2042. Because once it’s running, it’s running and you feel like the main protagonist in a Michael Bay movie and you’re really having a lot of fun. The problem is, however, that this is only the case in the rarest of moments. You regularly have server problems or bugs that unfortunately destroy the game. This is compounded by poor performance, which often ruins the experience. Battlefield 2042 currently feels more like an “Early Access” version, for which you unfortunately also have to pay the full price.

While fans of the series are already used to Battlefield always having problems at release, here the problems feel gigantic. Features like a proper scoreboard, dedicated servers or even a reasonable character customization like in Battlefield 5 are still missing.

Let’s hope that DICE still gets its act together and creates a bombastic experience out of Battlefield 2042.

Pro
Contra
Story
75%
+ interesting story – unfortunately no single player campaign to experience the story
Gameplay
85%
+ fast and action-packed.
+ Adjustments to weapons now possible even in the current match.
+ despite the speed still very tactical
– very unfinished in some places
Balance
85%
+ thoughtful maps – but which often still seem empty despite 128 players
Controls
100%
+easy to learn.
+flying easier than in any part before
Graphics & Sound
80%
+ realistic effects.
+ nice sound effects
– Soundtrack unfortunately not as nice as the ones in the predecessors

Simon Lüthje

I am co-founder of this blog and am very interested in everything that has to do with technology, but I also like to play games. I was born in Hamburg, but now I live in Bad Segeberg.

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After Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 we were allowed to dive into the first and second world war again, now Battlefield 2042 is released. As the name suggests, this part is now set in the future. However, the game unfortunately feels more like an alpha than a finished game. Story While Battlefield 1 and Battlefield … (Weiterlesen...)

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