Battlefield 2042 Review in Progress and won't have voice chat at launch.

 

Everything We Know About Battlefield 2042:

Following up on Battlefield V, a World War II epic released in 2018, Dice is ignoring the past and focusing on the near future. Players will be thrown into huge battles set in a chaotic planet plagued by one of our present greatest existential threats: climate change in Battlefield 2042. What does Dice have planned for Battlefield's triumphant comeback to the contemporary age? Everything you need to know about this highly anticipated shooter is right here.

What's new about this Battlefield game compared to prior installments?

Unlike the previous several installments in the series, Battlefield 2042 is a completely multiplayer game. DICE has opted to provide all of its story threads through the various multiplayer components, such as the maps and specific Specialists you'll play as in battle, rather than a single-player campaign.

What exactly is the plot of Battlefield 2042?

After a succession of natural disasters disrupts any pretense of peace, a globe already afflicted by the consequences of climate change finds itself in times of war. Satellites littering the Earth's atmosphere succumb to the "Kessler Effect," which occurs when a critical mass of machinery collides with one another, resulting in a flood of destruction.

Communication and location systems are mainly down due to the loss of more than 70% of the planet's satellites. Due to supply chain constraints, Russia and the United States are involved in an increasing battle for food and resources. Storms that are becoming more violent and general environmental conditions have prompted displaced people known as No-Pats to select a side in the fight.

What multiplayer modes are making a comeback?

The popular Conquest and Breakthrough multiplayer modes, which together make up the All-Out Warfare pillar of the program, are being brought back by Dice. Conquest, a sandbox game in which large groups of players battle it out for control of land, will now allow 128 players on PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and PC, with the numbers halved on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Breakthrough will once again involve an attacking team pushing through one of 2042's enormous maps, while the defending team must maintain their ground and prevent the invaders from advancing. 

How many Maps should we anticipate?

Locations and locations are at the heart of any FPS experience, and Battlefield 2042 plans to offer a few new favorites while also bringing back some old favorites. DICE has created 13 maps for launch, including seven new locations and six maps from previous Battlefield games.

Orbital, a site in French Guiana where players fight around a rocket launch, Discarded, a deserted Indian shipyard, and Hourglass, a Qatar city destroyed by sandstorms, are among the new maps.

Returning maps include characters from throughout Battlefield history, some of which may be exclusive to the game's Portal mode. The Battle of the Bulge from 1942 is included, as well as Arica Harbor from Bad Company 2, the Noshahar Canal from Battlefield 3, and more. Each of these iconic maps has been remixed and updated with new artwork.

Why am I so enthralled by Portal?

Portal, the second of the three pillars of the 2042 experience, lets players create their own Battlefield scenarios by combining landscapes, weapons, vehicles, and equipment from the series' history. To spice up the big team clashes, you can even form asymmetrical teams with arsenals from different eras and create unique victory conditions.

Want to put a World War II squadron up against modern operators using only the technologies available at the time? That is conceivable! On a Bad Company 2 map, how about giving everyone only knives and sniper rifles? You have the option of doing so as well. Portal has a logic editor, custom modes, and other options that can be tweaked to create unique conflicts not found in typical 2042 matches.

What exactly is happening with the new Hazard Zone mode?

Hazard Zone's goal is straightforward: drop into a 2042 map as a team of four specialists, recover valuable data drives, and escape with your lives. The fact that all of the other groups in the area are pursuing the same goals adds to the complications. Because there are no guaranteed respawns in Hazard Zone, if you're down, your team is likely to be without a key member. If you are successful in extracting the critical intel from the map, you will receive XP and Dark Market Credits, which will provide your team with better gear for the Hazard Zone extraction.

The more information you gather, the higher your prizes will be. However, the longer you stay on a map, the more likely you are to die before reaping any of the sweet fruits. 

Specialists are who they say they are and do they take the place of regular classes?

Specialists will replace the usual class-based loadouts in 2042. These are the characters you'll play, and they'll look like the classes you're used to, but they'll each have their own Specialty and Trait. Maria Falck, for example, is a support specialist whose Specialty is a handgun that can fire healing needles at her comrades. When a player is revived, her Combat Surgeon trait fully heals them.

Every Specialist has a past and a reason for being involved in the fight, giving the multiplayer-only game a sense of narrative and purpose. Returning characters can also be seen on the roster, including one of the last appearances of Michael K. Williams, returning his role as Kimble "Irish" Graves from Battlefield 4. The Fortification System is his Specialty, and it contains deployable cover as well as an APS Shootdown Sentinel to deal with bothersome aerial projectiles. Veteran, an Irish trait, is claimed to grant armor with additional boosts from defeated opponents.

Outside of their Traits and Specialties, there are 10 different Specialists to play as, and their kits are totally customizable.

Are there any "Battlefield moments" in-store?

C’mon. Do you believe Dice would release a multiplayer-only Battlefield without all of the fun, memorable, and emergent content? Of course, you'll be able to eject from a jet's cockpit to fire an RPG at a neighboring helicopter, then wingsuit into a tornado and land in a different vehicle! Let your imagination run wild!

Weather plays a big role in the unpredictable nature of multiplayer matches due to Earth's climate breakdown in 2042. You might only get a light rain in one match, but a furious thunderstorm with one of those above-mentioned twisters in another. Use the raging weather to your advantage as cover, movement, or simply to enjoy spinning around inside a churning vortex in true Battlefield flair. You make your own decisions.

So, when is Battlefield 2042 coming out?

Battlefield 2042 will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on November 19. Anyone who pre-orders the Gold or Ultimate editions will get early access on November 12th. Subscribers to EA Play or Xbox Game Pass will get a 10-hour trial on the same day.  

128 players storming into Battlefield 2042's packed warzones at the same time is a perfect example of why more isn't necessarily better. Even in the little time I was able to play during EA's three-day "virtual review event" earlier this week, large lobbies with so many people proved frustrating rather than exciting – even in the limited time I was allowed to play during a three-day "virtual review event."

Thankfully, its terrifying new Hazard Zone mode offers a strategic option on a smaller scale, and its customizable Portal mode tools provide an exciting insight into how the game's future could flourish. However, thus far, 2042's showy, large-scale conflicts have left me wanting – but I still have a long way to go before I'm ready to score it.

To reveal what reviewers had access to prior to launch, I was able to play around 12 hours of Battlefield 2042 over three days, which meant I couldn't queue into whatever mode I wanted and was limited to what was available at the time. For example, we spent one day only playing the All-Out Warfare modes, with only around an hour of Breakthrough on the first day and another piece on the second. I only got a glimpse of the enormous new weather system during that period – I spotted one tornado, but it didn't make it across the map to me. As a result, I'm still chasing storms.

As a result, this review event felt more like a sneak-peek into each of Battlefield 2042's modes than a full immersion, so I'll hold off on writing a full review until I've spent more time with the game on live servers. Look for it the following week! Having said that, I did play it long enough to get a sense of what it has to offer. Most notably, compared to the nice surprise that is the unorthodox Hazard Zone, the game's customizable Portal is an absolutely wonderful insight into game production, and it practically throws the typical class system out the window – and not totally for the better.

At first sight, Battlefield 2042 appears to include a roster of ten Specialists based on the four original Battlefield classes: Assault, Support, Recon, and Engineer. However, unlike past Battlefield games in which classes had very particular roles and skills, the Specialists' skills in 2042 don't significantly impact the dynamic of a team. For example, I initially chose Maria Falck, a Support Specialist, to serve as the team medic. Her Specialty skill equips her with a Syrette Pistol, which fires needles that heal allies and herself while also inflicting harm on opponents.

I had assumed that Falck would be the only option for a medic, but it turns out that anyone can play as a healer provided they had the medical crate gadget, which allows them to ditch the standard Battlefield area-of-effect healing box. While Falck's Specialist attribute allows her to bring downed teammates back to full health, anyone can revive and heal their teammates. 

The existence of free-for-all deathmatch in a Battlefield game (see a gif of excessive prone use above) breaches some divine PC gaming laws, but it's a lot of fun, so whoever has been chanting in an RGB summoning circle should keep it up. Sure, the devilish novelty of Swedish Call of Duty will wear off someday, but Battlefield 2042's Portal game mode editor has so many options to play with that I'm almost persuaded I should urge all my friends to buy it. I'll have to play BF2042 in the real world before I can say for sure that there's $60 worth of fun to be had here.

As part of a guided tour made up by EA for reviewers, I've spent the last three mornings playing each of Battlefield 2042's branches—All-Out Warfare, Hazard Zone, and Portal. For the event, I was assigned a squad and a Discord voice channel (BF2042 will not have built-in voice chat at launch), and pitted against other critics to simulate the live experience. I got a solid idea of what BF2042 has to offer, although controlled events are never the same as live multiplayer games, as EA admitted.

The servers will almost certainly fill up with kids whose bone marrow has developed to create headshots in Battlefield games when Battlefield 2042 early access begins this Friday for EA Play Pro subscribers and owners of the special editions. My current K/D ratio isn't going to hold up, so I'll have to tackle those live servers to gain more expertise with each mode before publishing my final evaluation next week. It's also possible that bugs or server issues that I didn't discover throughout these sessions detract from the enjoyment.

But, so far, I'm enjoying this Battlefield edition better than the last one. I've never been a fan of Battlefield's single-player missions, so I'm glad DICE has focused on delivering a more hearty, fibrous multiplayer package for Battlefield 2042. It's something I'm going to think about for a while. Here are some general impressions based on my limited experience with it thus far:

Battlefield Portal is, as expected, the best component of Battlefield 2042. Portal is a program that allows you to create and host custom game types. It doesn't feature actual modding tools or the ability to change maps like Halo's Forge mode, but it does include a logic editor for a rather intricate rule scripting. It's like Unreal Tournament mutators gone wild, with firearms, gadgets, vehicles, and maps from Battlefield 1942, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3, and Battlefield 2042.

EA demonstrated a mode in which we all began with a rocket launcher and one rocket, and we had to jump five times to receive a fresh rocket each time we fired. We also played free-for-all with Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 1942 guns, regular Battlefield 1942 Conquest on remade versions of the Battle of the Bulge and El Alamein maps, Battlefield 3 Conquest on a Caspian Border remake, and BC2's Rush mode on BC2 maps that I'm not familiar with because I didn't play it. (Here's a complete list of everything in Battlefield Portal.)

Individually, these remakes and oddities are unlikely to pique your interest, but the variety is what keeps me interested in Portal. Battlefield Portal Roulette sounds like a nice addition to the 'Discord server doesn't know what to play' list, which currently includes quality titles like Ratz Instagib, Shotgun Farmers, and strange CS: GO custom maps.

One disappointment: The recreated Battle of the Bulge and El Alamein maps maintain some of Battlefield 1942's charm, but not all of it. It wouldn't budge when I got a tank jammed and tried to unstick it with explosives. Not a very accurate reproduction of a game that was primarily about executing acrobatics with explosives!

However, aimlessly sprinting through fields and pondering capture points transported me back to the early 2000s. The gap between Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 3 was longer than the distance between Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 2042, which shocked me. Huh. Although returning to the Caspian Border and Noshahr Canals reminded me of how much has changed since 2011, BF3 still feels modern to me.

When I discovered that this long-forgotten Battlefield rite had been maintained, I was overjoyed:  

Other Portal observations, frustrations, and remarks:

• A match can't have more than 60 bots in it.
• You must choose a game and faction for each team, which dictates which weapons are available to choose from (but the rules editor allows you to place any gun in a player's hands). I'm not clear why you can't start with a blank slate squad and choose from, say, the engineer class from BF1942, the support class from BF3, and the BF2042 weaponry. Maybe it was just very complicated?.
• The rules editor will take some getting used to, but it's not difficult if you have a basic understanding of programming ideas (variables, loops, etc).
• The rules editor is only available when using the FFA or TDM templates to create a mode. It isn't compatible with Conquest or Rush.
• The rules editor can be used to display words on the screen (to give players instructions, for instance).
• If you start a mode (whether it's one you created or one created by someone else), your server will stay up until the last participant departs.
• Before you have to delete one to construct another, you can design up to 25 Portal modes.
• When playing the featured Portal modes, players receive experience and unlock.
• Was I the only one who didn't realize Battlefield Bad Company 2 is odd? There is no prone and no strafing while sprinting, and the XM8 Prototype and variations outperform all other guns by a wide margin. For years, I believed everyone who stated the Bad Company games were the best in the Battlefield series—they all sounded so sure!—but I'm no longer so convinced. (Rush, on the other hand, was a lot of fun.).