Battlefield 2042, have we tried the best multiplayer in the history of the DICE series?

Battlefield 2042

Are you ready for the Battlefield 2042 review? Because we are not at all and in this article you will find our impressions of the full game, but not a final grade. Electronic Arts has chosen not to distribute review codes, replaced by an event divided into three days, each dedicated to one of the three modes present in the game: too little to express a sufficiently reasoned judgment, to fully understand all the mechanics present, or even just to be sure that Battlefield 2042 is playable on console as on PC, that is the only version that we have been able to try in preview.

Nevertheless, this will not be a missed opportunity, we will try to transform it in a sort of alternative to the classic review with numerical rating that has distinguished videogame criticism practically since it was born. The first step will be to replace the universal judgment so dear to Metacritic with our legitimate doubts, reasoning in the open where in other situations we would have limited ourselves to more concise final reflections which, however, will come, of course, once we have been able to test Battlefield 2042. for as long as necessary.

Preparing for battle

The skills of the Battlefield 2042 specialists are similar to those of other games, but apparently much less impacting on the gameplay Between doubts and certainties, the interest around this new Battlefield is surprisingly high, thanks to the technical arrogance of DICE, which for the first time promises exclusive wonders to the very hungry owners of next-gen consoles, and of a game system that seems to have found one of its possible final forms where the uniqueness , the clarity and fun of the formula finally go hand in hand. More than a new Battlefield, this 2042 is a sort of monument to the entire project, to the entire series, where the secret recipe has finally been rewritten from the beginning by removing all the erasures and integrating those additions that had accumulated over the years. Battlefield 2042 is the Battlefield that contains them all, a catchphrase that inevitably leads us towards the inflated concept of platform gaming, and Portal mode is here to confirm it.

Past doubts

In the new maps of Battlefield 2042 there will be extreme weather phenomena such as sandstorms and very dangerous tornadoes. Having an interest in a game does not mean, however, automatically wanting to buy it. And here Battlefield 2042 must face several problems to definitively convince those who are following it from afar, first of all to make users forget the half missteps represented by Battlefield 1 and Battlefield V. Both titles have failed to satisfy the audience of the series, nor to attract new ones, and even if they have allowed DICE to definitively leave behind the big problems that have marred the launch of the however excellent Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4, their memory does not lead to an impulsive purchase of Battlefield 2042, rather it advises a more careful wait.

The lack of courage that seems to have blocked Battlefield 2042 between two different eras: that of fully-priced games and the more modern and captivating free-to-play formula that has for some time been the most appreciated and, given in hand, profitable in the field of multiplayer games. From this point of view, Battlefield has always been slow: it was the last to realize that charging expansions involved more problems than revenue and today it is the last major online shooter without a campaign to require an entrance ticket. without discounts. The only concession to more modern systems is the ability to try the game for ten hours through the EA Play system, available on every platform for which the game will be released and also included in Xbox Game Pass subscriptions on PC and / or console. Never before has Battlefield benefited from some kind of invention, a stunt from the marketing department with which to bring it immediately into the homes of as many people as possible.

Perfect bullets, menus to review

The wingsuit is the prerogative of a single specialist, and is one of the most characteristic skills among those provided to the different characters present Even if far from perfection, Battlefield 2042 is certainly not a title to keep hidden, indeed more monsters and the better, the more you play it and the more audience you will attract. It happens when you are in front of a well-made product, and Battlefield 2042 is at least until you find yourself in the middle of the action, but the situation will reverse every time we collide with the menus, as simple as paradoxically confused, in the mode. Portal also totally devoid of the minimum cohesion that would allow to circumvent the lack of clarity with a saving habit.



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Nothing for which Battlefield fans are not already used to it, but after a long time it is nothing short of crazy that DICE has not made progress, with the result that even Battlefield 2042 is not that finished product to the millimeter that the series would urgently need to be definitively love from the mass audience. Like it or not, that kind of success is exactly what Electronic Arts and the Swedish software house aspire to, and that even this time does not seem really within reach, at least not in the short term.

What changes?

In the Hazard Zone mode of Battlefield 2042 the focus is on the most characteristic points of each map which, in addition to the great outdoors, usually also features different areas designed for closer combat What could convince the many doubtful are the major changes that have affected the pace and development of the battles. It is not immediately clear why Battlefield 2042 to play seems so different than its predecessors, a greater balance of weapons and skills would not go that far. In Battlefield 2042 you collaborate much more closely with the rest of the troop (each platoon is made up of four players) and the course of the war almost always involves a journey with its own epic, its own emerging narrative, instead of the constant kamikaze rush of return to the action that characterized the previous titles.

We think we have found the answer by playing on the maps of the past included in Portal mode, where we immediately returned to move and interact with the rest of the platoon as we were used to before: all together, but up to a certain point . The substantial difference between Battlefield 2042 and the previous Battlefields therefore seems to come more from the level design, as well as from the large number of supported players (128 against the 64 of the previous chapters, but only on PC and nextgen) than from the changes to the gameplay that basically does not they are not even that numerous. The biggest news is having replaced the classic and anonymous soldiers with specialists, each with two unique abilities, to which we can still totally change equipment.

The skills present, however, are rather limited, there is a certain fear of exaggerating and consequently damaging that apparent realism that has always characterized the shooter signed by DICE, yet in some cases, if well used, they can push the collaboration between fellow soldiers far beyond what one would expect from the usual Battlefield, especially in the Breakthrough and Hazard Zone modes. As you will discover, even the most classic Conquest mode will have a totally different breath from what could be experienced on the old, but unforgettable Caspian Border or El Alamain, among other things both present in Portal mode.

Band of Brothers

Although the game is not yet available, you can already start enjoying the Portal editor on the official Battlefield 2042 site During this review session, an entire evening was dedicated to Hazard Zone of game. In the four hours at our disposal we were able to immediately understand how it works in principle without major problems, after all it is a sort of Escape from Tarkov in a simplified version, but the experience was too short to be able to grasp all the potential implications. strategic. In Hazard Zone each platoon lands at a random point on the map and is called to collect as many chips as possible from the fallen satellites scattered on the battlefield and finally escape through one of the two extraction points that will be revealed over time. You can also run away without a chip, but that will mean that you have no credits to spend on starting equipment in the next game. When a friend dies in the Hazard Zone and it is no longer possible to heal him, he can be called back into battle through computers that we can buy at the start, or find along the way to escape.

Hazard Zone is totally different from the classic Battle Royale, the map does not shrink and it is indeed possible to invest credits in the equipment at the beginning of the turn; in addition to the other teams with which you are competing, there are also bots that will make the action more intense and unpredictable, but still manages to convey the same adventurous emotions that push millions of people to have fun every day with games like PUBG and Apex, where every game is a journey of a "band of brothers" ready to do anything to save their skin. In Hazard Zone it is not even that important to engage the enemy, from which you can escape for a good part of the game, but it is to decide when is the most appropriate time to launch an attack that could subsequently allow an extraction, which takes place with an airplane. cargo, without major problems.

The time machine

The arrival of specialists also serves to sell new skins. For the moment there is nothing really exaggerated, but the fashion police is already on the who goes there! The Portal test, on the other hand, was the least interesting one, but the fault is above all in the choice of game modes which strangely focused on boring free-for-all deathmatches that have little to do with Battlefield (except the last one where the rules allowed only one knife and one missile launcher, the latter only reloadable by jumping five times). Much more interesting is the Vip Fiesta mode, always created entirely with the Portal editor, where two teams face off trying to kill the opposing VIP fifteen times, always visible on the map and interpreted in rotation by all the players of each side. Nothing to say about games that simply re-propose maps and gameplay of the old Battlefields: returning to play Bad Company 2, Battlefield 1942 or the immortal Battlefield 3 was beautiful and we can't wait to do it again.

PC Optimization

Robot Dogs can be summoned at any time as long as there are free slots The new pace of Breakthrough Mode and the cooperation needed in Hazard Zone are two of the things that are most there. missing servers in this time frame and they will be the same two that we will try once the game is available to the public and, more importantly, to our friends. Waiting to see the console versions, especially the PS5 and Xbox Series X | S ones, we anticipate that on PC the game is extremely well optimized, includes support for DLSS and has never stopped working in the total fifteen hours spent with the client in function.

Battlefield 2042 is a strong candidate to be the best multiplayer Battlefield ever (the two Bad Companies do not fight on the campaign), but first he has to solve some big balance problems that some weapons suffer from and demonstrate that all its novelties are able to work at their best even when the servers are definitively open to the public. | Menus look like a mess. Have you noticed any errors?