Battlefield 2042 has finally arrived in our consoles and computers after a month-long delay from its previous release date. While the developers used this time to fine-tune and fix parts of the game, it doesn’t appear to have been enough time for DICE to fix the problems that still plague the game. However, one question has to be answered: can this game be saved?

Before we talk about the bugs and my personal experience, let’s talk about what this game has on launch. The main menu has an easy display that allows you to navigate through most game modes and options without running into too many problems. I heard some people were having a problem finding out where to make a squad with friends, but that was mostly due to the fact that they made it one of the smaller buttons in a corner. Besides that, I think that this game has the best menu out of all the other Battlefield games.

There are three game modes within the game, All-Out Warfare, Hazard Zone, and Portal. All-Out Warfare includes Conquest (classic capture command points) and Breakthrough, a more focused version of Conquest that deals with one area of command points at a time. Hazard Zone is DICE’s love child between The Division and a Battle Royale Game. It has players being dropped into a map and capturing intel before attempting to extract with what they can take.

Portal is by far the greatest thing to be in Battlefield 2042! Portal allows people to play custom game modes that have been made, as well as explore some of the previous games in the Battlefield franchise. The three that they have currently are Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 3, and Battlefield Bad Company 2.

Despite the fact that there is no campaign within the game, there is still a story to explain what is happening. Essentially, global warming has ramped up to the point where the only two stable nations left in the world to exert their dominance are the United States of America and the Russian Federation. However, every soldier that you come up against is a Specialist called a Non-Patriated or No-Pats for short. This is the name given to refugees and exiles who have lost their homes due to the storms and other natural phenomena that have occurred due to global warming.

These No-Pats number at least 1 billion people who are unwilling to go back to their homelands for various reasons. There are currently ten different No-Pat Specialists that you can choose from who all have their own unique abilities from Falck’s Healing Stim Pistol and Full Revives, to Sundance’s Grenade Belt and Wingsuit, to Irish’s (yes, the one from Battlefield 4) Fortification System and Additional Armor.

When I had first jumped into the game, everything seemed to run rather smoothly. There were no bugs that I could see and my connection to the game was pretty solid. Despite having all of these things work out on my end, I came to realize through the chat system that I was in the minority of players. My fellow teammates were talking about frame issues, textures not loading, gun loadouts not saving, and a variety of other bugs. I eventually began to run into a lot of these bugs, except for frame issues, and they did prove to be rather bothersome.

By far the worst bug that I have run into most often is one where the revive prompt for a fallen comrade would not show up. This would often lead to the loss of firefights as there would not be enough men that I could get back up to finish off the enemy. The one bug that proved to be nearly as bad was when my camera would be locked from letting me move up and down. This meant that my vision and aim relied on looking from side to side and hoping that my enemy was on the same level as I was. Luckily, I only ran into this bug once.

Over the time that I have played Battlefield 2042, I have actually come to enjoy it. It is the first Battlefield game that I have played and booted up on my own without having a friend ask me if I want to play. It definitely is not the greatest experience as there are too many glaring problems that tank the experience. I believe that one day, Battlefield 2042 will be a great game, but today is not that day. DICE has a lot of work on their hands to turn this game around and only time will tell if they steer the ship in the right direction or let it get consumed by the storms that ravage the in-game Earth.

A PC review copy of Battlefield 2042 was provided by Electronic Arts for this review.

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Battlefield 2042

$59.99 - $109.99

5

Score

5.0/10

Pros

• Easy to use Menu
• Major Improvements to Loadouts
• New Game Modes

Cons

• Numerous Bugs
• Graphics Often Render Slowly
• Lack of Destruction Compared to Previous Games