It is said that "a good wine is an old wine" and that to be able to taste it at its maximum flavor you have to wait.
So it has also been a constant for the last chapters of Battlefield. Who can forget, release after release, all the embarrassing bugs present on day one of chapters like Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4? I still remember all the cancellations of pre-orders for Battlefield 3 after the publication of the Beta, or the situation beyond the embarrassment of the monstrous amount of bugs in BF4, so much so as to make the game unplayable for the first launch period (thus giving us a beautiful video by Neebs Gaming). Yet, giving time to time, they have become cornerstones of Battlefield, so much so that we can still find the servers populated.
That said... will a whole year have been enough to change the fortunes of Battlefield 2042 and thus take it from one of the worst launches to a chapter to remember?
Despite the different maps it is not possible to choose which one to play and they will all be random
We loved each other so much
It is useless to hide behind a finger, Battlefield 2042 was one of the worst chapters received by fans, even if we want to see the current situation, it remains behind the older Battlefield 1 (October 2016 release) and Battlefield V (November 2018 release), which have an average active player of 15,000 and 8,000 respectively, with a good difference from the 4,500 of BF2042.
Therefore we are here today with Battlefield 2042 in the dock who will have to defend himself to the test of the facts to determine if it is a valid Battlefield, and that it is therefore the fans who unfairly misevict it after all this time, or if it still after a year has not been able to recover and be able to be thus atoned for.
I will therefore wish your honor, Mr. Reader, to present the evidence I have collected for this purpose and, together with you, to arrive at a vote that can encapsulate the value of this chapter, after all the time it has had to be able to improve.
Look but don't touch
In Battlefield 2042, the graphics look good as long as nothing moves.
A year after its release, the destruction of buildings is my biggest blow to the heart. They are nothing more than static design constructions, where you have to thank if sometimes a wall comes down, but where the rest remains there staring at you as if to say "If you expected Levolution you have the wrong game dear". Considering that since the introduction of the Frostbite graphics engine , destruction had become the strong point and the mark of recognition of Battlefield compared to rivals, it is clear that this decision to bring it back in a marginal way has gone to affect one of the cornerstones. Not one of the best ideas to meet the joy of fans.
the damn metal nets can block a 120mm shot from a Tank
The situation does not improve in the map of the third season, which is also beautiful to look at with automatic factories, but where little is destroyed. If you want to go backwards, the levels of destruction in Battlefield 2042 are more marginal than those of Bad Company 2, released in December 2010, where you could raze entire buildings to the ground. Ironically, this destruction can also be seen in the Portal mode, yet in the new maps there is no trace.
Run soldier, run
The movement of the soldiers is even more annoying, which could simply have been transposed from Battlefield V where they had reached an excellent level and instead, it is not clear why, they were made from scratch. Arriving at a level that is also reminiscent of Bad Company 2 and not current levels. Soldiers who turn around in place levitating, weapons that remain fixed on the screen without considering where you look, all interaction with the environments of the terrain removed.
As much as the graphics are statically beautiful, the color palette varies, many elements on the screen, buildings with a careful design, all this vanishes when we will not be able to break down the wall that separates us from that damn camper.
The broken scales
Dealing with the fundamental subject of a video game, Battlefield has always made me fall in love with the integration of military vehicles within a military arcade game, where the other developers only put infantry in order not to risk it. Fortunately, various types of vehicles have also been introduced in this chapter, limited by their total number and their different function. Forgetting the variety of tanks in Battlefield V, here they preferred to cut short on development and put the same vehicles for both factions. With the current subdivision, the vehicles cry for variety. But even more so they cry for balance.
In my several hours of trying the gameplay in conquest, to see how well the game runs with 128 players, I have never been able to get my hands on an attack helicopter. The scarce presence of the vehicles and the high number of players prevented me from being able to grab one and I therefore diverted to test the piloting of transport helicopters. The gameplay on helicopter is strangely not very fluid, particularly in the third person mode, where moreover the changes of view with the zoom scratch even more.
The vehicle situation is also sad in the latest map released
The balance between vehicles and infantry is regulated solely by the low presence of armored vehicles and the high number of players equipped with rocket launchers, and only in this sentence several problems emerge that the developers were not able to balance, wanting to explain for reasons and consequences: The armored vehicles are too powerful and therefore they had to put less "active" than those that were in the previous chapters despite the number of players being double. The lack of variety of convincing gadgets and the power of the vehicles leads several players to equip themselves with the rocket launcher. Since there are so many players with the rocket launcher, the developers have put little ammunition per person. The low diffusion of ammunition increases the number of people who use the rocket launcher since a single person in the team is not enough to annihilate a tank. The vast presence of rocket launchers has forced the developers to make sure that the means of transport can take another number of damages without being destroyed. Making infamous cars more armored than a crawler and greeting any glimmer of realism.
An unsolicited addition
Having changed the class system by mixing it with that of the operators is another important change to one of the pillars of Battlefield that clashes with the gameplay. The use of the same operators, the same weapons and the same vehicles does not make it an arcade representation of a modern war, but only a representation in a battlefield of a Team Deatmatch from Apex Legends.
In fact, the presence of the operators and their skills, and the gameplay based on the speed of the game, thus disfavoring calm and tactics, gave me the feeling several times that I was playing a seasonal mode of Apex Legends rather than a Battlefield. Players flying here and there with suits and grappling hooks, enemies with indestructible shields, everyone running and shooting, desolate vastness of the map and then finding themselves all fighting in some hole in the building.
the desire to make everything seem more futuristic has somehow led them to fill the HUD with useless symbols and huge squares that do not help and indeed distract in the gameplay
Other season, same mistakes
The variety of weapons a year after the release of the title remains sad. Even sadder is the fact that although there is a low presence of weapons, they do not differ too much from each other, being able to modify them all substantially with the hooks during the game. The choice of most players thus falls on weapons with a high fire ratio which, by modifying some accessories, behave damn well even in long-distance engagements.
But here we are served a new season with its new weapons, new vehicles and a new map. Right away I want to give a note of appreciation to the new map, in which the developers have finally managed to think it through and create that "battlefront" effect that stimulates you to want to play as a team to gain meter by meter the distance to the point to be conquered. But here is that being one-shot by a player placed hundreds of meters away with the new Rail-Gun assault rifle takes away our joy.
It seems that the developers are in such a hurry to publish new content that they completely forget to test it. With this new addition they have managed to make the whole category of sniper rifles useless, as this new weapon has an exaggerated range, a very high accuracy even from standing and icing on the cake the shot does not fall and kills with a single center in the head. The dream of every shooter but theplague of a balanced game.
I'm lapping like a sloth and yet I don't see the symbol of network problems nor do they show the Ping
The only easy day was yesterday
Although a year has now passed since its release and after three seasons where they have added maps and weapons, Battlefield 2042 continues to make holes in the water. The main strengths of the previous chapters, the environmental destructibility, the balance between infantry and vehicles, the teamwork in classes, the feeling of advancing along the front, have all been severely affected. Clearly the hemorrhage of experienced personnel and particular choices from above have cut the legs of this chapter, which after more than a year to say that it was developed in the covid period is no longer a valid excuse for the current state. They wanted to make an "Apex Legends" in total war style without having the skills and without understanding the philosophy of Battlefield. Now they find themselves with a series on the brink of the abyss from which it will be difficult to recover. Before going to the moon, you have to learn how to walk on earth.
Nice that after a year there are still loading errors in the post-match and in the initial scripts
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