Battlefield 2042 review – a few big patches away from greatness

BF 2042 still has a few rough edges, but nothing that can't be fixed with a few patches.

There’s a fictional logistics company in Battlefield 2042. You can see its shipping containers dotted around the game’s huge maps, emblazoned with the company name: “Ship It”. It feels like a meta-commentary on the game’s state.

“Ship it”, if you’re not familiar, is game development terminology for getting a game out to the public. “A game is never finished, it just ships,” so the saying goes. Some bugs are marked as shippable prior to release – issues the developers can live with at launch, perhaps with an aim of fixing them via post-launch patches – and Battlefield 2042 has plenty of them.

The on-screen prompt to reload your weapons often gets stuck to the user interface like one of those little eye floaters hanging in your peripheral vision. When you call out an enemy, your soldier says things like “belay that order” and “ignore that tank”, which isn’t very useful when you actually want people to follow that order and fire rockets at that tank. When you see enemies and allies running at a distance, they don’t animate and simply skid across the screen like they’re auditioning for the next Paper Mario. Hovercraft can drive up the side of skyscrapers. If you die close to a wall, your allies can’t revive you. Sometimes your hand bends around your head when you go prone. There are freezes, crashes and frame drops.

Despite all of that, Battlefield 2042 is still a return to form for Dice’s shooter series. It’s chaotic, hilarious and tense – everything a Battlefield game should be. It’s also packed with content, from the main offering of All Out Warfare to Hazard Zone and Battlefield Portal. It might not have a single-player campaign, but Battlefield’s are notoriously bad anyway. Dice put all of its focus where it matters this time – on the multiplayer.

Outside of the many, many bugs, Hazard Zone is the weakest part of this package. Similar to Hunt: Showdown, it features multiple squads in a large map, all of them competing to grab resources and extract with their spoils. As well as facing off against other squads who want to steal whatever you’ve acquired, there are also teams of AI to fight. It’s certainly more interesting than Firestorm – Battlefield’s take on the battle royale genre – but it feels a bit throwaway compared to everything else and will likely fizzle out quickly.

Battlefield Portal fares better. On top of allowing players to make custom games with their own rules, Portal offers up a range of maps, vehicles and equipment from past Battlefield games (Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 1942 feature at launch). The custom servers are mostly filled with XP farms where players gun down bots to unlock all the weapons in multiplayer, but I can see this becoming huge when players get to grips with the creation tools. For now, Dice’s official playlists where you can enjoy classic matches on remastered maps are where the fun is at. It’s also cool to be able to change the pace whenever you like – one minute you’re hacking a sentry gun in a near-future war and the next you’re cradling an M1 Garand as Spitfires fly overhead.

For the main offering, there are seven (absolutely huge) maps. In Conquest, two teams battle it out to control zones. In Breakthrough, one team attacks while the other defends, and whenever the attacking team holds the two zones at the same time, the defending team is pushed back to the next area where they have to hold them off again. Of the two modes, Breakthrough is the standout.

Conquest is a traditional Battlefield mode that still holds up, but it can be frustrating to trek across large portions of the map, die, and have to do it all again before getting in a fight. It’s also difficult to know where the enemy is since people can spawn in any captured territory, at their base, and even on squadmates and inside some vehicles. Add wingsuits, grappling hooks, and parachutes into the mix and it quickly becomes sensory overload. It’s good, but Breakthrough feels purer.

Not only are you fighting in sections of the map one at a time, but it’s an actual frontline war. Each team has a specific side, and battles are about the ebb and flow of that line. It’s like a tug of war, but with rocket launchers, tanks and helicopters. Sometimes a sneaky squad flanks around the back, the defending team moves in soldiers to deal with the threat and the frontline crumbles as a result. When you’re part of the squad that changed the outcome of the match, it’s thrilling – especially on current-gen consoles and PC, where there are 128 players per match.

The seven main maps are carefully built to take advantage of Breakthrough, funneling teams into natural chokepoints or obscuring spawn areas with vantage points. It’s a mode where taking a single hill can turn the tide. From grandiose ice canyons to dusty deserts backed by shimmering skyscrapers, the maps are as awe-inspiring as the battles that take place within them, too.

One of the things that made the battle royale genre popular was how you create memories in little pockets of the maps. Because of the random nature of the zone that pushes players together, matches end in a different place each time – they force you to fight on alien terrain. Combine that with a wide toolset and random weapon drops, and every fight feels distinct. Battlefield 2042 captures something similar. Thanks to the Operatives – unique soldiers who have different tactical equipment, from turrets to wingsuits – the size of the maps, and the vehicles and gadgets on offer, there are never two fights that feel the same. I also haven’t played a single match where something didn’t make me shout down the microphone in surprise.

Dice has always understood that this is what makes Battlefield special. Battlefield 4 had “levolutions”, which were bombastic moments that modified the playing field. In one, you were able to topple a whole-ass skyscraper. These return in the form of space rocket launches and hazardous weather, from tornadoes to sandstorms. You might be fighting it out with an enemy soldier only for them to suddenly be crushed by a jeep that’s just been spat out by a cyclone, or perhaps you’ll be pulled into the air yourself before wingsuiting out, landing behind an enemy squad and gunning them down. On top of the Operators, it’s just another ingredient that makes matches feel dynamic.

While the new Operators change the feel of the game mostly for the better, opening up more tactical considerations outside of the usual medic, engineer, assault, and sniper archetypes, they come at a cost. It’s hard to tell allies from enemies at a quick glance – everyone looks the same. It’s also a bit jarring to be constantly murdered by your own doppelganger. Then there’s the fact that classes aren’t really a thing anymore. You can still be an engineer, medic, etcetera, but you’re free to use any equipment or weapons for each. You could be a support character and carry a sniper kit, if you wanted. When you see a teammate with an ammunition symbol above their heads, that should be an indicator that they’re support – they carry ammunition and you can ask them for bullets. That’s not necessarily the case in Battlefield 2042 and it hurts readability and teamwork.

Dice also overhauled prone gameplay for this one. The developer perfected prone in Battlefield V, allowing you to twist and shoot from your back and rotate around on the floor. For some reason, the team has reverted back to a less refined version that only allows you to lay flat on your stomach. 

I can see a lot of balance changes coming to the game in the near future. Hovercraft are currently more effective than a tank for getting in and doing damage. They take multiple rockets to destroy, and you can’t shoot the driver through the window, unlike with the jeep. They dominate the warzone and are in need of a big old nerf. Time to kill could also do with a reduction since many of the weapons feel ineffective in the game’s current state. It’ll also be nice to have a scoreboard – you know, like almost every shooter ever made? I get that Dice wants to encourage selfless play, but it’s good to know how you personally stack up to the other 127 players. 

It’s fitting (and sexy!) that I opened this review talking about a logistics company because getting a triple-A game made in the middle of a pandemic is a herculean task. You can see the scars of a troubled development all over the game, like the pockmarks left behind after an Apache helicopter strafing run. Battlefield 2042 certainly could have done with a few months more in development, but the majority of its issues can be fixed in patches. The core of what is here is the best the series has been since Battlefield 4, and it’ll only get better with time.

Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.