In anticipation of early access to Battlefield 2042 , which will open tomorrow, Electronic Arts has invited journalists for a three-day private presentation. During each day, the authors showed one of the three main elements of the game: first, All Out Warfare (we already wrote about it ), then the new Hazard Zone mode, and at the end – the Battlefield Portal, which combines content from three games in the series ( BF1942 , Bad Company 2 and BF3 ) in one playlist.
Alas, according to the results of the presentation, we cannot tell you anything good: judging by the 10-12 hours of gameplay, all the problematic moments that were noticeable in the beta version will be even worse on release. Contrary to the hopes of fans of the franchise, DICE has made far more controversial decisions than it might seem at first glance, and Battlefield 2042 has every chance to take away the laurels of the most controversial game in the series from Battlefield V.
However, it would be unfair to prepare a full review after three days of presentation, so the review will be released later, when we thoroughly study everything the game has to offer. In the meantime, we will share the brief, most important impressions of what we saw.
All – Out Warfare
Oddly enough, the information leaked for a long time has been confirmed: the arsenal of Battlefield 2042 weapons really has only 22 copies, half of which have already been seen by everyone. They feel differently, and the available attachments (scopes, barrels, handles) in the release version are much larger, but the weapon settings are still not so extensive as to smooth out the problem. In addition, DICE has significantly changed ballistics: now it is much more difficult to control recoil and spread, and assault rifles have to be regularly switched to single fire. Apparently, the developers listened to the feedback from the community, for the most part of which the return seemed too gentle.
Also during beta testing, many players complained that the Orbital map (one of eight planned for release) was prohibitively large even for 128 players. Unfortunately, the remaining seven maps follow the same trend: the locations are extremely spacious, but at the same time very monotonous and poorly thought out in terms of level design. Control points in Conquest are still too far apart, forcing players to march across uninhabited wastelands in search of gameplay. There are no clear directions of attack on the maps, there are no interesting flanks (it is difficult to bypass someone from the flank, literally fighting in the field), there are practically no elevation differences, if you do not take into account all sorts of hills, dunes and a couple of buildings. There is no foundation to give the messy gunfights a tangible structure. Besides, when the scale of the battles is so great, individual skills and abilities of specialists are instantly lost against the background of general chaos. They seem to be useful, but they do not create the feeling that the player is making a significant contribution to the common cause.
But if the “Capture” still somehow works, then for the “Breakthrough” the cards are not balanced at all. The attacking team enters the battle almost close to the front line, and there is simply no time to organize the defense before the assault – the first line surrenders in a few minutes, because strike aviation immediately begins to thrash the defenders.
Hazard Zone
In reality, Hazard Zone mode is played exactly as one could imagine from the trailers: it is a very pale, frankly shameful attempt to perform in the Escape from Tarkov niche . Eight squads of four players each land on the map and hunt for hard drives, and then try to escape with the looted goods – for this you need to make your way to the transport, which arrives on the map only twice per match. The dead units (as well as those who could not escape) will lose all the loot, and the four winners will receive a unique currency as a prize, which can be spent on equipment in the next match.
More measured battles with fewer players in theory should better reveal the tactical potential of specialists, but in practice, the Hazard Zone is deadly annoying at best in two hours, if not twenty minutes. Firstly, battles for some reason take place on huge maps from All-Out Warfare, which are in no way adapted for the mode, because only 32 players participate in the match, and not the standard 128. In this situation, even more dead zones automatically appear on the maps. the pace of the gameplay sags even more, and the locations feel completely empty. Secondly, in the Hazard Zone there is no complex economy and at least some permanent progression: the trophy currency is only needed to buy equipment, and strictly for one match. You cannot take home some good cannon from the enemy’s body or customize your own.
As a result, it’s hard to tell which audience Hazard Zone is targeting. Newbies who die on every sortie will likely quickly tire of having to grind currency just to get a handy weapon into battle. Moreover, the reward for this grind will be a rather insipid experience that offers absolutely nothing worthwhile in comparison with the usual game modes – there is nothing to say about other popular battle royals. And for hardcore fans, Hazard Zone does not offer a good reason to stay for a long time: without a clear progression, there is absolutely nothing to strive for, there is nowhere to hone a skill. Perhaps the situation will somehow be corrected by content updates, but it’s hard to believe in this, because the idea is broken at a fundamental level.
Battlefield portal
But Battlefield Portal certainly seems to be the most interesting element of Battlefield 2042. Everything works exactly as promised by the developers: on a special website (hello, times of Battlelog) you can customize your own game mode in detail. Moreover, customization is unexpectedly flexible – down to individual mechanics, numbers and other small nuances. Soldier health, interface visibility, speed of running and flying bullets, access to one or another weapon, damage multiplier, respawn timer, the ability to aim, go to sprint and go to bed – there are really a lot of options. And in addition to them, Portal uses a visual programming language that allows you to write your own rules for the game. This is not to say that it is easy to use, but once the toolkit falls into the hands of the community, surfing custom servers is guaranteed to be fun.
Most of all, I am glad that Portal makes it possible to push soldiers from different eras in battle, and simply return to familiar battlefields in a new engine. At the presentation, for example, the authors presented a simple deathmatch, where infantrymen from BF1942 fought special forces from Bad Company 2 – the forces of the parties were, to put it mildly, unequal, but nevertheless. Nobody bothers to include the classic rules of your favorite part if you want to. Portal surprisingly faithfully reproduces the mechanical nuances of previous games in the series, such as movement physics and ballistics. The only pity is that the previous Battlefield, even in a greatly reduced form on a modern engine, is played much more pleasantly than Battlefield 2042 itself.
If, after beta testing, suspicions crept in that Battlefield 2042 would be at least a controversial game, the presentation confidently confirmed them. A significant part of the fans of the series will be disappointed: despite the colossal budget and the joint work of five experienced studios, only one element of the project out of three turned out to be worthy of attention – the one that literally quotes the developments of the previous editions of Battlefield.
However, there is some (microscopic) chance that over time, All-Out Warfare and Hazard Zone will still unfold from the best side – but we’ll talk about this already in the review.
