Battlefield 2042
Battlefield 2042 is a great, beautiful looking and versatile game, especially thanks to the Battlefield Portal. All-Out Warfare offers amazing action for 128 players (64 players on PS4 and Xbox One) on massive maps, where vehicles often decide the battle and there’s not much you can do as a single person, unless of course you’re a top pilot yourself. The danger zone makes the action smaller, but puts more emphasis on good teamwork. The lack of in-game voice chat is a handicap for single players that we hope to address soon, because in fact All-Out Warfare and Hazard Zone are only fun for them if this functionality exists. So the icing on the cake is Battlefield Portal. The combination of traditional maps and modes from old Battlefield games, which can be used for entirely new gaming concepts, is a hit. Not every homemade game mode is equally fun, but there are actually some nice variants in between and there will likely only be more in the coming period, especially if EA and DICE add new content to the creator. We wouldn’t be surprised if the Battlefield Portal has a lot more value in the long run than Battlefield 2042 on its own, but having a game mode definitely makes it worth getting in on the game.
When new consoles hit the market last year, we got a glimpse of what the machines can do. However, in recent weeks, we’ve only seen games that clearly get a lot of added value from more powerful hardware. On Xbox Series X, Forza Horizon 5 was a good example, while on PlayStation 5 Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart showed nice things. Next in the line is Battlefield 2042. The shooter series has been hitting a great bar on every platform available for years and that doesn’t change with this new game. DICE and the other collaborating studios were able to deliver an impressive performance, with Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 almost equaling the audiovisual level of the PC version. Not only that: the features are the same too. This means that you can experience the multiplayer action of Battlefield 2042 on Series X, PS5, and PC with up to 128 players simultaneously.
Battlefield 2042 does not have a single player campaign, but it does contain a story. This is a little strange of course, but come on: we understand that there must be a context for two large groups of soldiers to fight each other fairly legitimately. The year is 2042 – and you’d never guess it – and the world is in bad shape. Climate change has completely changed the world and made all kinds of raw materials, including clean water, more scarce than ever. Moreover, as a result of the so-called Kessler event, seventy percent of satellites coming from space crashed, causing the necessary power outages. Amid this chaos, the European Union has collapsed and the United States and Russia are at odds. Tensions escalated in the years until 2042, after which a new war broke out between the two superpowers.
There is a great deal of history available and the goal is that in Battlefield 2042 the story is further explained via multiplayer. This effect is not yet visible at all. Well, for every game you see a short introduction to why there is a fight in the right place and the dangers of fighting, but it hardly stays put. We may see some additional developments in the setting and the story in future updates to Battlefield 2042, but for now we’re just sad that there isn’t a single player campaign. The place is cool and interesting, because the scenario could be farther from our bed than it seems…
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