Battlefield 2042

[Edge-]

Caved and bought the early access version thingy and I'm actually really enjoying it so far.

On PC is largely runs well, 2K @ ultra settings at easy 60+ on my 3070 (usually 90+). I haven't messed around with raytracing yet (I want to) or too much with DLSS so I'm curious how good I can get it looking before it starts tanking my framerate. One of the maps straight up doesn't work - it won't spawn players - and there's a pretty persistent issue with "authenticating persistence" or some nonsense that won't let you connect to servers. And apparently there's some shit going on with the portal modes and XP farming, but I haven't tried that yet. Just the two main modes.

It feels proper "big" again. Like, some maps are big enough to spread folks out so you're having a lot of smaller battles and shit, but a few, like one of the docks maps, is absolutely bananas. People on shipping containers. People in shipping containers. People up on cranes. People on shipping containers on cranes. People around every corner. It's absolutely mental and I love it. Air battles overhead with jets strafing and 4-5 helicopters doing their thing? Heck yeah. Seeing a small fleet of hovercraft and jeeps jump over a hill and start unleashing holy hell as they zoom through lines? Delightful.

I've only played a few of the "operators", but I'm actually really digging it now that I'm getting used to it. It's the same basic assault/medic/sniper/engineer structure, but each "operator" has their own flare in how they do it with a few unique abilities. Like the healer lady has a little syringe gun (heals allies/you) and res's allies to full health, other guy tosses out armor/ammo packs and revives allies to half health but with some armor as well. Same basic function, just a bit different. Not a huge fan of unlocking weapons/mods but it's pretty standard at this point. I am a fan of the mod system though as you basically create mini "mod-loadouts" for each gun that lets you swap between the mods while out shooting shit.

Spent most of the night getting my ass handed to me since I don't play shooters much anymore, but have had a few BF moments of sniping a dude out of a helicopter cockpit or a surprisingly good killstreak. Otherwise just learning the maps and figuring shit out. I like that they have cross-play as an option, though unsurprisingly seems like I've mostly ended up with other folks on PC.

I'm a pretty basic gamer at this point, and admittedly have usually enjoyed the BF series quite a bit. Not so much for BF1/V (very interesting games and I loved their campaigns, but the multiplayer didn't really click with me), but I'm feeling it with the return to a modern setting. So far it's scratching the shooter itch I've had for a while. Looking forward to messing around with the Portal modes when they get that XP stuff sorted.

[EyelessCrow]

It feels very clunky to me overall. The gameplay just feels janky. Certain things not sticking when you choose them, like say the specialist with special grenades. I can choose anti vehicle grenades and if I die I need to reroll through them to have them ready. I've ran into a load of bugs, which I kinda expected so I'm not too miffed but some of these bugs have been around for past battlefield titles and have been fixed as far as I'm aware. Such as dying and being revived and not being able to fire your weapon. Theres another where you will spawn with no tag so everyone shoots at you thinking you're the enemy and then when you die you have a 0 respawn timer and can't respawn. TTK is nuts to me. Before unlocking specialized rounds I feel like I'm having to spend an entire mag to kill someone at medium ranges unless I can get a few headshots.

My biggest gripe is breakthrough, it just feels weird, and has been my favorite mode (when it was rush more specifically). I might be having a sudden rush of shit for brains but didn't you take a point, you had it. Then you had to focus on defending or pushing the team off from the second point (or blowing up the second node/mcom)? Now they can be re-taken and it's just a matter of rushing the point that was already taken before they take the second point. The sand map is the worst because there are three different points to take at once for one phase. Still teams lose and teams win but it feels terrible to me.

[meheez]

Still like BF 1 more.

2042 is 90% traveling 10% combat.

The atmosphere is neither a war neither a tactical shooter - more like an arcade buggy shooter.

Has some very well made and polished moments but it lacks alot of features currently. Doesn't even have a deathmatch lol, I guess they expect people to create that in portal - but on early launch nothing is made.

Very few maps, I feel like its too expensive for what it offers (specially if you have other battlefields) - therefore i asked for a refund, and maybe come back later sometime.

Edit: Steam decided to not refund ,because I played more than 2 hours (6). My only recommendation for new guys is to not buy the gold or ultimate, because they offer next to nothing, and the ingame skins look much better. Oh well, I hope what I payed is a thank you for Dice for the previous Battlefields <3

[everydaygamer]

The game is fine but not sure if I want to spend money on it just yet. Call of Duty is nice because you can sit down for an hour and just play a handful of quick matches. With Battlefield you can get maybe one or two matches in an hour and most of the time I find myself running around for several minutes before suddenly dieing then going back to running around for another few minutes looking for a fight.

At least in CoD you can get straight back into the fight. I might give Five or One a shot since I got them for free on Playstation. See if my issues are with Battlefield in general or just 2042.

I know i enjoyed 4 but not sure what player count is like on Xbox or playstation these days.

[C20]

I opted to spend the money on EA Play Pro so I got early access (or should I say I got it on release date, and people who paid the full price get it a week later).

It feels like the Battlefield I expect. I was a big fan of BF3 and BF4 but before that, BC2 and BF2 were great games too. BF5 was better than BF1, but I wasn't a big fan of either. The lack of dedicated servers was a big downside, as it meant you were hosting on your own machine but also it meant that there was no way to have an admin team who could ban or kick players.

The weapon customisation system in 2042 is fantastic, and I wish we'd had the ability to change attachments in-game earlier in the series. The base LMG you get isn't great until you unlock attachments, but once you manage that, it's actually a good weapon. This contrasts with BF5 and BF1 where the LMG's were outgunned by everything unless you were covering down a very thin corridor - something that was only really available in the 'Operation Underground' map in BF5. These BF2042 LMG's are actually capable of winning fights in most ranges as long as you've got the right loadout. Their accuracy while hip firing is very poor (as it should be), but their ADS accuracy feels great.

They reduced the slide-range from what it was in previous games, so it's no longer possible to slide your way across the entire map. However, it feels like it got tuned down a little too much and could do with offering a slightly longer slide range because right now it doesn't feel like it offers any advantage even for getting into cover. However, overall it's a good change.

Netcode seems to be on-point this time around. BF3 has major issues with it for its entire life, while BF4 significantly improved this. I didn't play BF1 much, but it seemed to be decent from what I recall. BF5 was notoriously bad, and sometimes it was actually more effective to play on a high ping server if you actually wanted to have a chance of winning fights. I've had 1 instance of it seemingly not working, but I'm not sure if I was firing at an enemy player who's marker hadn't appeared, or an enemy player who's marker hadn't appeared. They didn't fire back in the ~8 seconds we were looking at each other and ran off, but a friendly player also seemed to be chasing them, so I'm honestly not sure what happened. Every other fight seems to have had decent netcode and I lost fights that I should have lost, and won fights I should have won.

The game also seems to run well (Windows 11, 3900X, RTX3080, 3440 x 1440 ultrawide) even on max settings. DLSS performance mode seems to help, but even with the quality mode, it still runs well. I haven't measured the FPS, but it seems to sit somewhere around 45-50 FPS in some situations. I might consider dropping some settings down just to try and push above 60 FPS consistently.

It's not all good though. I'm not a fan of the 30 second forced deployment at the start. Sometimes I need more time to decide what loadout I want to go with for the match. I'm also not a fan of the way jets seem to be extremely difficult to kill. The AA vehicles aren't able to lock onto them from long enough range, and by the time they come back around for another run at enemies, their flares are back up. They're able to slow down significantly to lock rockets onto heli', but often the heli doesn't hear the lock-on sound - all they get is the "Missile Inbound" warning, and then within half a second, it's landed and taken out 40% of their HP. There's also been a lot of issues getting into games due to an 'unable to load persistence data' error (even with crossplay disabled), but thankfully this doesn't seem to happen with Portal games.

[Tekko]

Was looking forward to this, shame all reviews are bad and beta was meh, especially for performance.

[Mojo03]

Got the free trial on Xbox and played for a bit. No performance issues for me on Series X so far.

Portal is a cool idea. I didn't even know about that before playing and was pleasantly surprised. I spent a lot of time in BF1942 and BF3 back in the day and was cool to replay them with updated maps.

The new 2042 conquest felt a bit boring when I played it. It was like people have been saying - It's mostly just running around because the maps are enormous.

Also the gunplay feels quite clunky after being used to Destiny 2 and Vanguard. I really don't like it much.

I really think they should of delayed this 6 months and released it at a dead time for shooters in June instead of in the same month the other 2 big shooters release. Would of been a much smarter move all around.

I really haven't played enough to give a great opinion, but so far it's looking like a pass for me. Halo and Vanguard are both better options and it's looking more and more likely Halo Infinite MP is surprise dropping on the 15th.

Worth waiting until its on game pass in 6-8 months and it's more fleshed out.

[Edge-]

Also the gunplay feels quite clunky after being used to Destiny 2 and Vanguard. I really don't like it much.

I think that's a bit due to the fact that recoil/bullet spread exists. Granted I haven't played a CoD game in a few years, but the many I've played + Destiny 2 largely all don't have recoil. You can just hold down the trigger on a full auto weapon and minimally drag down and melt shit. You can use semi-auto's without too much kick to them allowing you to pretty quickly spam shoot.

I'm still getting used to the recoil and all, but it definitely doesn't really reward just holding down the trigger.

[everydaygamer]

Portal is easily the best part but it's not worth the asking price.

[PACOX]

Looks like a good BF so far. A return to the BF3/4 days. Will probably pick it up on its 'proper' launch day.

Say what you want about EA, they do maintain their shooters a decent amount of time so you can expect certain issues to be fixed. Always a shame when core things can be changed like private servers.

[Demsi]

It's fun but it lacks polish, also portal is really fun and i hope there's some post launch content added there too

[MrPaladinGuy]

Is the audio still garbage in this ?

[EyelessCrow]

This game is so incredibly infuriating as a pilot. instant lock ons are a thing after you've been locked onto once, you get no further notification just missile inbound. And planes can hit you instantly. I'm not kidding. You have absolutely NO time to react. It's like there is no travel time for their rockets or you're not being notified

There is WAAAAAAAAAAAY too much anti-vehicle in this game, and it's not meaningful in any way. Cut it down and make it something more than swarming an enemy vehicle with aa rockets and recoiless rockets. Those stupid ass grenades can track you across half the map and I don't know how.

[everydaygamer]

Bullet spread is kind of rediculous. Can't hit to save my life yet some how I'm getting sniped from accross the map.

[Ausr]

Is the audio still garbage in this ?

The music is. It's like someone was like "Let's make really loud scratching noises."

LMGs need a damage buff.

[EyelessCrow]

The music is. It's like someone was like "Let's make really loud scratching noises."

LMGs need a damage buff.

and an accuracy nerf

[Ausr]

and an accuracy nerf

Think I've been killed more by DM7s than LMGs.

[MrPaladinGuy]

The music is. It's like someone was like "Let's make really loud scratching noises."

LMGs need a damage buff.

In the beta a few weeks ago every single audio mix sounded terrible, most sounded not only as if the volume was normalized, but the quality was muffled and the mixing was terrible. That's really sad considering BF 3/4 had excellent audio.

[Ausr]

In the beta a few weeks ago every single audio mixed sounded terrible, most sounded not only as if the volume was normalized, but the quality was muffled and the mixing was terrible. That's really sad considering BF 3/4 had excellent audio.

The Portal stuff has the more classic theme, which is nice if you do Portal. I just don't know what the fuck they were thinking with the main game's music. Like I guess they thought exotic music was just screeches and stuff.

[Edge-]

The music is. It's like someone was like "Let's make really loud scratching noises."

Oh man I'm so glad I'm not the only one, a few times it legit sounded like the audio when your computer blue screens and it freaked me out. Turned that shit off ASAP, seriously, it's atrociously bad.