BIGGER FIELD
I wasn’t sure whether or not Battlefield 2042’s randomly-appearing tornadoes could pick up vehicles until my squad’s ATV was inhaled by one. As we tumbled skyward, I had to make a choice: Ride it out in the gunner’s seat or eject? I bailed. Our driver remained at the wheel, trusting that ‘all-terrain’ included the sky. Two seconds later the vehicle fell into a field like a bomb, and incinerated him.
Even after two decades of sanding and streamlining, Battlefield can still surprise. The modern FPS scene is now stacked with big maps and whimsical vehicle physics, but Battlefield remains distinct from the milsims and battle royale games that have encircled it. With Battlefield 2042, DICE stands its ground as the king of military shenanigans more convincingly than it did with Battlefield V, ditching the singleplayer campaign to focus on the two pillars of the series: Objective-based multiplayer and scale.
ROOM TO STRETCH
What was a back in the category of games that push technical boundaries. The increased acreage isn’t an across-the-board improvement to the experience, but if it’s wrong to make a game bigger and more technically complicated without designing for all the possible consequences, then I don’t want to be right.
