Earlier this week, Ethan rightly called Battlefield 2042 as “wrong game at the wrong time”. A similar piece on Eurogamer says Battlefield 2042 open weekend was “a disaster”. User ratings of the game are in the toilet. Imagine my confusion when I realized last night that I had been logged into the game all week and had a bust.
I am not claiming for a second that there is anything wrong with these parts or people’s user ratings. The game started very half-heartedly and for many long-time fans an unforgivable state, as if the whole thing had been cobbled together for the jury like a bake-off disaster at the last minute. The changes to player classes are confusing, the way infantry bullet spray is handled is insane, and the technical issues people who play on Xbox consoles seem to be having very crappy.
I’m going to sound like an asshole here, but these are not my concerns. First I play on the PC where I have very few problems. Maybe Australian servers are just blessed, who knows. The second time I played I got some weird texture pop-ins and there is an weird screen tearing effect at times even with V-Sync on, but those are annoyances, not deal breakers , and that is basically the extent of my technical concern. Most of the time the game looks Splendid and runs nice and smooth to boot.
The next thing I notice is that the game is missing from some game modes and others are not up to date. But I always just play Battlefields big conquest mode with up to 128 players battling it out on huge maps and this is here and it works, so that’s all I’ve played anyway.
Now it’s getting weird. I understand that many people’s complaints about infantry, ranging from visually identifying classes to concerns about their bullets not landing where they are aimed, are very important to the way they play the game to play. But that’s not how I play the game.
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I like tanks. I like driving them around and shooting them. When I can’t drive the tank, I still like to sit in one and use the machine gun, like a grueling take on Ralph Wiggum’s “I’m helping” meme. I like Battlefields Tanks so much that I’d bet I spend about 90% of my time in the game on them, and the other 10% drive cars that have guns too, or smaller tanks designed to blow up planes instead Building.
I just don’t care about these infantry stuff. There are so many other shooters out there with guys walking around with guns; for me all the charm of Battlefield is that it’s even bigger, with its helicopters and hovercrafts and fighter jets and huge maps. I appreciate that infantry is there to blow up my tank, but like a whale appreciates the schools of krill it shovels into its mouth every day without worrying about their existence.
And the tanks are here fun. Or, as many serial veterans call them, “overwhelmed”. Russian or American doesn’t really matter, both are fast, tough looking, can fit three other people in for squad-based gadgets, and those three can wield an interesting variety of complementary weapons, from robotic shotguns to small rocket launchers. I think tanks are just the best way to really soak this up Battlefield Experience. This series is best when the entire screen explodes, helicopters shoot missiles to the ground as infantry seek cover, and trucks are torn to pieces around you. The third person view of a tank, visibility, speed and level of safety from these explosions is something you often have in mind Battlefields Storm and I never scream “Holy shit!” just as often in a chain of chaotic events as in driving a tank.
Is that strange? That I look through the whole hodgepodge of things that you can do in these games and settle for a tiny part of it and then play that part to death? Maybe! I am not the most passionate in the world Battlefield Player; In fact, this is the first time since Battlefield 4 that I really spent a lot of time playing one of the games at launch. And now that I think about it, it’s probably because of the military hardware on offer. There is just something more white bones via the map in faster modern vehicles than the (relatively) creakier armor of the last two games, Battlefield 1 particularly.
While we’re here talking about first impressions, I really like these cards. I have yet to learn their deepest secrets as it’s only been a week and I understand veterans are already complaining about things like lack of cover, but see above, I drive tanks and I don’t care. Everyone has their own gimmicks, like Singapore’s docks with huge moving parts, an Egyptian map with a perfect split halfway between dry desert and lush green grass, or another that develops a huge storm in the middle. Even if the game doesn’t have a single player campaign attached, each one tells a small part of a story about a dystopian future, the only thing they all have in common is that they are all in some way affected by an impending climate change, which makes it strange makes playing on it depressing.
If you’re wondering why I’m writing all this, it’s not because I want to rub it in or dismiss your criticism; I am just fascinated by the gap between so many other people who are rightly having a bad time playing this game and my own joy. That this disagreement, unlike anything else on the internet, is not a subjective disagreement. My views and theirs (and yours) can coexist here and all be true because that’s the kind of game Battlefield is. Despite its ups and downs, it’s a series that essentially offers us games within games. You play as infantry on huge maps with no cover and overwhelming vehicles, you have a bad time. I drive overpowering tanks around a beautiful big playground because that’s what I love, I’m having a great time. All in the same game.
If you like to play Battlefield is broken here or not overwhelming, this is definitely a problem, and I don’t want to give the impression that I’m somehow letting DICE and EA off the hook. This game takes some serious work no matter how much fun I have with it. But if you’re a weirdo like me who watches this huge game and only plays part of it, be it tanks or jets or choppers or However, then despite all the bad press the game is getting right now, this is still a good time. Depending on how big a weirdo you are.
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