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This exact spectacle that Battlefield has constantly leveraged over its competition seems to have finally undone the game itself in this latest installment. Vehicles and on-foot soldiers are bountiful everywhere you look, and squad-based skirmishes come to define most of the experience, but it’s all set against almost complete, dizzying chaos. These modes focus on large-scale campaigns, quite ridiculously support up to 128 players at a time, and are, for better and worse, exactly what you expect of Battlefield to the point of parody. Instead, there are three multiplayer playlists of varying depth, the most familiar of these being All-Out Warfare, consisting of the classic Conquest mode and the return of Breakthrough. This game leaves behind single player entirely, despite the pretty explicit narrative I’ve outlined, favoring an online suite of experiences crafted from the wreckage of its story. The games I most love are pieces of fiction that have worked as some affirmation of myself or the world I wade through, or even as just plain fun Battlefield 2042 is just a cold, unflinching void. I’ve no notion of games being the thing that will save the world, but in 2021, I think what I needed least was for an incurious blockbuster game to completely throw in the hat about the grim future we’re staring down and use it as a playground. It’s been a constant point of frustration for the entirety of my time with the game.
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This is the setup that Battlefield 2042 establishes, only to completely drop it at the first chance. Rather than come together to help each other, the nations of the world instead accelerate tensions and a global war breaks out. Due to an astonishing amount of pollution, the Earth’s orbit becomes so dense that the satellites in it actually crash back down onto the planet, causing a global blackout. When that disaster ravages large swaths of the world, the refugee survivors, or “No Pats,” are forced to weather the collapse of the environment around their homes.
BATTLEFIELD 1942 SERIES
The latest installment in the long-running multiplayer series jumps forward two decades, pitting you as a soldier in a pointless future war brought on by climate change and its progenitors. Words almost fail to capture what a profound waste Battlefield 2042 is.