A Complete Battlefield 2042 Re-Review (2024)

[Music] the more things change the more they stay the same this was said by Jean Baptist Alon car all the way back in 1849 and articulates two key points one radical changes often do not affect reality on the deepest level other than to cement the status quo and two a change of heart must be accompanied by experience before any real change occurs that's a fancy French way of saying that even though things may be changing around us some things will continue to remain the same and in the most extreme cases change is often completely superficial because problems still lie at the core of the issue and we must experience change before we can recognize it as actually being change Battlefield 2042 is a game that has experienced a lot of change and when I say a lot of change I mean a lot of change to the point that so many bugs and gameplay issues have come and gone that you'd be forgiven for forgetting a lot of them when you go back and look at everything that's happened even the most cynical of players can admit that Battlefield 20142 has come far and a lot of credit should be given to the developers at dice Stockholm ripple effect Criterion and a handful of other Studios that worked on the game while they all should be commended for their work saying the quiet part out loud here it should never ever have been that bad but here we are this video is being released on the 2-year anniversary of when the game launched and with season 6 now being out for over a month dice are continuing to move forward with Battlefield 2042 the game has recently broken its player count record on Steam with with a free weekend and Flash sale and the game for the first time since launch has reached over 100,000 players on Steam the perception Around Battlefield 2042 is the most positive it has been since the night before its fateful launch while it remains to be seen just how long the donkey intends to pull the proverbial cart Battlefield 2042 has changed enough to deserve a definitive rreview of the game for those of you who have never visited my channel before hello my name is catalyst I've been playing battle field since Bad Company 2 I'm an accomplished Battlefield competitive player playing competitively since 2017 as one of the few people in this dying scene crazy enough to continue competing against the best Battlefield players in the world on both console and PC Battlefield has been my favorite FPS franchise for over a decade because I believe that Battlefield offers gameplay that you cannot quite find anywhere else and there is nothing like the battlefield formula when it's working as intended that is to say this video isn't coming from somebody that plays Battlefield just enough to feel Justified and giving their opinion this video is coming from somebody that has been playing for over a decade and loved Battlefield enough to make an entire Channel around it I am not going to beat around the bush in this review there are some things that some of you may adamantly disagree with and that's okay if you like the game I'm not going to degrade you for it you can have fun in a game but still acknowledge that it has flaws however what this video will do is unapologetically challenged the idea that Battlefield 2042 is a game that has redeemed itself in the last 2 years and will give an accurate assessment as to just how much the game has improved and how much dice should be praised for their efforts if I still have your attention after these past few minutes I would suggest getting yourself a snack or at least making sure you didn't do something stupid like leave the oven on or something we've got a lot to talk about ladies and gentlemen I present to you the definitive review of Battlefield 2042 [Music] too self I'm treating me right Battlefield unfortunately has a track record of being a bit of a buggy franchise it's sort of the elephant in the room that most of us veteran Battlefield players have grown to accept as just being a part of the package and as long as it's not too bad we can generally speaking look past it as long as we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and the gameplay is good I don't need to sit here and tell you how disastrously buggy Battlefield 20 42's launch was as that has been very well documented by a number of different sources according to journalists and leakers about halfway into the development cycle of Battlefield 2042 dice said to completely remake the frostbite engine for this game and it was abundantly clear that the team was not prepared to handle the kicking screaming baby known as the frostbite engine with plentiful quality of life updates over the last 2 years I can confidently say that if there is any one area that you could point to in which serious improvements have been made it would be in the game's performance though like most games that statement does depend on the quality of your Hardware recently I upgraded my PC to a ryzen 550x and EVGA 3090 and the performance is strikingly better than the PC that I was using for the first year and a half of playing this game where I only had an8 or processor but this type of improvement is expected and not every player is going to be dropping a stack or two on a new pc every 3 years even still I do not feel as though Battlefield 2042 uses the hardware in your PC or console to its full potential and with how many performance hitches and bugs pop up out of nowhere I have heard this game be compared to malware this is without mentioning last generation consoles which you'd be forgiven for forgetting that the game even launched on these platforms in hindsight Battlefield 2042 should have never launched on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and the greediness of EA 100% affected the game's launch by forcing dice to delegate resources on a port on consoles that had no business running this game the bugs you encounter per minute have drastically been reduced since launch and while this Improvement can certainly be attributed to the general bug fixing and performance upgrades the switch to focusing on primarily 64 player experiences has also helped the 45 HZ servers from becoming bloated and overloaded memory leaks stuttering crashes and soft locks still do happen occasionally with a black screen bug recently terrorizing the community but these problems occur nowhere near as frequently as they occurred in the opening months of the game with all of that being said the remaining bugs in Battlefield 2042 are bold and obnoxious when you encounter them the frostbite engine has the tendency to produce some of the most Outland Bish bugs that I have ever experienced and it has become a running joke in my community that not a single day goes by playing Battlefield 2042 without something completely bizarre happening to you take for example this invisible gun bug that breaks the game even further as you play as other players start to become invisible as well I believe this bug has been fixed but it's a prime example of what I'm talking about dusting on air vehicles is still a common occurrence and very frequently vehicle hitboxes will be desynced resulting in very frustrating deaths to Liz missiles that clearly missed you terrain textures and object hitboxes can occasionally glitch out or are wildly misplaced the game will consistently reset your settings specialist choices and specialist skins to default for no discernable reason as previously mentioned the game will frequently soft lock you on a black screen while it takes you back to the main menu because there are no persistent servers in Battlefield 2042 Jets and air vehicles still warp and stutter across the map and these are just a handful of examples unfortunately some of the game's biggest bugs and performance issues lie at the foundational level as Battlefield 2042 still has some major bugs pertaining to input that have yet to be completely solved Mouse input and controller input have been bugged since the beta and even after multiple patches to both inputs it's still does not feel exactly right having talked to smk gaming who is a longtime friend of this Channel and is somebody who I know is very knowledgeable about controller aim he seems to think that some kind of combination between the aim assist not working properly and the a assist response curve for Battlefield 2042 is what is making the game feel so bad to play on controller with the season 6 update dice added a quality of life change in the form of different types of aim assist response curves which has improved the overall feeling of aiming on controller but it is still not quite right especially for players using uniform Soldier aiming which in of itself has been inconsistently buggy a bug affecting recoil was fixed during season 6 but like the other fixes it still does not feel entirely consistent hit registration and desync are still frequent issues as well though certainly not to the degree that they used to be the sum of these parts results in Battlefield 2042 being the worst feeling FPS game that I have ever played in my gaming career and to say that a AAA development studio with 20 years of experience creating FPS games can't even get input to be correct is frankly embarrassing as someone who mechanically is in the top percentile of players I can go to other FPS games and have cracked out aim just fine and come back to Battlefield 2042 looking like I've never held a mouse before I can only assume that these issues are not solved because they were created when dice rebuilt the frostbite engine during its development cycle and to fix these issues another rework of the engine would be necessary the frost engine has been without a doubt a pain in the ass for these developers to deal with and I can sympathize as random bugs tend to appear out of nowhere with every patch in sabotage what has largely been a successful attempt to clean up the game that does not mean that there haven't been some really great bug fixes as well including fixing the infamous tank black screen zoom bug that you got when switching between third person and first person in tanks this was a bug that has been plaguing battlefield for multiple titles so major credit is to be given to Eddie or Armored Kill one of the main Battlefield vehicle designers and his team for sniffing out this bug a large portion of the effort to clean up the game has come in the Improvement of the game's UI which according to dice was the main culprit behind a bunch of the game's performance issues at launch and you could see why instead of logging in and seeing three gigantic boxes with three main game modes looking like an early 2000's DVD menu with no Direction the game has now Consolidated all of your options into the bottom leftand corner of your screen these changes make Battlefield 2042 feel like one experience as it should and frequently includes limited time events like Friday night Battlefield that appear among the list of options small additions such as the battle pass missions and the profile page have filled out the main menu nicely and now other players that join your party can be seen standing alongside your specialist doing away with the did you get into my party question that we would routinely ask our friends otherwise with all of that being said some of the menus are still a little convoluted and if I weren't an experienced player I would definitely get lost in these menus a few times before getting the hang of it as some settings appear multiple times across different settings tabs making it very confusing to navigate while loading into a match you can also now change your specialist and class load out while you wait for the round to begin and if the round is taking longer than usual to start the game will tell you exactly how many players you are waiting on on a larger scale downtime in between matches has been significantly reduced since launch with loading times being cut back by almost a minute depending on the speed the lobbies created other small quality of life UI settings such as mini map scaling Network graphs damage numbers and opacity settings have all found their way into the game as well something that longtime fans can appreciate a final note here the in-game store well I don't go in there very often at all my impression of the store is that it's a bit of information overload you are bombarded buy bundles charms and skins to buy with price points that often not always fall in between the amount of Battlefield coins that you can purchase often leaving you with barely not enough coins to get the weapon skin that you want it's not until you scroll all the way down that you find subtabs that allow you to browse specific Cosmetics but I would like to see some more organization here if I want a new specialist skin the legendary and epic Skins are currently all thrown together in no particular order and if you're looking for a specific specialist you'll have to find the needle in the Hy stack I would like to see some kind of drop down menu that would sort available skins by The Specialist that I'm looking for the same problem and solution goes for both weapon and vehicle skins while certainly not perfect the steady Improvement of the performance and stability of Battlefield 2042 over the last 2 years is very noticeable if you enjoyed Battlefield 2042 is core gameplay Loop but could not get past the performance hitches graphical bugs and crashes you probably find yourself in the camp of players really enjoying Battlefield 2042 in its current state as for me the performance now is pass and having experienced the launch of 2042 from the very first hour it is a notable and commendable [Music] Improvement without a shadow of a doubt one of the most controversial aspects to Battlefield 2042 from the very beginning was was the replacement of traditional classes in favor of Specialists these characters were created for the original vision of the game which due to leaks and Reporting was supposed to be a battle royale type experience before the game abruptly shifted gears halfway through the development cycle towards being the more traditional Battlefield experience Specialists obviously persisted through the direction change and the Battle Royale mode became what we now know as Hazard Zone one of the most important patches of 20 42's life cycle was the patch in October of 202 to where dice reorganized The Specialist to fit into a more traditional Battlefield class system and this currently is the system that is in the game today if you're familiar with my channel you know that we talked a lot about Specialists over the last 2 years so if there's any one area of expertise in this entire review it's right here for those of you now fully expecting me to fundamentally tear apart the idea of specialist and condemn the entire idea well you're going to be surprised do I think that specialist overall were good for the game and and do I prefer them to classes no do I think that Specialists were a bad idea not entirely I believe that if the original execution of Specialists were done differently Specialists not only could have been the microtransaction powerhouses that the greedy [ __ ] that EA wanted them to be but the specialist also could have been an accepted evolvement of the battlefield franchise there was already a foundation for a successful specialist system in Battlefield but staying true to dice's innate fascination with unnecessarily Reinventing the wheel the foundation was passed over for gimmicky money grabbing hero shooter elements that are in the game today now this isn't dice's fault completely as I think a lot of these decisions were forced upon them by the desire of EA to have the next Battlefield game take heavy inspiration from other popular games at the time those games being primarily Black Ops 4 and Apex Legends but with that being said it should have been clear from the very beginning that designing the specialist in the manner that they were to be designed was only going to bring about unnecessary balancing problems problems that we will discuss later in this video for those of you who have been playing Battlefield at any point during the last decade or so you surely remember specializations specializations have gone through a couple of different names throughout the years but the idea has remained mostly the same these specializations or field upgrades were passive bonuses that you can earn while playing the game that applied Buffs to you and the rest of your squad some of those passive abilities are actually seen in Battlefield 2042 such as Dozer flak passive that reduces explosive damage taken I fully believe that if these Specialists were designed around strictly passive abilities instead of gimmicky primary gadgets and were structured into classes from the very beginning that specialist would have been much better received this also would have allowed dice to fall back on their Elite model in Battlefield 5 which as the precursor to specialist allowed players to purchase special characters skins that came with special voice lines and melee weapons I can only assume that the reason all of this was not done was because Dice and EA were afraid that the Specialists would be boring to Casual audiences without these gimmicky abilities and to a certain extent I agree it's certainly is more boring and in gaming today where this type of game design is more and more common I can understand why they went this direction but Battlefield to me was always about being a faceless soldier in a large battle and there was definitely a middle ground here that dice overlooked intentional or not this Middle Ground would have made EA money while also making Battlefield 2042 a more focused Battlefield experience the often forgotten part is that these Specialists are the conduit for the slew of scattered story pieces littered throughout Battlefield 2042 while the narrative was never really a priority for this game any further efforts to flush out that story have been actively sabotaged by these specialist whose complete tonal diss from the world that they live in and quirky personalities has been burned into our brains from launch so when you have a character like p uncovering a dark and Sinister plot as she did in season 6 this is who I imagine is delivering the news that human beings are being tortured killed and experimented on with all of us how can we lose today today I'm proud easy in Easy Out sure the quirky tone NE voice lines and terribly written onliners may have been toned down considerably from the launch of the game but I believe I can speak for a lot of players when I say that I still see these Specialists as nothing more than bumbling idiots in a war zone that are meant to sell skins in a store and I couldn't care less about them I don't mind when my playable characters have some personality to them especially since my first Battlefield games were Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 where helicopter Pilots were pacifists and my Soldier casually screamed about getting [ __ ] in the ass but when you pitch your world as being more serious and Sinister the fun happy go-lucky nature of these specialist just does not match and it has actively sabotaged any further efforts to retcon the tone of the game especially when a bulk of your storytelling has now been delegated to quotes from these characters that appear in loading screens while it is an admirable attempt to inject life into the story these quotes have no value because the characters have little emotional value and some of them come off as cheesy and [Music] cringeworthy describing the current offering of game modes in Battlefield 2042 is something that I would compare to the experience you would get at a Chinese buffet restaurant the main dishes are hit or miss some side dishes actually end up being the best part and you definitely need to get there early or else you're going to miss out on fresh food well fresh to a degree Battlefield 202's main offering of game modes are either conquest or breakthrough as it has been since the launch of the game since then however both rush and Team Deathmatch have been added as side dishes along with Hazard Zone and portal which we will discuss by itself later in this video with those choices Battlefield 2042 also offers different options of playlists and game modes that alternate every week with every season dice also releases a new game mode during a midseason an event some of which were pretty good and I would like to see return in other titles and others that were extremely low effort this is a very common practice for live service games primarily operating off the fear of missing out and while this does increase variety and keep the game from becoming stale these Weekly game modes and playlists are still poor replacements for actual permanent game modes with some thought and Care put into them I miss front lines more and more every single day despite once being the staple mode of the battlefield franchise Conquest has been forced further back in popularity with Battlefield 2042 this is mostly a result of the initial decision for the game to support 128 player battles after much debate on whether or not the game should actually proceed with 128 players the game eventually was pushed to prioritize 64 player battles but dice did not completely eliminate 128 player experiences dice really needed to commit to one or the other but because they only committed about 85% of the way there are still some experiences to be found but they are now in the weekly playlist rotation and are not easily accessible which if you're a fan of 128 players flat out stinks the pacing issues in Conquest have persisted despite the focus on 64 players resulting in matches that often felt like running simulators with inconsistent flow because some maps are too big for 64 players even after their reworks as such breakthrough seems to be the more popular game mode as it at the very least guarantees consistent action it is not without its faults however as balancing has been a particular challenge for this game mode it's not a secret that attacking is much preferred to defending while playing breakthrough in Battlefield 2042 and more often than not the game will result in a one-sided steamroll when the steamroll is not due to gameplay imbalances such as vehicle count or flag positioning it will likely be caused by a combination of player-driven factors streamers skilled players and players who are tired of Defending against those players will consistently only cue for the attacking side which they have memorized from the matchmaking screen leaving the defending team full of players that are either begrudgingly playing defense on a map that they like or are blissfully unaware that defense is this unfavored in the game mode Rush is the most underappreciated mode in the game and as literally the only option for players seeking an objective game mode with a smaller player count it does its job well enough it kind of stinks to say that about a game mode that was once a pillar mode for this franchise but with th clearly pushing it aside in the last two titles in favor of breakthrough the more commercially accessible mode rush in Battlefield 2042 is as serviceable as the map design allows it to be Erica Harbor and Valero are highlights here providing some genuinely Fun Classic battlefield but this is no surprise seeing as these Maps were originally designed for Rush B back and bad company 2o while Rush was at one point the most popular mode in Battlefield 2042 because it was the only game mode where you can have consistent performance players have for the most part made their way back to Conquest and breakthrough now that the performance of the game is much improved that is of course unless you are playing Rush XL which is a 128 Player version of Rush that you either love for the ease of working on tier one weapon assignments or absolutely despise as a needlessly chaotic bastardization of the once great game mode Team Deathmatch on the other hand I can't be as positive about listen it's very difficult to completely screw up something as tried and true as Team Deathmatch but boy oh boy did dice try their hardest here since there are no objectives other than to kill the enemy team more than they kill you in Team Deathmatch the most important qualities of a good team deathmatch game mode are good maps and good spawns Battlefield 2042 is rendition has neither of these things while yes some maps are better than others most of the team deathmatch Maps suffer greatly from 20 42's awful spawn systems it should not be possible to spawn trap another team in Team Deathmatch yet that happens frequently on multiple Maps as the game continues to spawn players in the exact same locations furthermore when you look at the playable areas for some of these Maps it is very clear that these locations were chosen without much thought and without much testing if there is one thing about this review that you may point to in order to discredit it in any way and say that it's incomplete it will probably be this Hazard Zone I cannot comment on the current state of Hazard Zone because to this very day I have not played a single second of it that's right in over 800 hours in the game I did not play Hazard Zone once on the first day of Early Access all the way back in November of 2021 I tried to cue for a hazard Zone game but matchmaking issues prevented me from finding a game and after watching colleagues and peers play the mode and I saw the product that it was I didn't even want to bother trying it and it's clear that many other players felt the same way as eventually player numbers were so low with Hazard Zone that it was effectively put on ice so dice could focus and redirect resources into patching up the allout Warfare experience I do not know what the hazard Zone experience is like today nor do I know if it's even populated and truthfully I do not care as it has been so far removed from the battlefield 2042 experience that I would argue it does not even matter what a waste of resources ladies and gentlemen I could sit here for a solid 30 minutes and discuss with you why Battlefield 20 42's maps are some of the most boring and poorly designed maps in the history of the fds genre in fact I've already done that multiple times on this channel so to cut down on the time of this review I'll try and generalize as best as I can after reworks to all the vanilla launch maps and the addition of six new maps over the last 2 years the map Pool in Battlefield 2042 is still downright depressing with a total of 13 allout Warfare Maps this is the smallest offering of maps in any Battlefield title and it's not even close instead of adding two maps per new season dce have invested a lot of time into reworking the maps that launched with the game instead providing a Content cycle of one new map and then one reworked map later on in the season and while the season Maps were much better designed under the new approach to map making that dice adopted after season 1's map exposure they too suffer from some of the same core issues that the vanilla Maps do too many vertical structures that result in Fishbowl type gameplay on objectives odd spacing and size which lead leads to inconsistent map flow and the running simulator effect poor design of outlier objectives and an absolutely horrendous spawn system that either leaves you in the middle of nowhere with hundreds of meters to run or spawns you directly in the line of sight of enemies in smaller game modes the vehicle call-in feature was meant to be a solution to a lot of these problems by allowing players to call in vehicles to get around and make the map more traversible and while it was a good idea this is a feature that has completely backfired as players ERS have resorted to using this feature to call in vehicles and use them in locations that they should never have access to with a vehicle and depending on the map in game mode this can ruin the entire round a simpler solution would have been to more strictly regulate where players could call down vehicles but instead we have degenerate players calling into our rail gun tanks and putting them on top of skyscrapers and becoming an unkillable monstrosity these map design issues are even more evident when you play the playlist that contains some of the portal maps that were carried over to allout Warfare these Maps take a gigantic steamy dump over some of 242s maps when you place them side by side even the Bad Company 2 maps which were only designed for Rush originally play better as Conquest Maps than some of Battlefield 20 42's Conquest maps that is not to say that these maps are perfect as they certainly aren't spawns once again are a major problem here as in some cases you can force spawns to occur right in front of you if you know where to stand on the flag and it has been my experience that a lot of these maps are one-sided especially Erica Harbor which tends to end with whoever captures the middle sector first absolutely raffle stomping the other team but without a doubt the worst thing about Battlefield 20 42's Maps is their absolutely abhorent playable boundaries even after reworks there is still an excess amount of empty space that players can access this leads to moments where even on massive flanks you still get killed by players that have outflanked you making you shake your head in disbelief as to why players are even allowed to be that far away from objectives when you look at the map overview in the spawn menu often times these areas are completely irrelevant to the rest of the map and map flow would be tightened up significantly if they just did not exist let's take a look at this layout of Al perzo would you like to take a guess as to what game mode this layout is for I'll give you a few seconds this is the team deathmatch layout for this map and surprise surprise just like most of the maps in the game it's way too big Battlefield 2042 does not have many game modes so you would think that for the very few maps and modes in the game dice would try to find areas of the map that cultivate the best gameplay for these smaller modes instead it feels like dice lazily took turns throwing darts at a dart board with some maps ending up miraculous LLY to be half decent While others have layouts that are completely horrible this is especially frustrating because littered across the game there are opportunities for some interesting gameplay experiences experiences such as the stadium on hourglass that has since been completely removed from the map in concept playing in and around a stadium submerged in sand sounds quite fascinating and fits the atmosphere that the game was going for even in the flagship game modes dice's decision making when it comes to map layouts is spotty at best with multiple breakthrough Maps containing small objectives with no more than three entrances that attackers routinely blow every single ticket that they have trying to take somehow the developers felt it was a good idea to shove 64 players into a confined space and what's even worse is that there used to be 128 players sandwiched into similar locations this is a condition that I would like to deem Metro itis the disease of trying to take the chaotic CQC gameplay of operation Metro that players fell in love with and shoehorn it unnecessarily into maps that would be much better without it the worst offender in my opinion is exposure as the map at one point had the best breakthrough layout in the game with the final sector containing a one flag objective at the top of the facility instead D selected to change this to the layout that we have today where you are forced to throw yourself at the bunker objective for 300 tickets with the only hope of breaking the stronghold being defensive incompetence or me somersaulting with my dick out and killing 17 people miraculously this is inexcusable map design and the fact that some of these layouts persisted through map reworks and were still included in designs of later Maps tells me that dice likely did not test these enough or they just plainly don't care this is some of the most blatantly awful map design I have ever seen in any video game ever next to the Gunplay map design is the most crucial aspect in a first-person shooter as it dictates the pace of play the engagement and the replayability of your game a good map can make hours playing feel like minutes but a bad MAP can make minutes feel like hours and Battlefield 2042 has a couple of really bad Maps which is actually part for the course for a Battlefield game game but it's made worse by the fact that there are only 13 allout Warfare Maps 2 years into the game's life cycle a lot of people nonchalantly say Battlefield is known for big Maps so what's the big deal these maps are big too so why is there this double standard it's because these Maps lack substance they lack the it Factor they lack the reason to keep coming back that so many Maps had in the past Battlefield 2042 worries so much about where you're going and how you're getting there that everything else in between suffers greatly and feels more like a late 2010's Ubisoft open world game than it does a high octane firstperson shooter I don't make that comparison likely because I should never have to feel like Fast traveling in a first-person shooter game yet I have consistently found myself contemplating leaving the lobby and finding another game instead of running across Battlefield 20 42's vast Open Spaces these maps are unforgivably boring in this aspect instead of taking players to locations where the consequences of 20 42's world can be seen with recognizable locations and landmarks Battlefield 2042 often takes you to remote locations in the middle of nowhere which while good for variety begs the question as to why anything remotely interesting could be happening in Antarctica Additionally the environmental crises are rarely ever explored in meaningful ways in Battlefield 2042 is maps with the only environmental hazard being the gigantic PC melting tornado that stroll pull through your matches every now and again whether it makes sense to be in that environment or not there are flashes of a decent narrative here with things like the Panama Canal drying up on Stranded the lush green plant nursery facility ju opposed to the desolate Wasteland on two separate sides of a large wall on renewal but without context this just comes across as fields and rocks and you can't help but feel like meat was left on the bones here Battlefield 20 42's World sets itself up beautifully to have awe inspiring map effects and Levolution events which while I wasn't the biggest sickler for those events in Battlefield 4 this seems like a slam dunk that dice completely missed sure the tornado is technologically impressive but it becomes redundant and otherwise the closest that Battlefield 2042 comes to a serious natural disaster is the Landslide on exposure and we don't even get to witness that season 6's map redacted is a master class in aesthetic and atmosphere but it feels like such a far cry away from the original narrative that it almost feels as though it should be judged separately and it highlights that you can make engaging maps in remote locations but the majority of 2042 maps are bland and cookie cutter Battlefield [Music] sandboxes I'm going to be honest you better strap yourselves in because this is where things get dicey I have no clue how I'm about to tackle all of this in a timely manner because it's one thing to say that this game is a balancing mess it's a different challenge entirely to explain why but I will attempt to do so for the next 20 minutes or so to start I do want to make the statement that Battlefield in its most basic form is an incredibly complicated game to balance there are a ton of moving bells and whistles to take into account here if the average Battlefield game adheres to a rock paper scissors approach to balancing Battlefield 2042 takes that principle and straps an explosive device to each of the core pillars resulting in a balance that at the surface appears normal but beneath the surface is volatile and prone to collapsing the entire balance of the game at any given moment as we've already discussed earlier in the video I think that specialist could have worked had they been more focused on passive abilities that enhance the performance of each class but instead because every specialist comes with a gimmicky gadget and abilities the the balance between each component of Battlefield is inconsistent and at the foundational level is horrible for the game these Specialists have the innate tendency to completely throw conventional gameplay out the window by causing utter chaos a few examples McKay and Sundance offer movement abilities that can completely [ __ ] up any resemblance of map flow and predictability by creating endless new angles and positions of power you are often times spotted for the entire duration of a round if you have a Casper on the enemy team that is dedicated to sitting in a bush and flying their drone over the battlefield but Catalyst you can just shoot down the Drone right yes you can but since it's Casper's main ability and not a piece of equipment that needs to be resupplied like in previous Battlefield games another drone is available in 30 seconds and he's right back at it in many instances the deciding factor in whether or not you hold a sector on breakthrough is how many Irish players are placing APS systems because the amount of Specialists and gadgets that produce explosive spam are way too high could you imagine how spammy this game would be if the Irish APS system did not exist but there is by far no greater example of the balancing problems that Specialists create than the mere existence of Specialists like Liz and Ral even simple balancing changes that are geared towards vehicles or anti-vehicle gadgetry instantly become more complicated because these specialist exist when you have Specialists with abilities that can relentlessly impede the gameplay of an enre third of the battlefield experience any change that you make in this area is compounded by every single mechanic related to infantry versus vehicle balancing individual changes may be fine but when you compound that with a rechargeable TV missile a hack that causes damage States every 15 seconds Stingers javelins soflam with M5 recoiless launchers M5 recoiless launchers themselves incendiary ammo Crawford miniguns Boris turrets in addition to the presence of other Vehicles all of which have their own anti-air or anti-vehicle capabilities these changes are not so cut and dry having anti-vehicle gadgets is one thing but adding Specialists with anti-vehicle abilities on cooldown in addition to these gadgets is a horse of a different color Battlefield 2042 is the worst defender of indirect fire out of all of the Battlefield games between Boris turrets that make you completely readjust your positioning because an AI track you from across the map app airb burst rifles that have practically endless ammunition SPH launchers that are used to stick to players rather than stick to walls Rangers that aim B you mercilessly and should have never made it into this game to begin with scatter grenades and Liz missiles all adding to the chaos frequently and relentlessly the large list of things to take into account when playing infantry has made it so that trying to counter these things is daunting to the point that you are better off ignoring them entirely rather than being overloaded with information and this is not something that you want for a game that is grounded in a teamwork Dynamic the transition to a class-based system and the introduction of classes into the game in October of 2022 did not fix these issues as much as players would have hoped and the narrative that the introduction of these classes made the game feel like a true Battlefield game again is some of the most overblown pile of copium laced horeshit that you may hear out of this community yes the introduction of classes did Focus the gameplay of Battlefield 2042 and provided a certain degree of readability to the game by limiting what gadgets certain Specialists could use and yes the classes created a sense of having defined roles that previously did not exist in the game however the class system changes never reached their full potential because weapons are not locked to specific classes and players still prioritize The Specialist ability over anything else as a result these these changes did very little in truly steering player agency into the classic Battlefield roles since you still have plenty of players that don't give a rat's ass what class they are playing just as long as they play as their favorite specialist to dice's credit they did attempt to counteract this by adding weapon proficiencies which gives you added bonuses for using specific weapon types while also using certain classes but apart from the assault proficiency these proficiencies typically do not factor into how players design their loadouts things do not get better on the vehicle side of things as nothing is more horrifically balanced in Battlefield 2042 than the vehicles and their relationships with other vehicles and infantry the main issue here is that a majority of Battlefield 2042 is ground Vehicles all act way too similarly every [ __ ] ground vehicle in Battlefield 2042 has multiple Gunner seats with payloads for every situation in the entire game regardless of the class that they they are in the ebaa Wildcat is a mobile anti-aircraft unit its job is to Target enemy aircraft so why does it have multiple anti-infantry Gunner seats and more importantly why does it have anti-tank missiles another example the calav brawler is meant to be a close quarters anti-infantry vehicle so why does it also have the ability to have 20 mm flak pods hell why does the latv Recon need 20 mm FL pods every single vehicle in the game can be configured and equipped to deal with every threat in the game with high Effectiveness what is the [ __ ] point of having nuanced counters and furthermore what's the point of having different classes of vehicles if every one vehicle can do everything even in the most vehicle dominant battlefields on the market there were limitations to keep vehicles in line and checks and balances that defined clear roles on the battlefield not the Swiss army knife vehicles that wreak of laziness and copy and pasting if you are a seasoned 2042 player then you will know of the balancing Saga that has been the game's transport Vehicles which I cannot believe has lasted the entirety of the game's life cycle without getting their secondary Gunner SE completely removed from the game dyes even elected to change the name to gunship instead of Transport vehicle just so they wouldn't have to remove the Gunner seat from the game these flying fortresses sign 5 one of Battlefield 2042 is biggest balancing conundrums and shows just how Tangled this balancing mess can be these behemoths can make you tear your hair out as an engineer as they can withstand multiple Rockets before going down and there are plenty of times where these gunships will last the entirety of the match especially in breakthrough where the lack of other present vehicles to AG you leave it relatively unopposed on the other hand the fact that they can resist multiple rocket launcher blasts while every other air vehicle cannot make the gunships the most prominent vehicle threat on the battlefield to all parties and one of the most popular choices in the game for aggressive farming which obviously feels weird considering it was meant to transport infantry let's talk about the T rail gun tank I do not like to take the approach of just deleting things in video games but the tour genuinely deserves to be vaed and removed from this game the tour is a balancing catastrophe and even after balancing changes the Tank's ability to one-hot air vehicles out of the sky from across the map with ease is not only ridiculous but adds to the already impressive laundry list of uncounterable indirect fire issues in the game the tour can also shoot through APS systems so there is no counter defensively against the tour for land Vehicles the players that try to argue that the tour is balanced simply because you cannot get high kill games truly do not understand Battlefield nor the amount of map control that you can gain by putting enemy vehicles on res spawn timer beyond the tour main battle tank balance has gone from being impressively weak to actually being in a relatively good spot the addition of APs systems to all land vehicles in the game and the recent improvements to vehicle turn speed gravity physics and acceleration de acceleration mechanics have drastically improved the state of Tanks but like many vehicles in the game their effectiveness comes down to whether or not they are being subjected to the repeated pounding of anti-tank gadgetry which are stronger against tank than in past time titles due to the removal of glancing blows and the negligible differences in directional damage and then there is the nightbird which forums and Reddit would make out to be this unkillable monstrosity when in fact veteran Battlefield players know that in terms of balance the nightbird could be much stronger and we kind of got off easy The Mechanics Work similarly to Battlefield 4's little bird but movement is hindered by egregious amounts of input delay as a pilot you are forced to suffer through that delay and hope to God everything works in time time and that your inputs are actually registering which is especially impactful when doing type Maneuvers the skill Gap in these helicopters has been significantly reduced because in Battlefield 2042 there is no momentum sway despite improvements the miniguns on the nightbird are still a mess the convergence point between the two guns is annoyingly bad which results in Pilots most of the time having to aim with one Minun by tracking the tracers the rocket pods have been nerfed into Oblivion due to how strong they were at launch and are not really impactful anymore ECM jamming is nowhere to be found which stinks because the input delay causes flares which are the only counter to missiles in the game to sometimes not work correctly during last second flare pops which against the laundry list of anti- vehicle counters in the game can be an issue while a lot of things in Battlefield 2042 can be described as a bit of a mess the gun play has found itself in a decent place for a long period of time the Gunplay in Battlefield 2042 was completely laser likee with a stunning lack of spread and recoil becoming a common trait of most weapons in the game this resulted in weapons being affective from unintended distances and overall feeling exceptionally lethal for how open the playing field was at the beginning of season 5 Dice began a series of rolling changes that added more spread to every weapon across the board in an effort to reduce the engagement distances in the game these changes have been largely successful and have returned the gun play to much more manageable engagement distances bursting and tap firing at medium to long ranges have become more common practice which replaces the previous boring meta of holding down left click and mag dumping as good as these changes are to the overall health of the game it would have had a much greater impact if burst firing fully worked as intended with multiple bugs to spread resetting and recoil still existing in the game that make the gun play still feel off of times now is probably the best time to bring up the plus system a system unique to Battlefield 2042 as one of its main gimmicks out of all the new features brought to Battlefield 2042 the plus system is certainly the one that has had the best reception the plus system allows you to select multiple weapon attachments and swap to them on the fly to react to the various engagements you encounter on the battlefield I don't hate the plus system it's fine however I would not want it to return in future Battlefield titles and there are a couple of reasons why the first reason is that the plus system almost entirely eliminates ammo as a valuable resource on the battlefield since the plus system allows you to have three different attachments for your under Barrel weapon site barrel and magazine this means that you can have up to three different ammo types only in select circumstances do these different ammo types significantly affect the performance of your weapon and in most cases the different ammo types only go as far as to act as extended or reduced magazine capacity options of the same ammo type each ammo type gives you three magazines so you have nine magazines on default in comparison to traditional three magazines and this can be doubled if you take advantage of the assault weapon proficiency Battlefield 2042 also has returned the Battlefield 5 mechanic of resupplying a portion of your ammo from ammo pouches that you can pick up by running over the bodies of dead enemies all of these factors have significantly reduced the usefulness of ammo as a resource and the Specialists and gadgets that provide them which used to be a huge part of the traditional Battlefield gameplay Loop the plus system also creates another one of these balancing dilemmas that seem to plague Battlefield 2042 take the short barrel for example since the short barrel seems to have a high usage rate weapons with short barrels as an option are typically more popular so in balancing situations if you see a weapon has a high pick rate and is overperforming and you also see that most players are also using the short barrel do you Nerf the short barrel or do you Nerf the weapon or do you give short bars to every other weapon in the game or do you just buff the other weapons hopefully you can see what I'm getting at here these types of dilemmas are why dice tried to change how extended mags worked in a patch in the middle of season 4 by nerfing the ads times when using extended mags this was a change that the community absolutely detested and since then dice have seemingly given up trying to balance things like this do you rework extended mags or do you Nerf the weapons in previous games optimizing your load out and finding the attachments that best fit you and your play style was part of the joy in learning the game but in Battlefield 2042 there is no incentive to do so as general speaking you can use the best attachments on every single gun no matter what and if a weapon doesn't have said really good attachment you'll find it's not as popular as much as I dislike the Battlefield 5 specialization system it at least offered a clear pros and cons list that allowed for dynamic gameplay options options such as going full hipfire specs on the grease gun and turning it into a hipfire laser beam in Battlefield 2042 being able to choose multiple attachments deprives the player of the opportunity to make nuanced and subjective gameplay decisions because if they work themselves into a situation that their Loadout does not excel in their original choice doesn't matter they have two backups and that greatly decreases the substance of the game's gameplay Loop some people tend to like this but call me a traditionalist I don't like the you can't go wrong approach to game design as it lacks substance in the plus systems defense it is not helped by the overall lack of depth in Battlefield 20 42's larger weapon customization system when setting up your load out you are presented with stats in the form of four rows of descriptive words that describe how each weapon should perform Firepower range accuracy and handling next to those bars random numbers that are supposed to give me an indication of how the weapon performs in each category the descriptors continue down to the actual attachments with explanations such as plus weapon accuracy what exactly does that mean are they talking about spread and if so how much does this attach actually Titan spread 15% I'm not even sure what handling does in this game is it aim down sight speed movement speed what is it all I get for reference are the four bars above with interchangeable numbers that don't really give me a true idea as to what is changing about my weapon so we as players especially new ones and not nerdy Battlefield players that are going to go into a practice range and figure out exactly what they do have to guess as to whether an attachment is even worth it or Not by trial and error instead of just being told how this will affect your weapon I think that an advanced weapon statistics tab is a long overdue feature for a Battlefield game and for a game that has so much of its DNA ripped from other games I'm a bit surprised that we didn't get one the balancing of Battlefield 2042 is a monster of dice's own creation and if you have played Battlefield games before you can attest to the fact that Battlefield to begin with is not the easiest game to balance with so so many moving Parts three pillars of gameplay that all interact with each other constantly the addition of specialist and the attempts at 120 players it is very easy to see how overly ambitious dice was with Battlefield 2042 to a dehab degree up until the release of Battlefield 2042 I hadn't the slightest idea what a legacy feature was and I certainly didn't know that something as standard as a scoreboard would be something considered to be a legacy feature I think everybody knows by now that what they actually meant by Legacy feature was we didn't have time to put it into the game or we thought the game didn't need it the lack of essential features that were either not carried over from previous games or just not included at all was so astounding that someone on Reddit compiled an extensive list of features that were missing from the game while some things on the list were a little bit nitpicky and not overly important the list did make a resounding statement as to just how much Battlefield 2042 was lacking at launch 2 years later andise has tackled a large portion of this list and while some items on the list were only partially addressed some were fully implemented into the game and there were some big ones here scoreboard all chat although all chat is off by default VoIP mini map and HUD opacity settings a profile stats page lock- on launchers APS systems for vehicles the classes system for infantry a squad management system and so on there are quite a few things that have since been added or changed and credit to dice they have done a good job at implementing some much needed quality of life features however it just so happens that some of the most important features that we have come to expect in our Battlefield games have still not been included and it has been crippling to Battlefield 20 42's comeback effort there is not a single feature that has had its presence missed more than that of the server browser the consequences and irrit ations of having no server browser in allout Warfare despite having it in Portal have been catastrophic and if we are ranking my complaints in this video and there have been a lot of them this one might be the biggest gripe in the entire game for me the lack of a server browser may not strike you as an immediate issue especially for players new to the franchise who are more accustomed to the lack of persistent servers in modern day FBS gaming but for those of us who are veterans of the series the longer you play Battlefield 2042 the more you begin to realize why the server browser is such a crucial feature to Battlefield Battlefield 20 42's matchmaking system works the same way as many other modern FPS games where you enter a quick match pool and the game will try and place you into a game with space as quickly as possible for whatever mode or playlist you're trying to play the problem is is that in a game in which so many of the maps are subpar queuing into a map that you actually want to play on the first try is a Monumental achievement in Battlefield 2042 this is not helped by the fact that Battlefield is not a simple game with only infantry gameplay there are many different ways to play and thus certain maps are more attractive to you based on what you want to be doing if you're an infantry player then of course you'd prefer playing redacted over hourglass for example if you are searching for a game and you don't find a server that you are content with on the first try you will likely sit in the matchmaking screen recing for minutes on end trying to get put into a match that you actually want to play whether or not you do simply comes down to your patience you either relent and play a map that you do not want to play in order to refresh the queue or you go and try your luck in another playlist only to be met with some of the same problems this can be problematic depending on the player count for each playlist the region you play in and if you are opting in for crossplay or not additionally because there is no browser or even really a way to distinguish lobbies apart if you leave a match for any reason and get queued for a match on the same map you have no idea if the game is trying to put you back into the same Lobby that you just left or if it's a completely separate one the only way to find out is to join that Lobby which may prove to be a gigantic waste of time the matchmaking system will also sometimes just not take the [ __ ] hint and will continue to try to put me in the same manifest lobby after I have denied the matchmaking request for upwards of 10 times because I would rather [ __ ] in my hands and clap then play Manifest this is likely due to the fact that the game will not put you into a queue for a server unless you are specifically trying to join on a friend or a party I don't know if tce thought the players would just happily play whatever map came up with them without any complaints or arguments but this is beyond frustrating there is also no way to tell how populated the server is once you queue for it which with a fluctuating player count means that you may search for a game for 5 minutes or more only to find that Lobby full of Ai and then it's back to the main menu for you what makes it even worse and yes it gets worse is that it seems like the game has a map rotation where you will consistently be playing the same three to four Maps your entire play session I am not talking about the special playlist that do only have three to four maps in the pool I am talking about vanilla playlist with all the maps in the game in them is there any definitive proof of this no but with there only being 13 maps in the game currently you can understand why it feels this way often times the enjoyment of your play session completely depends on which rotation of maps that you are getting there are some days where I just chalk up my entire play session immediately because I am getting a steady dose of hour class renewal and manifest and to be honest with you if that's the case I'm going and playing another Battlefield game the result of all of this is that way too much of your time playing Battlefield 2042 is either a spent in the menus looking for matches or B begrudgingly playing maps that you do not like wishing that you were playing a different mapper mode the objective of video games is to have fun and to have so much of your time being wasted in menus and otherwise better because you not playing maps that you enjoy is far too high of a price for this dog [ __ ] matchmaking system that was clearly put into the game to be familiar to players of different franchises if you aren't going to include a server browser dice the very least that you can do is give us a drop- down menu in which we pick and choose which Maps we want to queue for it just it just blows my mind how something so crucial to the identity and inner workings of Battlefield was just so casually tossed aside for something so inferior there are other big features that have still not found their way into the game that I personally find to be essential to the battlefield experience Battlefield 2042 still lacks a spectator mode for spectating matches to identify cheaters allow graphic designers and photographers to take photos and promote the game creators have to use console workarounds to get b-roll for for videos and esport leagues have to use third- party software just to be able to broadcast and host Clan matches in terms of unforgivable decisions having no spectator mode is a very close second to having no server browser as it is a direct gut punch to the community there is still no team switch option which would greatly assist in the balancing of games there are also still no platoon which ever since its Inception in Battlefield 1 has been one of the most beloved features in the franchise Battlefield 2042 has been absolutely thermonuclear to Battlefield communities as new players can no longer find groups of like-minded people to play with I personally cannot tell you how many communities I knew of coming into Battlefield 2042 that have not survived because of the lack of community features there is still no testing range in the game which seems like a complete oversight seeing how many moving Parts there are in Battlefield 2042 with all of its gadgets and Specialists for most of our weapon testing we are required to go to one of two portal experiences to test out our weapons and gadgets you used to be able to do all of this by fighting AI in Co-op lobbies but dice broke those lobbies at some point and now they are janky and laggy to the point of being unusable there are also a number of features in Battlefield 2042 that have either been half asked or are completely inferior to their predecessors the first thing that comes to my mind is the melee system for the first time ever melee finishing moves are in third person and for the most part look horrible not only does your camera jerk you around but you were forced to sit there through awkwardly long animations which is made even longer if you have to idiotically stand up the player you are trying to kill because there are no ground takedown animations why would I lock myself in an animation for something that looks so unsatisfying and goofy looking this was clearly done to cater to players of other live service titles and it's frankly [ __ ] awful there there is literally no reason to go for melee kills in Battlefield 2042 not that you had a reason to do so anyways because dog tags which were also once a valued part of the battlefield experience have become obsolete in favor of player cards that have the sole purpose of being filler in the battle pass even though Battlefield 1 was not the first entry in the franchise to use first-person executions it was certainly the most iconic iteration and it was a large step forward with immersive and brutal animations that showcase the brutality of War if you ask me this is perfect for Battlefield so why do we have this horrific replacement because EA felt the need to cater to players of other franchises rather than their own disappointing but not unexpected in the end it's a running theme with the entirety of the game there were so many things that in the interest of saving time I had to leave out of this section of the review small things that make Battlefield Battlefield that are either not there or not up to the brutal expectations we have as Battlefield fans in Battlefield 2042 is Portal mode three past Battlefield titles Battlefield 1942 Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 had two maps remade and a host of weapons recreated on the modern frostbite engine so that they could be played as they were when they came out or alternatively customized in an impressive amount of ways with an experience editor additionally all the native Battlefield 2042 assets could also be tweaked with the same portal experience editor and could have been meshed together with the older experiences to make a wide variety of cool ideas and game modes I absolutely loved the potential that portal represented at face value being able to play remat bed slices of some of the best Battlefield games ever made that is wickedly cool and while dice made some questionable choices as it pertains to which maps and weapons they brought back as a battlefield veteran I was completely hooked and on board it genuinely saddens me to say that 2 years later portal which could have been the beginning of something special has died without so much as a whimper it should have been a huge step forward as a feature of the franchise and should have been something that provided longevity and Life to older titles but portal has not seen any meaningful updates in over a year it is such a shame that this exciting idea was reduced to nothing more than a sacrifice so that Battlefield 2042 is allout Warfare mode could continue its comeback attempt at the start of season 2 in August of 2022 dice decided to start porting over Vault weapons from Portal in order to supplement the shockingly low amount of of weapons in allout Warfare Additionally the Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2 maps were put into playlists accessible from the allout Warfare menu and those playlists are routinely in the weekly rotation today while these decisions were welcomed and in hindsight were absolutely the correct thing to do it did come at a price as portal which was meant to be its own separate experience lost a major reason to go out of your way and play the mode without any significant content being added to portal to make up for this the retention for the remastered experiences have dwindled to almost nothing because for most players playing on Portal maps with Portal Weapons in allout Warfare is enough of a blend of nostalgia and gameplay for them to ignore portal entirely that is especially the case seeing as portal has now shifted how you find experiences you can no longer quick match into the setting of your choosing instead there are two options displayed to you at the main menu one a dice created portal mode and the other a featured mode from the community these modes although labeled as portal modes are entirely separate from Portal as they operate on Battlefield 20 42's matchmaking system and not the portal server browser if you want to go and play a specific experience you either need to hope that you find it in the server browser or create it yourself and hope that somebody plays it with you the Remastered game side of portal has faded rapidly from relevancy over the course of the last 2 years but that's only half of the experience what if the portal experience editor that allowed you to customize your experience in both older titles and new well it's a bit complicated there are a number of great and useful experiences that have been made over the last 2 years from the no-name a trainer that I mentioned earlier to some really intricate game mode Creations such as a recreation of squad obliteration from Battlefield 4 there are some great Community Creations that should be highlighted and praised it's too bad however that the larger Community doesn't give a rat's ass about any of them instead all the remaining Community cares to play are XP farms and cringeworthy hardcore msum experiences which when compared to the near Limitless creative possibilities provided by portal is frankly unimaginative cringeworthy and disappointing let us not act like this is a recent development either as XP Farms were so prevalent during the launch of the game that dice had to shut off XP gain across the board and portal to prevent scummy players from soaring through the game's progression the saying is don't bite the hand that feeds you but honestly I don't care I'm about to bite the hand pretty hard here portal is the closest that we've been to mod Tools in over a decade and it was supposed to celebrate the battlefield sandbox experience in all of its glory and what does this [ __ ] Community do with it create nothing but lazy XP farms and milsim servers for players that are too sheepish to go and play an act ual milsim game like Squad and Hell let loose I understand that once upon a time Battlefield had a more hardcore Edge to it it's in the DNA but that was 20 [ __ ] years ago to say this is disappointing is an understatement what narrow-minded creativity the once vibrant and interesting potential of portal has since been completely sapped away and left for dead over the course of the last 2 years to the extent that you can hardly recognize the difference between portal and allout warfare today portal feels like a wasteland when you are not using the community made testing range or the Cure rated playlist in the end portal was way too ambitious for its own good and it was certainly not helped by the fact that it launched alongside one of the worst launches in fps history to see it now is a depressing resolution for what could have been something special if it was given the time and care it deserved at launch and if it wasn't sacri acfic to sustain the mediocre experience offered in all that [Music] Warfare it's not really a secret anymore that modern gaming is trending towards being predominantly live service experiences especially in multiplayer focused games as unfair as it may be at times in today's gaming readily available frequently updated content is becoming the standard and franchises that adapt well to this model of games as a service tend to flourish and those that don't well you can see how that's going I am not going to sit here and tell you that Battlefield 20 42's live service is the worst live service of all time because I don't really know how somebody would even quantify something like that but I will condemn EA for butchering this franchise with horrible business practices and for putting dice so far behind the eightball by forcing this game out well before it was ready that it never stood a chance because I don't typically believe that developers wake up and head into the office going man I can't wait to work on all of this filler content no that is something that a high ranking publishing executive ultimately decides and delegates to the development team with all of that being said I don't think many will disagree when I say that Battlefield 20 42's live service has been woefully insufficient it's insufficient compared to its competitors and it's insufficient to the franchise's previous installments even with season 6 which is has brought this tsunami of new players when you strip it down to the Bare Essentials it is still one map one vehicle two Primary Weapons and a pistol for 16 weeks I will spare you from the whole spiel about just how much less content we have gotten compared to previous games because I am sure that you have heard it before but it goes without saying it genuinely stinks that just whenever it feels like Battlefield 2042 is gaining some traction dice's inability to give us more than the bare minimum of content every 3 to 4 months all but guarantees that any new players that this game gets will be bored of it in a few months because even after 2 years Battlefield 2042 only just now has the content we would expect for a normal AAA Battlefield game at launch I cannot truly say whether this is more of an issue caused by lack of funding by EA or lack of resources by dice as they work on the next Battlefield title or perhaps it's a bit of both but what I do know is that this is the second Battlefield title in a row that has had a very inadequate live service and the franchise continues to be gutted by modern gaming business practices delays classic game modes being completely stripped in favor of weekly playlist a battle pass that is more focused on selling skins than giving actual playable content Legacy features being passed off as new content content that was already in the game being passed off as new content even content that we've already played before being passed off as new content with Redux and the thing that irritates me the most is this patronizing attitude that dice gets every once in a while where they Gaslight the entire player base into being thankful that they are giving us this content that should have been there in the first place portal which should be a pillar of community creativity is a drained M opportunity that has not seen updates in months the community is divided between those who vehement hate this game and those that quietly like the game with new players that are just trying the game out getting stuck in between this battlefield gang war streamers some of the only people left promoting the game get stream sniped and extorted with one case in particular happening for over a year and has gotten to the point where he is considering legal action because simple account bins have not stopped these players from harassing him and EA will do nothing about it members of the EA Creator Network have been kicked without without warning due to trivial misunderstandings every now and again a talking headed dice makes a controversial and arguably distasteful PR statement that makes fans question how in touch these developers are with their community and that's on top of everything gameplay related that we have talked about in this review ladies and gentlemen as I told you before this review is not about what Battlefield 2042 was but what about the game has become and judging it based on its current form I told you that I would unapologetically challenge the idea that this game has redeemed itself and have done my best to give you something to think on one thing is evidently clear with the rise of players that have tried or purchased the game on sale during this most recent free weekend interest for a good Battlefield game is still there and that is not for nothing Battlefield 242 2 years later has made many positive strides and has turned into a decent FPS game that many players will find enjoyment in but as a Battlefield game Battlefield 2042 is subpar it is nothing more than a cookie cutter industry fabricated FPS game that parades itself around as Battlefield while lacking many of the features mechanics and experiences that made Battlefield special if you have watched the entirety of this review you'll know why I began this review with that quote about change only appearing on a surface level because behind the wall of quality of life changes that have vastly improved the experience the core of the game still has a lot of problems while I applaud the Developers for trying and I recognize that there are good hardworking developers at that studio I find that talk of redemption for this game is downright dangerous Battlefield 2042 has turned into a serviceable sometimes enjoyable FPS game that if you are experiencing it for the first time probably leaves you saying why all the hate I don't get it and I can completely sympathize with that because when it's working as intended it creates experiences that you cannot find in any other FPS franchise but having been a fan of this franchise for over a decade and sticking with the game through the last 2 years I cannot consider Battlefield 2042 to be a good Battlefield game and I can only imagine that the narrative that it has been redeemed stems from people that are so dedicated to Battlefield that they either choose to ignore the gigantic red flags and C design issues or they are simply new players that just don't see them every few months or so an article makes its way into the public eye articles like this game rant article heralding dice as the comeback Kings a title I'm not sure they want but nonetheless these articles written by people that surely do not have more than 25 hours in the game preach pretend to have their pulse on the community and regurgitate PR talking points as if they are canonical truth whether you are in the group of players that actively enjoy the game or the massive hordes of players that have stopped playing it and have not picked it back up we all know this one thing to be true the next Battlefield is it it cannot be another commercial failure that is the looming storm that we are facing as the next Battlefield game appears Over the Horizon change needs to be met with experience Battlefield 2042 as it was at launch was a three out of 10 Battlefield 2042 in its current state is a 6 out of [Music] 10 ladies and gentlemen as this video comes to a close I want to sit for a moment and reflect with you all and I'll try and make this short because in being so thorough with this review it has ended up being a pretty long video Even though this video had a lot of negative criticism attached to it I hope that at the very least my passion for this franchise was evident as a battlefield fan it genuinely stinks to talk about a game that has played such a pivotal role in my life in this fashion and I wanted to pour everything into making this video because this is the last Battlefield 2042 video that I will be making and furthermore this will very likely also be the last video that I ever post on this channel why have I come to this decision well the truth is is I knew that this was going to be my last video the moment that I started working on it around 5 months ago on April 6th of this year my friend Jordy passed away unexpectedly many of you may have known who he was as he also created Battlefield content but you likely don't know that we were really good friends while I was one of the few that knew that he wasn't doing well in his final days and that his time was coming to an end I still really couldn't believe it when he passed away he was a great friend to me and even though he passed on the sixth I didn't actually find out that he was gone until the next day April 7th which happens to be my birthday the tremendous amount of guilt that I felt to be celebrating my life while Jordan lost his the day before is a confusing emotional roller coaster that I don't wish on anybody I remember streaming that day to my community to try and celebrate holding back tears the entire time until I couldn't play anymore Jordy and I were not only good friends because we shared a love for Battlefield but because we happened to be in a very similar place in our lives we often talked about what we wanted to do with our lives and Jordy was making plans to travel around the world to meet all of his friends in the next few years I on the other hand wanted to find some stability in my life lock down a better job than my current one and figure out what kind of man I wanted to be and it came up a lot between the both of us but we both came to agree that we just didn't enjoy Battlefield anymore and we especially had become very jaded with making content on it Jordan didn't get the chance to go and live his life and do the things that he wanted but I still have that chance to make that decision and I have made that decision the fact of the matter is is that I have not enjoyed making content for a while but I've continued to push on in hopes that there would be some kind of light at the end of the tunnel I came back to give content a real shot at the start of Battlefield 2042 and while I have certainly experienced a lot of growth any Battlefield Creator will tell you that the circumstances are less than ideal Battlefield as a game is something that I don't love that much anymore and after long discussions with myself I have come to the conclusion that even if I were to start over and create content on a different game that I enjoy I do not have the passion or the consistency or the time really to pursue that in a way in which I would be satisfied with I'm not going to continue to waste my time doing something that I no longer enjoy Jordan's death instilled a sense of urgency in me to make good use of my time instead of being miserable doing something that I no longer enjoy because it could have been me that died suddenly it could have been me that did not get the chance to live their life you never know when your time will be up it does feel a little bit weird to persevere through what has been a horrible time for Battlefield creators only to quit while the finish line is somewhat in sight and the game's finally doing a little bit better but with a long wait in between games on the horizon I am content with this being my exit this feels like the right time I want to thank all of you for watching my videos all of these years helping me grow helping me become better and for supporting me I want to thank my peers and friends that I have made along the way some of them with channels of their own that contributed to this review to which I will now show them on screen as I close out this video If you enjoyed this video and have made it to the end thank you please leave it a like and a comment down below how do you feel about 2042 2 years later do you think the game has redeemed itself please share the video around as it has been a herculan effort to make almost four months of writing and recording and last but certainly not least thank you all for watching however many of you that may be at this point it has been an absolute pleasure and I hope you all take the chance to not only tell those that you care about that you love them but that you live your life to its fullest potential my name is catalyst and I will see you all another time that's the [Music] way that's the way it is [Music] [Music]

Channel: Catalyst_HD

Views: 19,912

Keywords: battlefield 2042, battlefield 2042 gameplay, battlefield 2042 update, Battlefield 2042 review 2023, Battlefield 2042 Review, Battlefield 2042 Season 6, Catalyst Battlefield, Is Battlefield 2042 good now?, Battlefield 2042 two years later, is battlefield 2042 worth it in 2023, is battlefield 2042 good, is battlefield 2042 good now, is battlefield 2042 worth it, Battlefield 2042 Updated Review, Battlefield 2042 New Update, bf 2042 review, bf 2042 review 2023

Id: JqDcq7E24NA

Length: 81min 41sec (4901 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2023