After a pair of entries that saw the Battlefield series revisit World Wars past, Battlefield 2042 is a trip back to the future for EA’s premier first-person shooter franchise. Low-tech battles in European locales are out, replaced with massive, highly vertical conflicts in the megacities of the near future. With huge maps, a completely overhauled class system and an intriguing new ‘portal’ mode, Battlefield 2042 is an undeniably ambitious entry. Is this the next generation in Battlefield action? Perhaps not – it’s a cross-gen game at its heart but the scale of combat expands with the move to the new consoles with a doubling of player count – 128 combatants vs last-gen’s 64, resulting in absolute mayhem in some scenarios – but can PS5, Series S and Series X handle it? The results are much improved over beta and early access code, but there’s still work to do.
Of course, we’ve seen gigantic player counts before with the battle royale genre routinely breaking past 100 concurrent users, but Battlefield 2042 is different. The sheer density of players here can result in some stunning, extraordinary scenes, particularly in the Breakthrough game mode, where all players fight over a small number of objectives. The carnage is intense and it’s safe to say that you won’t get scenes like this in Call of Duty’s Warzone, for instance – it’s completely different as players are too spread out. As the all-out mayhem plays out in front of you, some scenes need to be seen to be believed.
But perhaps the most interesting addition here is the new portal mode. This allows you to create custom games based on maps from Battlefield 2042, as well as prior Battlefield titles. There are six additional maps in this mode, consisting of recreations of maps from Battlefield 1942, Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 3. These new portal maps are paired with a range of options to customise your experience, including a rudimentary game logic editor. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Halo’s Forge, albeit with less map customisation with more scope for tweaking game modes and player abilities.
It’s a great addition but the presentation feels a little odd. Consigning these six maps to community servers with custom game types and no progression rewards is quite limiting. It feels especially odd given that almost half of Battlefield 2042’s 13 maps are exclusive to this mode. Surely, these maps should be part of the main game in a more substantial way – perhaps their own playlist. Still, it’s a welcome inclusion, particularly for players who have spent countless hours playing prior Battlefield titles. What this title does lack is a campaign mode, but considering the volume of multiplayer content, I don’t think it’s a huge loss.