Battlefield 2042

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About

Battlefield 2042 is a first-person shooter video game published by EA. The game received critically mixed reviews and was panned by players due to its poor performance at the game's launch in mid-November 2021, becoming one of the lowest-rated games of all time on some platforms.

History

Battlefield 2042 was developed by DICE studio^[1] and notably lacks a single-player campaign, a traditional feature of previous entries in the series. The game was announced on July 9th, 2021 (trailer shown below).

The game launched on November 19th, 2021, on Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X, as well as PlayStation 4 and 5. One of the game's defining new features is Battlefield Portal, a sandbox mode that allows players to create custom games in which they can mix eras together, such as World War II and the near future, and alter rule sets. There is also a battle royale mode called "Hazard Zone" in which teams cooperate to achieve a goal and earn points for new weapons and cosmetics.

Reception

Critical reception to the game was mostly mixed, with the PC, PlayStation and Xbox releases of the game receiving a 73, 68, and 66 on Metacritic, respectively.^[2] Critics tended to bemoan technical aspects of the game as well as issues with the upgrade system. Writing in PC Games,^[3] writer Christian Vaz wrote, "It’s rare to make it through a match without feeling like something has rattled loose from deep inside the game engine, and no amount of Portal-induced nostalgia can mask the feeling that this game feels rushed out the door." Desctructoid^[4] wrote, "It’s a combination of technical struggles, basic missing features like voice chat and a useful scoreboard, and an overall vision for the game that feels incomplete."

Online Presence

Online, players were much less charitable than critics towards the game, and it was widely panned. Shortly after launch, the game received over 33,000 negative reviews on Steam, making it one of the worst-reviewed games on the platform of all time.^[5] Threads in Reddit^[7] and Resetera^[6] compiled a massive list of missing or broken features in the game compared to previous games, such as limited traversal options, no standard server browser, the removal of the class-based system, no in-game profile or stats page and no spectator mode. Elsewhere from users, the game averaged a 2.3/10 on Metacritic^[8] and a 1.7/5 on Google as of November 22nd, 2021.

Videogamedunkey posted a video highlighting some egregious glitches in the game, tilting the video "Battlefield 2077" after Cyberpunk 2077, which also had an infamously bad launch period. The video gained over 1.8 million views in less than 24 hours (shown below).