I was expecting a massive let down since 2042 is basically a meme, and all of the reviews were crying; but honestly one of the most fluent feeling shooter games there is. COD wishes their system could feel this fluent. The environment feels like they shoved it through AI, but other than that looking at and experiencing the game is generally smooth - FPS/Gunplay/Sniping/Running/Parachuting/Flying. Etc.

Every gun fight I got into, we must have gone temporarily blind because it's not like people were target locking onto me with aim assist or cheats/scripts, and most of the time I ended up in sniping battles for like 2 minutes at a time or actually standing a chance against multiple people with close quarters weapons, which felt like a breath of fresh air to get a feel for the guns and stuff.

My main pet peeve is people don't revive you or they instantly KO themselves so you can't revive them. So it's more like a TDM even though there's objectives. I like actually running around and doing OBJ/teamwork stuff but it seems impossible in gaming today. Unless you're playing Rainbow 6, CSGO or something super tactical, then OBJ/teamwork is dead, so it's hard to blame Battlefield for this.

I can see how it would get boring quick if you play too much, so this is beautiful for getting on for a few games to enjoy a FPS game. I cannot see how this could be considered anywhere close to a "main game" for someone.

The short of it is it's worth $5, but any more than that is a gamble.

The game's more stable than at launch, but it still has serious bugs. Outright crashes, loading problems, players failing to load into servers, and it took an hour or two for a couple of friends and I to get everyone up and running because of how broken the game is. You might get lucky and have a smooth time yourself, but the more people you're planning on playing this with, the more likely you're gonna have to waste time troubleshooting for someone.

As for the gameplay, it's not as bad as you might think. The hero-shooter aspects at this point in time are somewhat mitigated. A good example is the three engineer-class characters: one is your sentry turret character, like the engie in TF2, one is your stationary manned-turret character, and one is your explicitly anti-tank character. You'll find the same functional dichotomy in the scout and support classes, where they mostly serve to better enable playstyles that were previous staples of their classes, such as support being split into the medic character, the ammo character, and the deployable cover character. The assault class is the only role that creates more novel play dynamics, but considering assaults general lack of utility otherwise, I supposed it's not *too* egregious to give them their broken mobility abilities.

The biggest issue I've had is simply that, even when you're winning, the game doesn't feel fun. I've played a bunch of matches where I had 3:2 KD ratio *and* my team won, and still felt the entire time like I was losing. I don't know if it's the sightlines, the effective ranges, the ping system or what have you, but most matches constantly feel like a losing battle, where no matter how you approach an objective someone is gonna shoot you in the back from halfway across the map, and you have no real way to prevent that or avoid it.

Almost every map is designed to give snipers line of sight to the whole map at once, with large, flat expanses you have to traverse on foot that hold next to no cover. Moving from one capture point to another is always a meat-grinder experience, and while other Battlefield games had maps like that, it feels like they're the rule in 2042, not the exception.

The community probably doesn't help. Compared to my experience playing Battlefield V, 2042 has an *extreme* issue with people not cooperating as a squad or engaging in teamplay. No one pings enemies, no one revives teammates, not even medics, and the moment someone dies they instantly force respawn, even if you're standing right beside them and killed their attacker before their body even hit the ground.

Tanks also seem to live forever because the lack of teamplay and the fact that Engineer characters kinda suck compared to your wingsuit and grappling hook Assaults and your on-demand healing Supports, so you're gonna be left out in the open a lot, getting shot at by a tank with no way to really stop it except to respawn and run all the way back *on foot.* Because squads don't even stay grouped up here. Half the time I look at the map and every member of my squad is at a different capture point.

To be clear, player behavior was a problem in Battlefield V as well. Tanks living too long was a problem. But in general, class selection rates seemed to be better balanced in my time playing, and squads of lone wolves were rarer too. I feel like in making certain roles vastly more compelling to play than others, and for some reason designing every map to give snipers line of sight across the *entire* map with next to no cover, they've changed a formula that at least still *worked* in V into something that no longer functions properly in practice.

A game like this only works if the thing players naturally want to do is the thing they're supposed to do, and this game seems to have hit that critical threshold where most players don't even bother. Getting players to not ruin objective game modes is inherently an uphill battle, but 2042 feels like it's finally lost that battle and for that reason, I can't recommend it.

I've been playing Battlefield 2042 these last few days since I picked it up on sale during the Steam Winter Sale. I've got to say, it is one of the blandest FPS games I've ever played or watched. Released four years ago, it feels like a shallow version of BF4. The maps are fairly mediocre; they lack the depth and design of BF4. The combat, while functional, lacks the thrill and some of the tactical variety that made BF4 memorable. Moreover, the grind to level up weapons is kind of tedious—a process that feels unrewarding and unnecessarily drawn out. Four years after its release, I'm freaking puzzled by how lifeless this game feels. If you're considering diving into Battlefield 2042, you might want to look at other titles in the series like Battlefield 4 or a different game entirely unless they add new content. I just don't think it's worth it.