Battlefield 2042 is not being well received by fans of the long-running FPS franchise. EA Games has released yet another dud, following in the lackluster footsteps of its predecessors Battlefield 5 and Battlefield 1, both of which failed to impress with their lack of a single-player campaign and simplified mechanics.
The latest three games are a far cry from Battlefield’s heyday in Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 4, and Battlefield 2042 doesn’t look to be breaking EA’s losing streak.
Even as other FPS franchises like Call of Duty, Far Cry, and Metro, and even EA’s own Apex Legends continue to innovate the genre. The Battlefield series has fallen by the wayside. Battlefield 2042 is one of the most poorly received games of all time on Steam.
Of the 37,592 reviews posted on Valve’s PC gaming marketplace, only 27 percent are positive. The remaining 73 percent of reviews have nothing but bad things to say about the game.
One of the most highly upvoted reviews is an index of the game’s biggest problems, not accounting for any smaller issues that exist with the game, which many complain feels like it could’ve used at least 12 more months in development. It reads as follows:
– No single-player mode
– No server browser
– No general, team, or player scoreboard, only your own squad is shown.
– No general chat, only team, squad, and party
– No VOIP
– No TDM/FFA
– No leaning/peeking out while in cover
– No score bonuses for headshots, multikills, or hit-based damage XP gain
– No persistent lobbies (back to the main menu after every match)
– No ammo pickups off dead enemies/players’ kits, only obtained through specialists
– No levolution beyond the tornado, the sandstorm on the Hourglass map only hurts visibility
– No melee weapon options, though melee is completely discouraged by the bugs and low damage it yields
– No spawning in other players’ passenger seats when game is about to start
– No changing teams, squads, or creating a new squad entirely. Squad bonuses, field upgrades, and drop-ins have also been removed
– No self promoting to squad leader by requesting an order
– No battle log/player stats page
– Laughable end-of-match player highlights with voice lines that make these battle-hardened soldiers fighting a global-scale proxy war act like middle schoolers
– Though the soundtrack is just as eclectic and electronic as past “modern” Battlefields, its placement is few and far between and is awkwardly sequenced throughout the match
– HUD is an absolute mess of small icons with large lettering, when an objective is capped a message takes up all of your top-screen real-estate for a good 5 seconds
– Geforce 10 series card owners, even the later released ones, good luck in even attempting to come close to a stable frame rate, as this game is far from optimized and server-end latency is common
– Weapon bloom (randomized spreading of shots) only helps bad players and hurts good ones
According to Steam250 Hall of Shame, Battlefield 2042 is only surpassed in negative reviews by Space Base DF9, Football 2022, and Flatout 3.
