Saying that “Battlefield 2042” was received poorly at launch is an understatement. The game came out as a bug-filled mess with countless glitches and errors. The game still sits in an unplayable state reflected by the player base from 100,590 at launch to around 13,156 today. “Battlefield 2042” was an exceptional concept, but had a messy execution.

The futuristic setting was only done once in “Battlefield” history. There have been ingenious games with futuristic settings like “Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.” It really excited me as some who loved seeing modern equipment with future speculation being put into action. “Battlefield 2042” is a 128 multiplayer shooter set in the year 2042. The game features several expansive maps with unique destructibles like buildings in each.

With a mind-boggling trailer, “2042” was hyped up to be the biggest release of 2021. With the Call of Duty franchise in shambles after “COD: Vanguard,” the Battlefield franchise was supposed to save the big Triple-A Studio releases. Triple-A Studios are publishers with a very high budget and more team members than the average indie studio. However, instead of saving them, “Battlefield 2042” only magnified the issues with Triple-A Studios. The game was rushed to meet the release date after one delay.

I played “Battlefield 2042” in the beta version as well as the officially released version. The beta was more or less a fresh experience; the graphics were pleasing and I had fun playing the short beta. Since I skipped “Battlefield V,” a new Battlefield game was exactly what I wanted to play. My first experience was adequate. I enjoyed the inclusion of natural events like the tornado. The storm is a visual spectacle that jams your mini-map and propels you into the air, and although the natural disasters were useless, they still looked quite nice. The only map that was out was Orbital.

The seven launch maps were really cool in their strong presentations, it was really fun for me to play all of them for the first time. They were varying sizes and my favorite map would have to be Manifest. There are only a few destructibles, but the map is still fantastic. In my gameplay, the motion was quite smooth. I’m playing on an Nvidia 2070 Super and AMD Ryzen 2700x system. I used mainly assault rifles, marksman rifles and snipers. The weapons serve their purpose marvelously. I don’t have much issue with spread or bloom. Spread or bloom is when a gun fires inaccurately to the exact point of your crosshair, basically there’s a hint of randomness in many shots. My time playing “2042” was very fun, especially with my friends. I loved my time playing the game; however, there are some major concepts and glitches that need to be fixed from a critical point.

Previous “Battlefields” also had bloom, especially “Battlefield 4”. I don’t mind bloom since I play casually. The maps are completely original with six returning maps from various previous games. “2042’s” weapon selection is limited compared to previous games with 22 weapons compared to “Battlefield 4’s” 84. I found fewer destructibles in “2042” compared to “Battlefield 1” which shows the difference in dedication and effort.

In the beta, the sniper and ARs would feel nice to use if the shoddy hitboxes and bloom weren’t absolutely horrendous. The in-game customization was hyped up so much, only to turn into a mediocre novelty. The constant errors and freezing kept my friends from being in the same party as me. There was no match reconnect option. Also, there are glitches that cause you to get stuck when downed with no way to be saved, bleed out or do anything except close the game. The helicopters were very poorly designed and dominated early “2042” lobbies. “2042” also made the class system into the specialist system. Similar to “Call of Duty”, specialists will give EA (Electronic Arts) more ways to introduce microtransactions.

The vehicles are definitely broken; countless glitches can be performed on it, like the zipline teleport which serves no purpose, but is very hilarious to execute. The controls on the keyboard and mouse also just feel off. Jet piloting controls were weird to me at first. The vehicle just wasn’t driving where I wanted it to go. Many of my friends also had the same problem. Some other negative features about vehicles that deserve mention are no vehicle damage points and no vehicle kill assist points. A few maps are too big for their own good. Then there are the elevators that have a new bug every time you get in one.

The ranking system is very lackluster with just numbers. There are no fun or creative names for ranks, not even the standard bronze, silver, and gold. There are no uniform changes between Russians and Americans which is criminal. There’s a literal war going on and the developers couldn’t bother to make the enemies look different. The unnoticeable headshot multiplier is quite concerning; players should be rewarded for hitting a more difficult target. Spawn map zoom-in is non-existent. And lastly, what a terrible user interface. Everything just looks unimaginative. The leaderboard is just a chart now with data and nothing to spice it up.

The game is dying off, with a 60.87% decline of players in December, a month after its release. Within the last 30 days, the game lost 19.01% of its players, according to information found on Steam Charts.

In the actual release, things did not get better. Most of the problems in the beta are still issues in the released game. It feels like EA just doesn’t care as their creation now sits at the 16th worst rated game on Steam, an improvement for the 6th worst spot at launch. I truly wonder who gave the green light to release such a mess. For it to cost $59.99 is an insult. 2/5.