Battlefield 2042

It badly needs a firing range/training section. Can't figure out what half of anything does or how it controls, particularly the very rare occasions you'll get an aircraft.

Compared to 4 some of the content feels very barren. BF4 was like an encyclopedia of weapons, here you have a grand total of four assault rifles.

The specialists thing, idiotic little quips from them and Angel's smug, smug face. More than slightly embarassing.

That said I HAVE had some fun with it.

So, had a few games of this. One 2042 match and a few portal ones.

I can only repeat what many are saying, it looks horrible (playing the xbox one version, mind you)...
The BC2 maps looks somehow worse than the 360. Although some things obviously look better the LOD drops so quickly it's embarrassing. Humvees look like they're made of about 4 polygons each at middle distance...
Most importantly game wise is the level and placement of foliage. There's just not enough, it looks as if Bolsonaro has come through and cut away most of the trees.

Valparaiso 4th set for instance is the defenders seeing the attackers coming from miles off. Luckily the shooting is so shit you can't drop someone even if you do see them coming...

I haven't really played many recent BF games for long so maybe the gameplay changes are nothing new though I don't like the waiting for a revive thing. Let me change my loadout whilst I'm waiting, otherwise I'm always going to pick "Die now" as an option. It doesn't even have the BF1 thing of telling you how far away a medic is (in portal anyway)?

The 2042 map was the port one and it looked stupidly simple, empty and non-destructible...

Valparaiso as I said is lacking vegetation (though I did see they've included seagulls randomly hovering about for some reason).
They've changed the limit of swivel on the mounted guns, so the choppers are now more difficult to take down with them, which as many who have played against good opponents know is going to mean a massacre...

And they messed with the flow of Arica...

It was too much to expect just a remaster of course, but they've changed the flow of the game. On the first set as defenders there are now concrete blocks all along the left side, blocking fast moving transport vehicles and I assume tanks as well if they don't blow them up first.
And they expanded the borders of the mountains on the left as well, removing the choke point so to speak and letting enemy snipers set up there, and they do, in droves...
Whereas on the right hand side there used to be rocks stopping attackers from walking over but that's gone too. So they can just run over hugging that side and it would be difficult to see them at all and then suddenly they'd be behind the barracks section...
On the 4th set they've removed the last ladder in the water for some reason and I'm not sure if they've actually put up signs or anything but the big blue crane thing is now home to a family of snipers...

And of course a stupid amount of bugs. I've seen corpses break dance over the floor, a humvee deciding it wanted to visit the ISS, dead people standing next to the vehicle they were just killed in, clipping issues, hit detection mistakes and more...

I'll give it another go when if comes to game pass proper. Hopefully they'll have patched it to be at least bug free...

You can have some great moments in 2042, that's ignoring how unfinished the experience is. I'd even say if you were in a squad or two working together, I can imagine it's brilliant. But as a solo player, who doesn't have time for clans and the rest of it, it can be a frustrating miserable experience.

Streamers working in teams will love it, but people with day jobs with the occasional hour or two to spare on their own will just pick something else, shame because I adore the series.

What's suprised me is after experiencing this particular unfinished sandbox, is how much I'm looking forward to playing the new Halo. Rather than 128 headless chicken in overly large maps, just playing something focused, that's actually been playtested and balanced.

They over nerfed the AR, if you move even a tiny bit while shooting it then you bullet spray like a drunkard. The SMG though has a much better focus, moving and stationary, so people are using that at all ranges instead, which doesn't really make sense for an SMG.

I thought the last gen versions were completely different?

Sounds good.

Ah okay. I assumed they were the same. 32v32 must be really empty if people are finding it empty with double the players.

The last gen version look horrific, and the bugs are far worse than in the current gen versions from what I've played so far. I quite enjoyed it despite all of the issues people mentioned when I played on the XSX, but the Xbox One version is so bad I'd be asking for a refund if Id bought it. You can't make it through a game without a laughably bad glitch and the graphics and look like a 360 game. BF 1 and 5 looked great on 64 player maps so it can't just be the hardware, it's just so clearly bodged to be ready for Xmas.

Still, I have 5 hours left of the trial so will continue to play it a bit longer, but I'll probably be waiting for it to turn up on game pass now rather than buying it.

Regarding map size: I'm on a base Xbox One and some points have been put out of bounds to compensate for the hardware difference. For example the beta map Orbital, the southern(?) most point is out of bounds, so you have the starting points with the actual play space being the strip between the skyscraper and the launchpad. I assume its similar for the other maps.

Graphically I don't think the game is too bad but it's the inability to influence games and getting bogged down at one point which has stood out the most. In that sense I've never thought a map has felt empty but I've never had the chance to fully explore either. 

Two things I'd hoped they'd change from the beta but are still there is the non functioning squad menu making it nigh impossible to create a squad to play solo or ditch campers stuck up a crane somewhere. Also the weapons fire mode is hidden unless you ADS so you have to momentarily pause to swap it - a stupid design in itself - but there is no icon telling you what mode your on and I keep getting caught out because I forget to change it back. Its just so poor.

If I were to sum up my experience it would be that I've been looking for fun rather than actually having any.

No I've never known them to make you pay for a server browser.
Also, where's the scoreboard at? What on earth is going on with this launch?

All true!

I trust DICE, always have. They'll make this a good game, of that I have no doubt.  Just a bit annoyed they (were forced to?) launched like this as it was clear from the BETA a few weeks back that it wasn't ready. 

Interesting that you cite War Zone. I wrote that and deleted it in my previous post. It does feel like that doesn't it.

I know that problem mate and I don’t even have CoD. Halo is so much smoother and just ‘joined up’ than BF it’s actually kind of embarrassing. It is I would guess less of technical challenge than BF but they have hit their goals whereas BF is just sorting of hanging together at the moment. The chaos of BF and the ability to contribute in a variety of ways other than pure kills draws me in though.

Is there no option to search for EU servers when playing vanilla 2042 conquest/breakthrough? I've tried 5 matches so far tonight and every one of them has been 180+ ping, reaching 350-odd at the worst of times.

I tried turning off cross play on the XSX and it was fine for 2042, but it was impossible to find a game in portal. I really hope they make it console only cross platform, or based on input device. The auto aim isn't strong enough on console to make up for the lack of precision Vs a mouse, and it's particularly bad coming up against a sniper.

I also tried the breakthrough 128 player mode for the first time. How is that meant to be fun? I love the idea of attack/defense modes but you can't move without dying immediately. The Xbox One version wasn't great with 64 players but this was ridiculous. The worst part was the complete lack of cover in the maps, i managed to join a 1942 server where the team were trapped in our base and it was impossible to get out without dying instantly. There was literally no bushes/walls/trees anywhere so snipers hundreds of metres away could shoot without being seen.

A similar thing tends to happen on the BC2 maps due to them changing the defensive spawn points. If your squad die, or you can't spawn on your squad because they're in combat (which is bullshit in BC2 Rush), then you get spawned on the road leading up to the stage, rather than somewhere near the back like it used to be. This makes sense from a "realism" point of view regarding reinforcements, but it just leads to a spawn camping as the defenders end up bottlenecked in their spawn point. Who thought that was a good idea? Why did they bother changing it? You can see the issue after literally 1 or 2 games, it's not like an unknown bug or complicated balance problem.

I really want to love the game, especially the portal stuff, but it's in such a horrific state (bugs and balance issues), and there's some poor game design that makes me lose faith in what they're trying to achieve (e.g. how tricky the weapons are to use and actually kill someone, especially at a distance).