After a pair of entries that saw the Battlefield series revisit World Wars past, Battlefield 2042 is a trip back to the future for EA’s premier first-person shooter franchise. Low-tech battles in European locales are out, replaced with massive, highly vertical conflicts in the megacities of the near future. With huge maps, a completely overhauled class system and an intriguing new ‘portal’ mode, Battlefield 2042 is an undeniably ambitious entry. Is this the next generation in Battlefield action? Perhaps not – it’s a cross-gen game at its heart but the scale of combat expands with the move to the new consoles with a doubling of player count – 128 combatants vs last-gen’s 64, resulting in absolute mayhem in some scenarios – but can PS5, Series S and Series X handle it? The results are much improved over beta and early access code, but there’s still work to do.
Of course, we’ve seen gigantic player counts before with the battle royale genre routinely breaking past 100 concurrent users, but Battlefield 2042 is different. The sheer density of players here can result in some stunning, extraordinary scenes, particularly in the Breakthrough game mode, where all players fight over a small number of objectives. The carnage is intense and it’s safe to say that you won’t get scenes like this in Call of Duty’s Warzone, for instance – it’s completely different as players are too spread out. As the all-out mayhem plays out in front of you, some scenes need to be seen to be believed.
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