Battlefield 2042 Beta Disappointed Me

Battlefield 2042 Early Access Beta is out, and boy, does it have some major issues!

So, I got to play the Battlefield 2042 Beta early thanks to the magic of Xbox Game Pass. And dang, do I have some disappointing things to tell you. But while reading this post, please do keep in mind one thing. Battlefield 3 had the worst beta I have ever gotten to experience, and that game went on to become one of the best games in the franchise. Some changes will happen before, and after, the game comes out.

The specialists of Battlefield 2042

One of the first things you have to do when you load into a game is to pick a specialist. There are four of them in the beta. The assault has exclusive access to a grappling hook gadget. He also has increased movement speed while aiming down sights and performs certain actions faster. He is the “bread and butter” of Battlefield 2042. But combined with issues such as EXTREMELY slow movement while aiming down sights. And the fact that his grappling hook ability has little to no cooldown and offers insane mobility. He feels like the only right choice when staring at the specialist select screen.

And now let’s take a peek at the other end of the spectrum. The support doesn’t do anything. No, I’m serious. The support has a needle pistol that heals shot teammates. In a game, where everyone automatically recovers their HP if they hide behind cover for 2 seconds. In a Battlefield with easily the fastest movement speed on foot. Hitting someone in the frenzy of battle is nearly impossible. And her passive is to revive people with full HP, instead of half. Which doesn’t matter because of the aforementioned fast recovery.

Recon and Engineer are decent. Recon gets warnings when enemies are nearby for his passive. And his ability calls in a drone capable of pinging threats and shocking them to disable some of their equipment. Or you can put C5 on it, and blow it up next to a tank, which is fun! The engineer can put down a turret, and as soon as it spots someone you get “wallhacks” against them. This can be absurdly overpowered when holding down certain spots on the map. It’s nearly useless anywhere without close-quarters fights, which is the majority of the map.

The veichles of Battlefield 2042 Beta

Noticed how I put “beta” in this subheading? The reason is simple. I hope to god some of the vehicles are completely revamped before launch. The jets are nearly uncontrollable. How are you supposed to hit someone with their main guns is a mystery to anyone who played the beta. Now, there is an important distinction to be made. I think the American team has a better jet. I’m not sure. I only put in the USA team once in 4 hours of play, and the match lasted 5 minutes. But I hopped into a jet and noticed the “hover” function, which functionally transforms it into a chopper. But I got like 1 minute of playtime with it, so I can’t say if this helps a lot.

The attack helicopter is about same-ish. Impossible to control, or aim most of the time. But you can invite someone to be the gunner, so you can actually pressure an objective. But the gunner will quickly find out that someone pulled a practical joke on him. As the helicopter turrets are loaded with rubber bullets. It takes a stupid amount of helicopter fire to take down one infantryman.

Quads, tanks are other land vehicles are fine for the most part. The only bad thing has to do with the destruction. Remember how you could drive a tank through a house in Battlefield 1? None of that in 2042 so far. Very little of the environment is destructible. So you have to be mindful of what you are driving into even in heavy armor.

Rapidfire of other issues

I’m 700 words deep into this article. Time to spit some rapid-fire thoughts about the beta to cap it off. The guns feel off. This might have to do with hits not registering. This is common for Battlefield betas at this point, and the Battlefield 2042 Beta is no exception, but no need to panic. The time to kill is also weird. It takes a good chunk of time to actually kill someone. I don’t know if this is another server issue, or if it’s the issue of poor weapon damage.

The overall dynamics don’t feel like a Battlefield game. By that I mean spawns, for example. People spawn on top of each other all the time. The game felt like a Call of Duty deathmatch in places. I spawned right in front of the enemy, got killed, came back 6 seconds later, killed that guy, and 10 seconds later he killed me. I do not know what is going on, but respawns are too fast, and they don’t spread people out enough.

The hud is just the worst. But I’m 90% sure it’s a placeholder. For some reason, you can’t equip a repair tool and a rocket launcher anymore. You know, as you did as an engineer in every Battlefield game ever? Now there are 4 slots. The main weapon, and a sidearm. Then you have the grenade category, which is vacant pretty much. It contains 2 types of grenades. Then you have the gadget category which contains EVERYTHING. Rocket launchers, repair tool, ammo crate, health crate. I have no idea why so many things got pushed into the last category. Why no rocket launchers in the secondary category? And you can’t set your loadout pre-match. You need to customize guns in-game, which can get you killed sometimes. Oh yeah, and you can swap magazine type, which gives you a full mag, WAY faster than any reload.

DICE will probably iron out these issues pre-launch. But I’m not pre-ordering. I will keep a close eye on the state of the game post-launch, and get the game when it is in better shape. Can’t wait to try out the other modes. Battlefield 2042 launches November 19, 2021. You can get the game here.