Battlefield 2042

Battlefield 2042's highpoint is its powerful Portal mode, which lets you relive the series' past glories and tweak them to your liking. Its current batch of modes is overstuffed with players and utter chaos, though Hazard Zone scales things down in an interesting, high-stakes way.

Although some specialists can feel a bit useless at times, tweaks to the formula with Battlefield 2042 add a lot of interesting gameplay variety.

There are some neat new toys while Portal delivers the series at its best, but 2042 launches as the weakest Battlefield in some time.

Battlefield 2042 makes gutsy changes to a series that needed them and sets a new standard for built-in custom mode support.

There’s still nothing quite like being in the middle of a massive firefight with dozens of players, while jets strafe the ground around you, and a tank rumbles over a hilltop only 50 feet away. DICE has been in search of that old Battlefield magic for more than a decade, and Battlefield 2042 comes extremely close. But 2042, at least so far, rarely manages to be much more than that. It doesn’t feel like a real step forward for the franchise, or a meaningful update on a 20-year old formula. As of now, I’m still waiting for that next big leap.

Battlefield 2042 is a strong foundation for future expansion. DICE's multiplayer-only FPS has scale and spectacle, but there are elements in need of careful refinement and optimization.

Each weapon has a unique feel that is fun to master and contested objectives always keep you busy

In a series known for its scale and spectacle, climate change and technical issues are the new enemies

Right now, “Battlefield 2042” is better than it has ever been, though that remains faint praise. And given all that’s come before, the best decision for its future, and that of the Battlefield franchise, may be, in some measure, to simply let it go.

Portal and Hazard Zone save 2042 from being a real low point in the series, which has swapped iconic, high octane moments for needless scale, without filling in any of that space.