There's no other shooter like Battlefield, really. Indeed, when it comes to providing chaos on such a thrillingly grand scale, there's no other series quite like Battlefield. More GTA than Call of Duty, the beauty of DICE's big map squad-based FPS has always been how its players interact with the many toys in its sandbox, tossing them at each other like tooled-up toddlers. The results are often as hilarious as they are spectacular.
Playing Battlefield 2042 this past week, those magic moments can still be found if you know where to look for them. I've squeezed alongside my squad into an elevator and ascended some 60 stories to a skyscraper's roof, quietly waiting for the doors to open before going loud and wiping out two other teams, capturing the point then parachuting down to capture another for good measure. I've sprinted through sandstorms, vehicles thrashing past as debris tears through the air, only to come through the other side and see a helicopter in flames spiralling noisily towards my face. I giggled and gawped as the huge map around me spins up into a catherine wheel of carnage.
Battlefield 2042 is, in some ways, a celebration of all that. A major component of its three part offering is Portal, a mode that zooms back and gives players the sandboxes themselves to play with. Here there are classic maps culled from Battlefield 1942, Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, with rules and movesets lifted from each title. Mix and match as you fancy, pitting a mass of WW2 soldiers against a smaller squad kitted out with modern day equipment, or maybe just stick to the old faithfuls: a round of Rush at Arica Harbor with Bad Company 2's tools and rules, or Conquest at Noshahr Canals using Battlefield 3's toybox.
