After 8 months of waiting Season 1 Zero Hour has kicked off for Battlefield 2042. But is it any good?
Season 1 of Battlefield has finally dropped after what seems forever. Players have had to remain as patient as they can while Dice worked on getting their game up to players standards after one of the worst triple A game launches in modern history.
The game launched with an extremely worrying lack of content for players. It was plagued with bugs, crashes and other performance related issues. The online response was savage, which frankly, was justified.
After months of radio silence we were treated to a rare update from Dice, detailing Battlefield 2042's first season. Not only did the game get a slew of new items and cosmetics but a hefty tome of bug fixes, the list of which goes into the hundreds.
Zero Hour comes in the form of the now seemingly standard layout of 100 tiers, a system seen in Fortnite, Call of Duty and a range of other games. The more you play, the higher the tier of loot you unlock. The cosmetics on offer for weapons, skins and vehicles is fairly decent. There is plenty of content for players to unlock and wear.
What are the main additions?
There have been some, and we use the word some very literally here, new things added into the game to spice up gameplay. These include...
New Weapons - Ghostmaker R10 Crossbow and BSV-M Marksman Rifle
New Vehicles - RAH-68 Huron and the YG-99 Hannibal Gunship
New Map - 'Exposure' Map
Reception and the Future
The season kicked off a couple of days ago now and the general consensus is that its a very welcome batch of content, the new map has been received well and the bug fixes are slowly starting to make the game more playable but players are concerned that, as it stands, it's just simply not enough content. Especially after waiting more than 8 months for it to happen.
There are worrying reports that Dice and EA have already pulled the plug on Battlefield 2042 and its continued development in favour of pushing all devs onto the next project. It is alleged by various insiders that a 'skeleton crew' is now working on these minimal content seasons that are shipped or planned to be shipped.
'Exposure' is set in the Canadian Rockie Mountains and offers Horizontal and Verticle combat for foot soldiers and aircraft alike.
Overall thoughts
As pretty casual Battlefield players ourselves here at GNG, we are pretty happy with the offerings of Zero Hour. A few new weapons to mess around with along side a couple of new helicopters and a pretty visually stunning map. It was enough to get us to jump back on and play a few games. From the point of view of a hardcore Battlefield veteran, we're not convinced it's nearly enough. We absolutely adore the battlefield series over here and it is hard to watch its slow-motion death as more and more players jump ship. We seriously hope that Dice and EA can get things back on track for 2042 and future games in the franchise.