Battlefield 2042 (Xbox One / Series X|S)

As touched on above, the world’s climate has slipped into extremes, causing a large number of people to flee their now untenable homes. These climate refugees are calls No-Pats meaning they are stateless and have ‘no country’. The climate crisis has dramatically worsened, causing the collapse of the EU and heightening tensions between the USA and Russia to the point of war.

Events on Earth come to a head when a Kessler Syndrome* event occurs in 2040, knocking out seventy percent of international communications satellites. Already tense, the USA and Russia are poised on the brink of war.

A Kessler Syndrome event will occur, according to science, when a chain reaction of collisions within the thick space junk belt whizzing around the planet (debris from space missions, lost or jettisoned for whatever reason) affect those things in orbit that we rely on for day to day work and play: the carefully positioned satellites that operate phone systems, internet connections as well as television and radio comms.

War finally breaks out in 2042, just in time for you to come along to save the day. Or play your part in the day-saving, anyway.

What’s New and What Stayed the Same?

The Plus system is new, and improved: players can now upgrade their weapons on the fly, and while the class system is broadly the same but with a massive and much-needed overhaul. Classes are now called ‘specialisms’ and you can explore any skill tree, instead of being limited to your class as before. The names remain the same, Assault, Engineer, Medic, Recon etc, so if you have a favourite, you can quickly find what you’re looking for.

Extreme weather effects have made the jump from the previous game in the series, and given that there’s a climate emergency, you will not be surprised to learn that tornadoes can suck you up and give you a hard time before spitting you out again – hopefully! – while sand storms reduce your visibility quite massively. And that can be a problem in the middle of a battlefield…

Instead of single player mode, but there are three main gameplay modes: All-out Warfare – which comprises of: Breakthrough (in which you try to take out the other team’s control points) and Conquest (in which two teams battle for a single control point). Hazard Zone is the multiplayer co-op zone and the place to be! There is support for up to 128 players in two teams of 64.

Finally, in the ‘what’s new’ column, there are autonomous vehicles that players can commandeer as and when they need them. If there are no handy cars around, players can even request a vehicle to be airdropped to them – why not think out of the box and get a tank dropped onto an enemy sniper, and make life a tiny bit easier for yourself?