During my short time with Battlefield 2042, I’ve been testing out all the different types of matches that players have been coming up with in Battlefield Portal. This is the doorway through which players can create custom matches with customer rules on maps that they choose. It’s how many players are bringing back classic matches in maps from Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3. However, it’s also home to the craziest of matches, the kind of stuff that you’d be mad to play because there’s just so much going on that it’s really difficult to get your head around what you’re actually looking at.
The custom options you have in Battlefield Portal can turn a match from something that’s fairly well balanced into a complete warzone where the enemy will destroy you in one hit. You can change how many hits it takes to die from in each region of your body, as well as the methods for reloading and all kinds of other things. If you need to jump drive times to make a weapon reload, then that’s going to make for one incredibly interesting match. This is what Battlefield Portal is filled with, and I honestly can’t work out if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
On the one hand, I love the Battlefield Portal because it provides all sorts of crazy new ways to play the game. The core game modes are what they are, and they’ll always be there, but all multiplayer games have a level of fatigue that sets in after a while. Battlefield Portal is a way to get around that fatigue. If you want to do something different, the game modes are likely just waiting around the corner for you to play. All you need to do is find the right match while it’s on, and you’re away.
I don’t know if I’d call Battlefield Portal good. It’s certainly different, but I think it needs more exploration before it can be called good or bad for me. I do like what it does for the game, but relying too heavily on it will be terrible in the long run, because players won’t always be around to make the new content work.
