November is still the month of the year with the highest accumulation of great releases in the world of video games. A few days ago it was the turn of Battlefield 2042 (PS5 / PS4, Xbox Series / One and PC), EA’s commitment to first-person shooter games, this time with setting in the near future as its name indicates. The franchise continues to bet on battles on a gigantic scale, a double-edged sword depending on the tastes of the players. This new installment dispenses with the campaign mode and is based on three online pillars: multiplayer battles, the Portal custom mode and the Battle Royale Hazard Zone.

The narrative context puts us in the skin of stateless soldiers, specialists, which have lost their origins after the collapse of many countries due to scarce resources and violent climate change, with the US and Russia on the brink of open war. These specialists have their own equipment such as the construction of parapets, a radar or a hook to reach distant places, but they are not conditioned on the use of weapons as were the holy classes of soldiers; with them we can use any weapon at our disposal, giving them greater freedom. And if we talk about weapons, we find futuristic variants of contemporary rifles such as the AK or the M16, both in assault categories, such as submachine guns, shotguns or sniper rifles. A good addition has been included, such as the possibility of edit its components (guns, sights) in real time to change their configuration according to the needs of the specific confrontation.

The modes of multiplayer battle as Conquest they now present up to 128 players (PS5, XBOX Series and PC) in massive conflicts also in size, with maps divided into several sectors. This size makes us feel very small with respect to the general context, a realistic point but that can sometimes lead to our achievements and casualties not having much reflection in the drift of the battle, and that also involve large displacements in vehicles or moments without clashes with rivals. Maps take us to desert environments or to newly evacuated cities, the design of which helps tell the decaying backstory. And yes, we once again have a generous destruction of environments (probably the best point of this saga) with the Levolution system and the Frostbite graphics engine, so that we will see gigantic towers and antennas fall on the battlefield. We will also suffer dynamic events such as sandstorms or tornadoes that will drag us to other places on the map even if we go by vehicle.

The Portal mode it is a great bet for the creativity and collaboration of the community. We can generate games with personalized rules with a good editor in which to define the environment, the weapons to be used and other conditions. And to this is added the remastering of six classic maps from previous Battlefield installments, so that in them we can put soldiers of all times on the battlefield. There can be very curious events, such as small squads of contemporary or futuristic soldiers fighting against entire armies of World War II troops, for example. Here imagination and the search for balance will be key in the long term, but we may be facing an almost infinite mode full of possibilities.

And the third leg of this Battlefield 2042 is the battle royale Hazard Zone. Up to 32 players (PS5, Xbox Series and PC) fight divided into squads of four soldiers each with a different specialist. Your objective is to recover a series of data hard drives scattered around the map aboard satellites fallen from the sky and crashed in various places where the fighting is concentrated because they are also escorted by AI soldiers. We have a first extraction to leave the game with the loot that we have accumulated until the middle of the game, but if we endure we will be able to have access to the most valuable rewards and to victory as the last team to leave the danger zone. In this way we can accumulate credits to buy weapons and advantages for the next games. Unlike the rest of the game (and the rest of battle royale on the market, many free and with a greater number of players per game) the scale is somewhat smaller and the shootings are more concentrated here.

More news

This week we have also been able to test Grand Theft Auto The Trilogy- The Definitive Edition, the remastered (not remake) compendium of GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas (one of the best games of all time) for PS5 / PS4, Switch, Xbox Series / One and PC. It is 20 years since the launch of the third part of the saga, very important because it meant the leap from two to three dimensions and unprecedented freedom of action. All three titles have improved graphics and their playability has been polished with GTA V-style circular selectors. From the beginning, you can see the improvement in resolution in the textures of characters or vehicles, as well as the lighting. The shooting system and mission restart have also been improved, which is now more immediate to avoid having to go to the hospital if we die.

But these remasters are not without errors; in some cases there are problems with the rain (it does not wet all the objects equally and its density prevents part of the vision) or with the modeling of some characters (which has been ‘inflated’ to round their edges), especially in GTA III and San Andreas. The developer studio has already started rolling out patches to fix them, because some modders they had already been advanced in the PC version. In any case, these are three masterpieces that take us to gangster movies in huge cities like New York, Miami or Los Angeles.

These days we have also enjoyed Blue Reflection Second Light (PS4, Switch and PC), the second part of the Japanese role-playing game Blue Reflection. He once again manages an interesting hybrid concept between fighting, exploration and dating for his main girl group. All of them have lost their memory and are in a floating institute; As we advance in the adventure we will recover fragments of memories and get to know them a little more. The game has its component to search for resources to make recipes or rebuild the academy to our liking, but above all we are going to fight against the evil creatures of Heartscape to acquire new powers dressed in battle uniforms. It is a story with many conversations, and at this point it is important to note that the game has voices in Japanese and texts in English, a point to take into account for certain players. On all these details we have talked with César Boquera, product manager of Blue Reflection Second Light of Koch Media for Spain. So far the SER Jugones this week, have a good time.