As someone who couldn't pick his jaw up from the floor after playing Battlefield 3 for the first time, and then getting more of the same amazing experience with Battlefield 4, I remember being disappointed with Hardline and Battlefield 1 consecutively. My problems with the latter were more about the continuity being broken, but when Battlefield 2042 was announced, I was excited again, since it was going to be a sequel to Battlefield 4.

What happened next was a generational stumble on the part of this fabled FPS franchise. Battlefield 2042 had no single-player campaign, it released in a half-broken state, and it was downright unplayable. So, a month after installing and suffering through Battlefield 2042's launch, I did the only thing that made sense — I deleted it from my PC, uninstalled Origin, and went back to Warzone instead.

Fast-forward to now, where, against every ounce of my better judgement, I found myself grinning like an idiot while playing the Battlefield 6 open beta. It reminded me of what Battlefield could be when it really remembers its identity, and strangely enough, it made me go back to give 2042 another shot. 10 hours later, I can't believe it's the same game from 4 years ago.

Why I quit Battlefield 2042 in the first place

It was never just the bugs

It wasn't just that Battlefield 2042 launched rough (because boy did it launch rough). Plenty of shooters launch that way, especially today, but the difference here was that 2042 felt like a complete identity crisis wrapped up in an unfinished product.

The maps were huge, and that was good. Sadly, they were also empty. The hero-style Specialists mechanic made squad play feel different and underwhelming, and the worst part was that it felt like an attempt to mimic Overwatch, of all games. And the moment-to-moment gameplay was disconnected and unsatisfying for a long, long while.

The swamp of bugs and balancing issues didn't help, either. This was going to be the first multiplayer Battlefield game that two out of four guys in the friend group would play with us, and it was embarrassing to play after all the months of hype we'd spent building up for it. By 2022, when the updates started trickling in, I kept an eye on the state of affairs, but never once felt like going back. There's a reason community numbers plummeted the way they did, and Steam charts turned grim. I did what felt right, which was stepping away.

Battlefield 6's open beta felt like a wake-up call

The insane fun I had left me itching for more

Battlefield 6's marketing team has been doing a lot of things right, and one of those was building up an insane amount of hype for the upcoming game. Once bitten, twice shy should've applied here, and yet, once the open beta dropped, I couldn't help but install it with the squad dropping in alongside me. Here's the thing: the beta floored me.

The maps had flow again, and so far, even though the full-scale maps haven't been revealed yet, the ones we've played in already aren't oversized or undersized. They're just perfect, tightly and meticulously designed for squads to push, flank, and fight over objectives. The destruction physics are genuinely remarkable, and they lend a new degree of chaos to the cinematic gunplay. And speaking of the gunplay, it feels incredible. Weapons have weight, the recoil patterns matter, and the victors of firefights aren't decided by the roll of a die.

When my squad and I were holding an objective against enemies we kept shooting down, but we slowly began losing players, all while smoke and explosives flooded the room. Yeah, that's the moment I grinned and genuinely felt like I was playing Battlefield again. This is what the Battlefield series should have been all along, and it made me wonder — if Battlefield 6 can bring me back, should I be replaying 2042 until October?

Battlefield 2042 isn't the same game I abandoned

DICE stuck to their guns and revamped this game

After reinstalling 2042, I realized that it wasn't the same game I left behind in 2022. Somewhere along the way, through patches and updates, DICE has actually managed to fix a lot of what was broken. The Specialists mechanic has clearly been toned down, and it's almost now folded back into the traditional class system. The maps which were once pointlessly huge and thus lifeless, have been reworked with cover and flow in mind. The bugs, of course, have largely been ironed out, but outside of being just more polished, Battlefield 2042 has clearly grown and evolved with time.

Squads matter again, the chaos feels purposeful, and when the entire lobby isn't just AFK farming for XP to take over into Battlefield 6, the firefights are genuinely tense, and actually did manage to deliver nearly the same amount of fun that BF6's open beta did. Look, 2042 is still not, by any means, perfect. It will never be remembered as one of the greats, but revisiting it did make me realize that Battlefield, as a franchise, isn't dead. What it clearly needed was time, patience, and the heavy course correction that it clearly has had with BF6.

The maps in Battlefield 2042 are genuinely fun to visit

They're no longer soulless, and every square-foot is happening

If there was one thing that made Battlefield 2042 feel soulless at launch (among others), it was the maps. Were they massive like DICE promise? Yes. But were they also just empty stretches of flat terrain where you spent more time running around and being shot at by snipers instead of actually engaging in interesting firefights? Also yes. Kaleidoscope, in particular, was a cruel joke. It was a gleaming skyscraper in the middle of what was pretty much an open parking lot with no meaningful cover to be found. This wasn't "scale" as much as it was wasted space.

Revisiting it this week in September 2025, though, left me shocked at just how much these maps had been reworked. Cover has been added in a lot of meaningful locations, sightlines have been tightened, and choke points actually exist now. Renewal and Hourglass were both disappointing maps once, and now, they encourage combat rather than avoidance, as if they've matured into their own. This is still the same game underneath, yes, but the maps no longer feel like cruel reminders of what went wrong. Now, they feel like they're doing their job, and I can't help but wonder if I should have gone back earlier to spend more time in this revamped 2042.

Battlefield 6 already has a lot of great things going for it

It could very well dethrone Black Ops 7 this year

There's a lesson here that goes beyond my own little redemption arc. Battlefield 2042 showed us what happens when a developer loses sight of its community, identity, and its DNA. From what I've played and experienced in the beta for Battlefield 6, it's easy to surmise that the devs have been listening, learning, and refocusing.

Battlefield 2042 clearly climbed out of the pit it dug for itself, but now, Battlefield 6 has every chance in the world to succeed. The marketing is going well, it has already reached release-day levels of polish and performance benchmarks, and to make things even sweeter, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, its main competitor for the holiday-shooter spot, seems to be shooting itself in the foot with its marketing decisions. I'm now going to spend a whole month downing Red Bull (sugar-free, of course) while playing through Battlefield 2042 before the next one arrives, and from the looks of it, it's going to be a thrill ride from day one itself.

Battlefield 2042 really did clean up its act

Along with most of my friends, I had thought I was done with Battlefield after 2042. I thought that game killed my love for the series by outright rejecting a campaign and hopping on to the online-only bandwagon. Four years later, the Battlefield 6 beta made me feel something again, and reinstalling 2042 felt like visiting an old friend I'd fallen out with, only to realize they'd cleaned up their act and were actually trying again.