Battlefield 2042: Hazard Zone Mode – First Look

Battlefield 2042’s Hazard Zone aims to reduce the franchise’s margins. If you’ve grown tired of the all-encompassing chaos of Battlefield, if you no longer want to dodge helicopter attacks, artillery bursts, and tank shells like cartilage in a meat grinder, here’s a new game mode that puts you in a tight little squad of four. Together, they will venture into terrain no battlefield has traversed before; a world devoid of infinite respawns, checkpoints, or the peace of mind that an entire army always has your back.

I didn’t get a chance to play Hazard Zone, but from a short speech by Senior Design Director Daniel Berlin, Battlefield 2042’s third mainstay appears to be an interesting hybrid between Counter-Strike tactics, building MOBA-style compositions, and a direct battle royale. Fiction, like everything in 2042, is hilariously apocalyptic. Satellites are falling from the sky, and we’ve moved to various Battlefield maps to secure the valuable “data drives” that rot in the smoking husks. You and three other players will select specialists drawn from the 2042 All-Out Warfare format, and the team will edit their precise loadout of gadgets and weapons before deployment. Hazard Zone is capped at 32 players on new consoles and PCs, and 24 on next-gen machines. Along with rival groups, NPC fighters guard the targets, and will need to be dispatched while securing payloads. To me, that sounds a bit like League of Legends creeps, and I hope they make DICE’s famous maps feel a little more alive.

Battlefield 2042: Specialist Screenshots

That is the center loop here. You broke into a map, secure as many units as you can, and ideally draw with everyone alive. (Yes, Hazard Zone includes permadeath, although there is a way for your squad to buy back from you.) The most interesting tidbit I learned from the presentation is the closed-loop economy of the mode. The units you accumulate are transmuted into “Dark Market Credits”, which are then spent on different weapons and ammunition in future Hazard Zone matches. I mentioned Counter-Strike earlier because it really seems like EA is playing around with a war economy similar to the one Valve originally established, where we spend a few minutes in a lobby deciding if we want to drop a wad of in-game cash into the AWP or what. Remember, those “dark market credits” are exclusive to Hazard Zone; you will not accumulate them for the cosmetics market. It’s always a relief when a studio adds a coin to your game and limits you to exactly one game variant.

Overall, 2042 is shaping up to be one of the boldest battlefields in years. Traditional mayhem is good and fun, but I’m very excited about the deeply robust level editor introduced with Portal, and the thoughtful and cunning approaches possible in Hazard Zone. A century has passed since 1942; It was about time this old dog learned some new tricks.