Portal’s logic editor doesn’t feature any premade blocks for creating an objective, meaning you’ll need to make capture points yourself by manipulating vectors.
OK, what about recreating Battlefield’s Capture the Flag mode? Unfortunately, that’s not easy either. For a franchise that prides itself on combined arms combat, this omission is just odd.Īir Superiority was a bust. Even with that option toggled, the logic editor offers no support for vehicles, absolutely none. Vehicles don’t have inherent support for TDM or FFA unless you force them to spawn on the map through a setting decoupled from the editor itself. But I quickly realized that not even the logic editor could salvage my dreams of playing Air Superiority with more than four players. It’s easily the most powerful aspect of Portal, allowing you to program a custom game type from scratch. Team Deathmatch and Free-for-All are the only two modes that support Portal’s logic editor, akin to Unreal Engine 4’s Blueprint system or Google’s Blockly. Creating a 64v64 server where only four players could use jets didn’t sit right with me, so I set my sights on alternative modes. Conquest only has a couple of jets for each team, and Portal doesn’t feature any tools to modify vehicle caps-likely for performance reasons. Conquest was the obvious choice, but I quickly realized that Conquest does not support Portal’s logic editor, neither does Rush. Booting up the Portal editor allowed me to select one of five game types to use as a base. My first project was an attempt to recreate Air Superiority-effectively Conquest with jets only. I spent the next few days toying with Portal’s creation tools. DICE thankfully stopped this by disabling XP rewards from custom Portal servers, although that initial shock stuck with me. Most of the community was going to use Portal as a playground to exploit 2042’s progression systems. People were using the powerful editing tools of Portal to make XP farms, not new experiences. XP farming servers, nothing but XP farming servers. I thought, “Wow, Portal is fantastic, but I’ve played Bad Company 2 before. It plays just as well now as it did over a decade ago. Arming MCOMs on Arica Harbor brought me right back to 2010. I played on a server that faithfully recreated Bad Company 2’s Rush mode. Conversely, Portal was exactly what I wanted. We compared it to Escape From Tarkov, only worse.
All-Out Warfare runs terribly as of writing, Breakthrough’s fun factor relies heavily on the map you’re on, and Hazard Zone just isn’t Battlefield to me. DICE’s changes to the core formula left me confused more often than excited. My initial impressions of 2042 were mixed. Related: Battlefield 2042 Review - Buy It Next Year Alienated fans have found solace with Portal, declaring it as “the mode that will save Battlefield.” As someone who’s spent many hours with Portal thus far, I disagree. What’s strange is that 2042 also captures this very DNA with Battlefield Portal, a wealth of remastered content from past Battlefield titles that can be modified to your heart’s content. In an effort to stand out from its contemporaries, DICE has shifted the core sandbox to revolve around Specialists and chaotic encounters, inadvertently contorting the squad-based DNA that made Battlefield the franchise it is today. Battlefield 2042 is in the midst of an identity crisis.