Battlefield 2042 is FUN

 

We're back on Iwo Jima in Battlefield 2042!

 With the Battlefield 6 open beta behind us and its release imminent, EA/DICE has decided to have one last hurrah in Battlefield 2042 with a special event that brings the famed Iwo Jima map from past Battlefields into the specialist-laden 2042. And boy, is it fun.

 First, the size of Iwo Jima puts everything in Battlefield 6 to shame. If someone told me you could fit all of the BF6 maps into Iwo Jima in 2042, I would believe it. That’s how big the map feels and plays. The map features everything from a naval fleet offshore—where the attackers launch from—all the way up to a volcano riddled with a maze of caves (as was common on Japanese-held islands during WWII). Everything about the map screams “this is Battlefield.”

 Another winning aspect of 2042 compared to 6 is the presence of tons of vehicles. Iwo Jima, for example, features upwards of 17 vehicles fighting it out. Helicopters are constantly overhead, tanks and IFVs are always pushing forward, and boats come rushing through the water during the initial sea deployment. A moment rarely goes by without a vehicle causing havoc, and it creates the glorious Battlefield experience I expect. Compare that to BF6, where the largest beta map featured, at most, four vehicles. Vehicles you rarely saw, either because they were paper-thin or—like jets—spent their time a mile away from the actual map thanks to the tiny ground area compared to the vast overhead airspace.

 You might think that with 2042’s vehicle count, the infantry experience would be miserable, but that’s far from the truth. Infantry gameplay is really solid on Iwo Jima. While it’s a big map, there are numerous compact points of interest with good fortifications that let infantry dodge and weave incoming vehicle fire and fight it out for final control of the points. On top of that, the map’s size allows anti-air players to step back from the frontline and focus on harassing air targets.

 Then there are the specialists, which many Battlefield players felt were a huge misstep for 2042, pushing it closer to a hero shooter than a Battlefield title. While that may have been the case at launch when there was no corresponding class system, that’s no longer true. Specialists now fit neatly into the class system and offer a ton of fun gameplay options thanks to their unique gadgets. Honestly, I’m a little sad they’re missing in BF6. I don’t think they were absolutely necessary, but in terms of fun, specialists add a lot of variety. In their current state in 2042, they complement the Battlefield classes really well.

 Overall, I’m having a blast jumping back into 2042. I’m not even performing well—I’ve placed in the bottom half of the scoreboard each match, my K:D ratio is below 1, and I’ve been on the losing side more often than not. In fact, I was doing much better in the Battlefield 6 beta, where I had close to a 2:1 K:D ratio and regularly topped the scoreboard. Yet I wasn’t having fun in 6, while I’m having an absolute blast in 2042.

 2042 just has so much more to offer thanks to the maps, specialist shenanigans, and the vehicle-vs-infantry balance. All of that to say: if you want a FUN Battlefield experience, jump into 2042 and skip 6’s launch. Maybe BF6 will turn things around, and years from now, we’ll be having the same comeback discussion about it—just like we’re having now about 2042, years after its launch.

Note: this post was edited with the help of AI (ChatGPT). The thoughts are my own.  The grammatical correctness and em dashes (—) are the AI.   

Battlefield 6's Trailer Was A Lie

 Battlefield 6 just wrapped its second beta weekend and the community is divided. Some players swear it’s the next big thing, but I walked away shaking my head. This wasn’t the Battlefield I grew up on. Instead of sprawling, all-out-warfare, we got jammed into tiny, overcrowded maps that felt more like that other shooter. And after rewatching that first reveal trailer, I can say it outright: it was a lie.

 I grabbed some screen grabs from that original trailer (which you can view on YouTube here).  Comments are added in the caption of each image.  Where, oh where, are these epic Battlefields we see in the trailer because they certainly were not in the open beta weekends.

There is in fact no vehicles, let alone helicopters, on this map.  The bridge as well is not part of the map.  This could have been such a cool experience if the bridge and adjoining housing area were all part of the map.  But nope; instead we get a couple blocks of murder tunnel buildings.

 

Remember Gulf of Oman?  Heartlessgamer does.  This clip from the video led me to believe maybe we'd be heading back to that classic map.  Maybe it'll be included upon release?

Multiple vehicles!? Tanks no less!  Sign me up.  Oh wait; sorry the best the Battlefield 6 beta could offer is two vehicles and zero open spaced on the map.

An army running off to fight?  Not in Battlefield 6 beta where most matches felt like a couple squads.  Battlefield 6 also did the rare thing in the series and took a step back on max player count on a map.  Apparently 128 was too many so we have to go back to 64.  I guess that's fine since they also made tiny little maps instead of sprawling battlefields.

This image is the heart breaker because what is shown here would be an amazing start to a Gulf of Oman style map made in a modern Battlefield game.  None of the maps have anything close to this image. How the hell did they put this in the trailer and miss that this, THIS, is what we expect of Battlefield games?

See; they were trying to warn us in the trailer.  The trailer, in fact, wasn't anywhere close to the actual game we were going to get.

Dune Awakening Patches Just Don't Go Well

 

 Dune Awakening is having a rough patch day.  While the most recent patch brings a slew of improvements to the game and makes the end game deep desert more approachable for players not interested in PvP it also has brought a host of issues.

 The biggest issue players seem to be facing are crashes or being stuck on the entering server screen.  Players are reporting that when pressing "continue" to enter a server they get stuck on the loading/entering server screen for several minutes.  Others are reporting they are just crashing at this step.  No workaround is known as of this posting.

 Next; it seems like a new dupe has been likely introduced (while old dupes were fixed in the patch).  This time instead of naked players sacrificing themselves at the auction house in the capital cities we have naked players sacrificing themselves a the public thopter transport stations.  At this point in Dune Awakening it is assumed any naked players using respawn anywhere is some form of exploit to dupe items.

 The patch brought us the coveted "depost/extract all water" feature which will save millions of clicks for players.  Also full water containers can now be sold.  However, the change also seems to have brought the ability for players to enter other players bases and steal their water.  Players are logging in to find their cisterns drained.

 And not necessarily on the "bug" front but the community seems torn on the changes to the Deep Desert.  Previously players had to venture far into the PvP region of the desert to find Tier 6 resource nodes to harvest.  A bit of risk for a big reward.  Now the PvE area of the desert is loaded with Tier 6 resources and there is a mad scramble to lock in those safe PvE areas for harvesting.  Personally I see it as a good change but understand the community feedback that it takes away from the risk/reward that the PvP deep desert provided.

 I am still playing the game and will check out the patch some more.  

Camelot Unchained Video

 I did something I rarely do: I watched a YouTube video at normal speed. Why?  Because Camelot Unchained has a new video out and I needed to evaluate the game at normal speed.  You can watch the video below and then read on for my thoughts. 

 For a bit of catch up; Camelot Unchained is a crowd funded MMO piloted by Mark Jacobs of Dark Ages of Camelot (DAoC) and Mythic Entertainment fame.  It has been in development now for 13 years since it was first kick started in the heyday of Kickstarer.  The supposed "beta 1" has been ongoing for at least 7 years at this point.  To say it's been a long time coming is being polite.

 So what did we get for 13 years of development? To be honest: a game that looks like it was being released 13 years ago.  The graphics are antiquated, the UI is yesterday, and the player movement/combat looks dated.

 But, and I mean this as a big but, it looks playable and visuals aside I can at least see myself being interested in giving the game a try should it ever make an open beta or release.  While everything felt slow in the video and polish is missing (damage numbers going to the 8th decimal point for example) I still got a sense for what they were aiming for and I got some DAoC vibes when they were on 

 There are some other details we could squabble about such as it seems range play dominates the combat as we see almost no melee range combat in the video.  The archer that is featured seems to have a very, very long range.  Also the PvE featured is pretty generic; pull a mob and kill it before it can get to you then run away if it does get to you.

 Anyways I'm not here to squabble.  I am just excited to see a game from this team.  Yes, I know there is a bunch of controversy around Mark Jacobs and how he has run things but I'd be lying if I said there isn't drama around every crowd funded MMO at this point.  Just get me the game so I can get the bit of value my Kickstarter dollars I invested.

Battlefield 6 Open Beta Thoughts

Here we go.... again

 The Battlefield 6 open beta opened it's doors early this week and lots of players are jumping in; me included.  I have some thoughts and I am going to come right out and say it: I am not sure what this is but it isn't Battlefield.

 I've never swung so far from hype to disappointment with a game in my entire gaming career.  Coming off an extremely well executed multiplayer reveal event it felt like EA / Dice had everything headed in the right direction for Battlefield 6.  We were back to Battlefield baby!

 How wrong I was now that I am getting a taste of the beta.  It is hard to put into words but the feel of the game is closer to Call of Duty (CoD) than it is Battlefield.  Maps feel claustrophobic, gunplay is sloppy, movement is filled with slides, and I have no idea what they are doing with classes.  How hard was it to just stick with the classic assault, medic, support, and engineer?  Why does everything have to get mixed up and why are weapons not locked to classes?

A dusty street; wonder where the enemy is hiding

 The visuals and sounds of the game are amazing, but the visual clutter (smoke, dust, stuff flying around, etc) makes it very difficult to figure out what is going on.  Enemies that are inside buildings are basically invisible.  It is nearly impossible to look and know where you should expect enemies and where you should not.  It doesn't help that, at least in the beta, the maps feel like they are more corridor shooters than they are battlefields.  Players are just constantly funneled into meat grinders.

 I had hoped with the return of destruction that we'd be able to get some creative ways to get around the meat grinders, but it seems like maps are designed in a way that you can destroy everything around the meat grinder but not the actual meat grinder itself.  Players have to go through them.

 Another area I can't eloquently describe in words, but I'll try is a quote I'll take from my son: "TTK is high but TTD is low".  Basically the amount of time it takes to kill a target feels high but the time it takes you to die is low.  I have had so many encounters where I empty my magazine but haven't landed the kill so have to change to a sidearm to finish it off which then puts me at a disadvantage if there is another player in the fight.  Yet at the same time if I stick my head out around a corner I'm ending up dead instantly.  There has also been times, even when watching the recorded video back, where the damage log in game shows me taking 5 distinct damage but all I can tell is the enemy pulled the trigger one time.  I am assuming there is some desync going on between server and client but it's hard to tell.

Vehicles feel grounded and powerful

 The moment to moment gameplay also offers no downtime or rest.  It is constant action in every mode I've tried; whether conquest or breakthrough.  I can't even count how many times I've broken through enemy lines where I felt like I could take a moment to get my bearings only to have yet another player appear right next to me from some hidden alleyway; they being as surprised to see me as I am to see them.  That constant fight or flight feeling is more a CoD thing than it has ever been a Battlefield thing.

 It is also telling when CoD fans are out there claiming "CoD is dead!" after playing BF6.  This clearly shows 6 is catering towards the CoD fans.  There are numerous CoD streamers that are binging the beta and loving every minute of it. So it really does seem like Battlefield 6 was catering to that segment.

"Large scale battles" minus the "large scale"

 

 With that said there is still vehicles and larger scale fights to be had in Battlefield 6, but they are a lot harder to find than I'd of expected. If someone told me I was playing the next Call of Duty I'd of believed them.  Even the UI feels closer to CoD than it does to Battlefield.  It's a damn shame. Honestly if I want a Battlefield fix I am going back to 2042. For all of it's flaws at least 2042 feels like a Battlefield game. 

Blogging Medium

 I promised as part of Blaugust 2025 that I would talk about and maybe search for a new blogging platform.  I've been on Google's Blogger (aka Blogspot) for over 20 years now and it hasn't had a major update of any sort in several years.  Before I get to exploration of entirely new platforms I do want to talk about a couple that I did already try.  The first one up is Medium and I have some thoughts.

 First, you can visit my experiment on Medium here:  https://medium.com/@heartlessgamer 

 What I liked about Medium is it's clean design. Black text, white background, and no effort to make that simple and clean template become a reality.  Also attractive at the time I tried it was the fact it can import Blogger posts with just a couple clicks so it was easy to port in content for testing purposes.

 A couple features I liked but didn't get to experience were the ability for visitors to leave me private messages as well as the ability to add a "tip the author" option on posts.  I could do the tip thing via any number of services with my blogger blog but that'd take extra effort vs the integrated option with Medium. 

 What I didn't like was that Medium felt like an ecosystem where I was just another cog in the grand scheme.  It felt like I was just putting my posts into a social media platform vs running my own blog.  I also dislike that Medium, like other platforms I investigated, require a cost to use your own custom domain.  It is hard to beat the fact that Blogger supports your own domain at no cost.

 Ultimately Medium didn't hook me and I gave up on it shortly after starting. I wouldn't say it is "off the list" because the member fee is only $5 a month which is not terrible compared to other platforms I'll talk more about in the coming days.

Dune Awakening Has Me Thinking About Ashes of Creation

 

 I haven't posted about Ashes of Creation in a while as I made a decision to try and avoid getting myself to intertwined in it's affairs after the whole situation with Narc went down.  Yet the more I play Dune Awakening and follow the community reaction to it's mechanics the more I think back to what Steven Sharif has planned for Ashes of Creation.

Ashes of Creation, like Dune Awakening, envisions an end game centered on PvP and player conflict for limited resources.  In Dune that is the Deep Desert zone and in Ashes it will be more traditional fantasy RPG contention over dungeons and zones.  Throughout each game players have ways of interacting with each other; both positive and negative.

 It is the negative interactions that worry me the most as the general experience in Dune has shown the worse side of gamers.  If there is some way the game allows a player to do something to another player in Dune it is being done and often done in a way to avoid the consequence of the action.  

 Blocking a player ship so they can't take off?  Unfortunately happens too often in the safe zones.  Purposely causing the worm to appear faster near a player risking all of their gear getting destroyed?  Happens.  Training NPCs to destroy powered down bases?  It's a new national pastime in Dune Awakening and while a powered down base is likely from an inactive player there is no doubt a player that stepped away for a vacation that will come back to a very rude awakening.

 And it is those sorts of crappy player interactions that worry me when it comes to games like Ashes of Creation and Steven's intent for the game to be full PvP with only a reputation system as a guard rail.  Kill players too frequently and your player killer character will be banished from society and weakened.  Of course as we are hearing from the Ashes open alpha testing this just means players find ways to get around this by training NPCs over players or tricking players into attacking them first so they can retaliate.  The sort of crappy player behaviors that adapt to code changes designed to stop them faster than the developers like to admit.

 I want Ashes of Creation to bring back that big open world idea we all want out of an MMORPG.  I want there to be freedom and surprises to find in how players interact together.  I am just worried that Dune Awakening is proving to me that us as players can't be trusted in the virtual world. 

Battlefield 6 Fixing Secure Boot Required

 Oh boy!  Battlefield 6, including the open beta tests, will require that your PC has Secure Boot enabled.  This will mean you must have a motherboard and BIOS version that supports it!  Fortunately most motherboards these days support secure boot and Windows 11 is forcing the issue for many so if you've already upgraded to 11 then you are probably good to go.  Unfortunately if you are in a spot like me still running Windows 10 and never went through the steps to get ready for Secure Boot then it will take some work!

 What is secure boot? "Secure Boot is a security standard in modern computers that ensures only trusted and digitally signed software is allowed to run during the system startup process."  Basically it stops bad stuff from running when your computer runs up.

 Why are games requiring it all of a sudden? Because of cheaters.  Cheaters ruin everything.  Secure Boot helps game's anitcheat verify the system's integrity since many cheats start up and then hide themselves during the boot up process.  Secure Boot reduces the chances of cheater's software being able to hide itself.

 What does this mean for the upcoming Battlefield 6 open beta weekend? We are going to hear a lot about Secure Boot!  So in the interest of sharing for this fine Blaugust let me walk through the steps I had to take on for my own situation.  The good news is the open beta client is available now to preload and while you can't play the actual game you can boot it up to verify your secure boot is good to go.

Note: this situation will be very context dependent on your Windows version and PC hardware.  My details are below.

• Windows: Windows 10 Pro
• Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE 

 The first challenge I ran into was figuring out how with the Gigabyte BIOS to get Secure Boot options.  This required for me to first disable CSM Support.  Once CSM Support was disabled I then had to reboot and enter BIOS set up again.  Secure Boot was then available but it would not let me set it to enabled.  This seems to be a bug with the BIOS and I had to switch the mode option from Standard to Custom and then back to Standard.  Once done Secure Boot was enabled.

 However, after booting up my PC refused to boot into Windows.  It turns out that my boot drive was still running with an MBR (Master Boot Record) instead of the GPT (GUID Partition Table) which is required by Secure Boot.  This was likely a hangover from when I originally upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10.  Fortunately Microsoft has a tool, MBR2GPT, that is a safe and effective way to transition your boot drive.  

 When I tried to run the command (via command prompt) mbr2gpt /validate I got an error: ERROR: MBR2GPT can only be used from the Windows Preinstallation Environment. Use /allowFullOS to override.  It turns out that MBR2GPT is meant to be run in the Windows Preinstallation Environment which takes a lot of hassle to get access to.  Instead I researched if it was safe to use the /allowFullOS option and reports indicate it was safe.

  After running mbr2gpt /validate /allowFullOS the utility ran and verified my drive was running an MBR.  So I ran the mbr2gpt /convert /allowFullOS command and a short time later the process finished and my MBR had been converted to GPT.

 I rebooted my computer and entered the BIOS again and walked through the steps to disable CSM Support and enable Secure Boot.  I saved the changes and when the PC booted it booted into Windows as expected and once navigating to system settings I could see that Secure Boot was enabled.  Success!

 The real test was then to boot up the Battlefield 6 open beta client and I was rewarded with....

 

Voila!  I hope your Secure Boot journey is simpler than mine. 

Monday Screenshots: Carrier in Dune Awakening

 Blaugust 2025 rolls on and I realized today that it has been a while since I posted a Monday Screenshots post so what better time to resurrect a blogging prompt than during Blaugust!  My friends and I hit a goal we set for ourselves in Dune Awakening: we finished building our first carrier.  Then we took it out for a spin in Hagga Basin and had a hilarious time.

We had to expand the base to fit Big Bertha; even then the wings don't fit!

Getting dropped off in Sheol's radiation zone; not in frame is our mining buggy

Inventory full, buggy tucked safely underneath, and heading back to base.

Unrelated screenshot; just a cool shot to end the night harvesting spice out in the Deep Desert.

 

Battlefield 6 Multiplayer Reveal

 We interrupt this regularly scheduled Blaugust 2025 plan to bring you exciting thoughts and opinions from the Battlefield 6 multiplayer reveal event that was held on 7/31.  If you didn't catch the event live you can catch up with the video below.  Read on below the video for my thoughts.

 First I want to acknowledge that this was a top tier event and reveal.  It was jam packed with details, revealed upcoming open beta test dates for the game, had the release date (October), and best of all: had hundreds of streamers lined up to stream the beta version of the game immediately following the announcement so we could all see immediately what the game was all about.  This is everything we keep thinking we will get from game announcements at big shows like Summer Games Fest!  Embark studios take note; this is how you properly announce a game.

 The game itself looks to be in amazing shape and brings Battlefield back to form.  It is near-future modern military in theme but feels more grounded than Battlefield 2042 did with the same near-future idea.  There will be a healthy dose of single player to go with 6 and then multiplayer galore.  Portal is making a return allowing players to set up all sorts of custom servers; from hardcore mode (one shot, one kill) to crazy custom maps built with the in-game map editor.  One such map features in the reveal had players running up a giant ramp dodging falling buildings and vehicles.

 The standard class-based Battlefield is back.  Gone are the idea of specialists.  Players will be back picking from assault, recon, medic, and support/engineer.  Each will feature many of the expected weapons and special items that we've come to know.  More details are needed to see what will be in the full game but the Battlefield community has rejoiced this return to form.  Battlefield 2042 went the specialist route and had wide open classes before ratcheting them back down to the classic formula (though many will argue too late in the games lifecycle to matter).

 The action on the Battlefield looked amazing. Graphics, as expected, are top notch.  Building and environment destruction are back and better by the looks of it. Buildings routinely were getting shredded in the streams that I watched.  Infantry could not bunker down as they do in 2042 behind impervious shipping containers.  While I am sure Battlefield 6 will still have some unbreakable portions the over all destruction is definitely ramped up in what we've seen so far.

 Some other tidbits that were cool to see.  Downed teammates can be dragged so that you can resurrect them in cover. Infantry have more movement options with crawls and slides.  I especially like the addition of a backwards crawl while in the prone position where the player can point their weapon at their feet but still head backwards.  The jury is still out on the all the sliding around as that may feel out of place in Battlefield games so we'll see how that turns out.

 The game will not have a server browser for the main game mode but will have a server browser for the Portal modes.  This is a sore spot in the community, but personally I've not played games with traditional server browsers for 10+ years so I really could care less.  I enjoy the open game and hit "Play Now" to get right into a match.  My buddies and I can group up and do the same.  It is honestly antiquated to expect to need to host and run servers for modern games.  I get the desire for others and would argue Portal offers them the ability, but it will still come up short for those willing to die on the hill of a server browser for the main game mode.

 I am excited for the game and looking forward to the open beta test weekends coming up.  They really have done a good job across the board to bring back the Battlefield we all love and remember.  Just from how the reveal was handled I get a sense that EA/Dice really, really care about this franchise and doing right for the community.  It won't be perfect but damn does it look better than the recent titles we've gotten.  Add me to the "I'll probably give in and preorder the game".