Hazard Zone
Let’s start with the Odd Duck out among Battlefield 2042’s three modes.
Small scale squad based combat with only 32 players on the map. Not quite a Battle Royale, but drawing on elements of games like Escape from Tarkov and Hunt: Showdown.
Hazard Zone is an attempt to create a more approachable PvPvE game than Hunt Showdown’s genre thrills or the more mil-sim like Escape from Tarkov.
It’s custom built to take advantage of Battlefield as a story engine, even building to a natural finale event as the only way to win is to escape via an extraction point.
The pitch is that your squad of up to four specialists is entering a full sized conquest map to take on up to 28 other players. You’ll all be competing to capture data drives from fallen satellites, fighting each other and AI soldiers.
The wrinkle is that your squad can all only have one specialist and one set of gear each, to deal with any situation. You buy your loadout and equipment at the start using a Hazard Zone currency that also serves as the reward for actions in rounds.
Each round only ends after two helicopter extractions. One at the midpoint, one to end the round. If you fail to extract, you lose the round, regardless of data drives captured or players killed.
It echoes a little of the design ethos of Battlefield as a whole in that killing isn’t necessarily the victory condition but it does make getting there a lot easier.
How does it play? At it’s best, as well as the rest of the game. Naturally evolving fights see teams drawn to data drive locations or each other, occupy defensive positions and then engage in cat and mouse chases as the round progresses. Tornadoes sometimes sweep across the map, cutting off paths or potentially even allowing for sudden escapes.
Levolution map events like Hourglass’s sandstorm completely change the game. That example’s visibility reduction is even more effective when the opposing force is only four people instead of forty.
It’s exciting gameplay, with each specialist using their specific gadgets to their best ability, meaning the team as a whole can succeed.
The problems with Hazard Zone in BF2042 are more structural.
The loadout system means two things. Every so often, including your very first round, you’ll have to go into Hazard Zone with the bog standard Assault rifle, no attachments at all. Because you don’t have any currency to buy gear.
To be blunt, that means you’re immediately at a disadvantage with no scopes, and at the mercy of any other player who happens to have brought their own gear.
The best you can hope for is blind luck meaning you stumble through a map without being spotted and somehow escape.
The other side of this is the options for purchase. They’re drawn from what you already have unlocked in the rest of Battlefield 2042. This creates two further problems.
One: Those who are already advanced in progression are at a significant advantage by default. They simply have more gear.
Two: Upgrades functionally cannot exist inside Hazard Zone itself because of the scale of the progression. The first challenge for unlocking equipment for most weapons is “Score five kills with the weapon”. A Hazard Zone squad is four strong. Challenges only scale from there.
If a player doesn’t play All Out Warfare or Portal, they will be at an immediate disadvantage in Hazard Zone. Especially because unlike other Battle Royales, the only option for looting is taking weapons from the dead.
This then snowballs as well. If you survive and extract your character, that goes on their “Extraction Streak”. Survive more matches, get access to more cash and also additional tactical gadget slots. It just grows and grows. If you die, potentially everything is lost and you may get no return on your buy in, so you’re stuck with early weapons.
It’s also worth noting that previously I said that at its best, Hazard Zone channels all the strengths of Battlefield. At its worst, it channels all the weaknesses. Even with an armour system built in, Players are inherently fragile, only two or three bullets from death.
You will die, and you will spend a significant amount of time not playing Hazard Zone. In regular game modes that’s fine. You simply respawn and go back to the capture point. In Hazard Zone that’s a whole process.
A squad based revive system and Respawn system based on a team mate surviving long enough to call players back in doesn’t mediate that enough.
Beyond that, other potential weaknesses of the series are amplified here. Choosing to solo queue means that you’re paired up with three random players. In regular modes, this is fine. You’ll be part of a wider team. It’s not too much of a problem if your squad refuses to revive or go the same direction. When they’re all you have?
Much worse.
Like I said. Odd duck out. There’s a kernel of a good idea in here. The actual act of playing the game results in tense, cinematic moments, especially in those finales. But there’s just so much awkwardness around Hazard Zone that makes it more frequently frustrating to engage with than those moments warrant.