Sean Sinclair

2042 is overwhelming. It throws so much information at you that it becomes incredibly challenging to make critical gameplay decisions (or any decisions) based on the information you have. It's like a visual and auditory sensory overload that tries it's best to let you know what the other 127 people on the server are up to at that moment in time. From the cluttered UI and HUD, to the muffled audio and identity crisis, 2042 is confusing at best and downright overwhelming and frustrating at worst. The audio is overwhelming. There is something fundamentally broken and flat with the audio mix. There is no balance between critical gameplay information and immersion. It all blends together with no dynamics as if all sounds are played at the same volume. I cannot discern the sounds of my 30 teammates stomping around from the sound of a squad of enemies approaching. It's like trying to listen out for footsteps while wearing ear defenders, everything sounds muffled and dull. Trying to isolate the gameplay information from the white noise is an exercise in insanity. The HUD is overwhelming. With everything being this futuristic shade of neon teal, combined with tiny font, I feel as though I need to squint my eyes and scan read to figure out what information is being relayed to me. Why do I need to see an icon for every gadget I have equipped all the time? Wouldn't it be better suited to have a context overlay appear as I swap gadgets/weapons and use the space available to only show critical information like ammo, health and armour. Objective markers are so obtuse that I can't actually see the players hidden behind them. A1, A2, B1, B2 flood my screen and make no effort to reduce in transparency even if you are looking through gun optics. The maps are over overwhelming. The majority of the maps seem to have been designed without cover. I guess cover is not a thing in the future... I cannot possibly identify or count the angles I am open to being shot from and so I feel paralysed when trying to strategically push an objective. You are either completely swarmed by a death ball of enemies trying to find the action in an otherwise barren landscape or you are wishing you could call in a quad bike as you run a half marathon from your spawn point. There's no feeling of accomplishment as your team successfully pushes or defends a critical flag. It's just a red zerg and blue zerg moving around the map like a tornado made out of players. The gunplay is overwhelming. Jesus christ I think this one makes me question my sanity the most. It feels like since the beta, everything has been given enough recoil and spread that hitting the broad side of a barn outside of 20m is just a pipe dream. Every fight is left up to unstable net code and random bullet deviation and I'm lucky if I can kill one person with a full magazine. As much as I don't like the implementation of spread, if it has to be in the game, look at how well it was done in BF1, you can still be incredibly accurate tap firing targets at longer distances. The level of level of polish and fidelity makes this feel like it's a pre-alpha build with another year to go before release. Everything feels like it's placeholder, but they ran out of time and had to ship whatever was there. I cannot believe the game has launched in the state that it is in currently.