Battlefield 2042's Season Two is a return to form

More than two months on from the release of Battlefield 2042’s Season One – which was generally well received – the game’s next season finally kicks off at the end of this month, on 30th August.

The content drop is familiar too, with Season Two containing just one new map, a new specialist, a couple of new vehicles and some new weapons.

Despite the snail’s pace in which DICE is moving to improve the game since its disastrous launch last year, the new content looks promising, and most importantly feels up to the standard we used to expect from the DICE of yesteryear.

The new map, Stranded, is even smaller than the already small Exposure that dropped with Season One. That’s a good thing. The biggest complaints about the launch maps stemmed from the fact that they were far too big.

The large scale was intended to accommodate the 128-player lobbies new to Battlefield 2042. The problem is that it would take an ungodly amount of time to move from objective to objective, while the sheer size of the maps meant that DICE encountered hardware limitations (yes even on the new-gen consoles) when trying to fill the map with cover or even simple surface details. As a result, the maps felt barren and empty.

Stranded is the complete opposite. It almost feels like an admission that DICE overstepped the mark with the gigantic maps. In an early hands-on session for Eurogamer, I enjoyed the fact Stranded felt very infantry-focused, with tight chokepoints and plenty of cover.