With less than one month until the release of Battlefield 2042, DICE has announced a new game mode that will be included in the title at launch. The Hazard Zone mode looks to be changing up the Battlefield formula in a major way by reducing the focus of big team attrition battles to smaller objective-focused squads.

Revealed on the official EA website, Battlefield 2042's Hazard Zone mode is described as a "tense, squad-focused survival experience" that pits four-person teams against one another to either retrieve and extract randomly placed data drives. Each player only has a single life and cannot be respawned unless brought to a "reinforcement uplink" which means that players will need to take a much more careful approach to completing objectives than in other multiplayer modes.

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Each match starts with a "buying phase" similar to other squad-based shooters like CounterStrike or Valorant which has players purchasing different tactical upgrades and load-outs with in-game "Dark Market Credits." Other items like vehicles can be acquired once each match starts by finding uplinks throughout the map to call in additional support. Unlike CounterStrike and Valorant, however, the players' primary objective isn't to eliminate all other players, but to remain focused on data drive retrieval.

The Hazard Zone mode seems to have been designed with high-level competitive play in mind with its blend of popular competitive mechanics from elimination shooters and battle royales. It'll be interesting to see which game modes included in Battlefield 2042 see a competitive community grow following the game's release. It seems like DICE has cast a wide net in terms of trying to find what fans want based on the numerous modes that explore different parts of what makes shooters fun from the tense, tactical experiences of the Hazard Zone mode to the more sandbox-style Portal mode.

Battlefield 2042's open Beta ran this past weekend, but, unfortunately, left many fans feeling uncertain about the game's release. While most Betas have their fair share of issues, Battlefield 2042 was in a pretty buggy state for being just shy of a month away from launch. The seemingly persistent glitches and issues seemed to permeate throughout the entire experience which made plenty of fans worried for the state that the game is currently in despite the fun that Battlefield's mechanics can provide when working properly.

Although Hazard Zone mode looks to be a lot of fun, especially for fans of elimination shooters, many Battlefield 2042 fans think that the game should be delayed once more to fix the numerous issues featured in the Beta. With the game's release date drawing ever closer, DICE will need to speak out about a potential second delay soon if one is in the works.

Battlefield 2042 releases on November 19 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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Source: EA