REACTION - Criterion getting transferred to the Battlefield squad is hugely exciting
All guns blazing, baby.
By Jonathan Garrett
21/09/23
Lets agree on a reality. Battlefield 2042 was proper wet salmon. The destruction was lacklustre. The map designs were too open, with copy and paste buildings and an overreliance on shipping containers. Even the hit detection seemed off in places, at least at launch. Yes it has been patched with seasonal updates, but for a lot of folks, the damage was done. Some kind of reinvention is needed, or at bare minimum a remaster of Bad Company (which would surely print money).
Enter Criterion, who have now been retasked as a Battlefield studio and will potentially have a much bigger impact on the output of future titles under Vince Zampalla (formerly of Titanfall and Star Wars Jedi devs Respawn). This is a banger of a move. Criterion have proven experience as a support studio, and since retaking the lead on Need for Speed, that franchise has been re-energised.
Plus, they also made Black, one of the best shooters ever produced. This is the kind of shred “reallocation of resources” that we can actually get behind. A studio with a rock solid pedigree being given the keys to one of EA’s historically significant and high performing franchises. It’s likely we won’t get to see the outcome of this play until we approach the end of this gen, but there’s oodles of potential for greatness here.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
