Battlefield 2042 has gotten off to a rough start. EA and DICE's futuristic military shooter struggled through a launch rife with bugs, glitches, technical issues, and other hiccups that led to a wave of negative user reviews.
As of right now, Battlefield 2042 remains one of the worst-reviewed Steam games in history, with a "Mostly Negative" ranking based on over 80,000 user reviews. The game hasn't fared much better on Metacritic, with a user score of 2.2. Yikes.
Take a look at Battlefield 2042 in action below!
While DICE is taking steps to fix Battlefield 2042, the game's overall reputation has taken a serious battering. Now, as if to make things even worse, a parody version has arrived on Steam - and it's already a better-reviewed title.
Parody games are nothing new on Steam. The platform is home to all manner of quick cash-grabs that rip off the latest releases, from Cyberpunk 2077 to Resident Evil Village. It is, however, rare - if not practically unheard of - for any such game to end up better regarded by players as the game it's copying.
But that's exactly what's happened in the case of Clownfield 2042, a cheap-and-cheerful new shooter meant as a flagrant piss-take of Battlefield 2042.
"Clownfield 2042 is an FPS where you take a role of unique soldier, equipped with six weapons that has to fight enemy and win the front," reads the game's Steam description. "After 2022 cryptocrash caused by NFTs, majority of nations collapsed and a union of "No-Clowns" has been formed. You are one of them, arm up and get ready for war."
The game promises such features as an "unoptimized experience", three maps, and "plenty of bugs".
"We'll let you enjoy them as is," the developer writes of any glitches you might find. "And instead of fixing them, we'll just release some new skins."
At the time of writing, Clownfield 2042 has a "Very Positive" rating based on over 1,000 reviews. The general consensus among users seems to be that even though it's clearly a meme, it's better value than Battlefield 2042.
"More thought, more love, more dedication than went into making [Battlefield 2042]," observed one user.
"You can walk on water, snipe with shotgun, hover with your craft (you know what I mean). Smooth RTX ON gameplay," added another. "That's the Battlefield 2042 we've been waiting for."
Featured Image Credit: EATopics: Battlefield, Dice