Last but definitely not least is the much vaunted Battlefield Portal mode.

This is a new experience for me, and while the usual problems like non-chatting teammates still blight the action, it is an interesting mode to get to grips with.

Everyone else on the field is trying to stop you doing this, and it is basically a meat grinder just trying to stay alive. The objective is to find and obtain data drives from what looks like crashed satellites – collect as many as you can, and then extract with the drives to win. Hazard Zone is the next option on the multiplayer menu, and this is played in a squad of four, facing off against a mixture of AI bots and real people. Nicely, you can choose how deadly you want the AI to be, and best of all, it appears that all Battlefield 2042’s achievements can be unlocked in this mode too. This is a great way to learn the maps, learn how various guns handle, and the details you need for the various specialists you can choose to operate and so on. By selecting All Out Warfare, then pressing the X button, you can change from online multiplayer to solo/co-op play, and the rest of the server will be populated by bots. Now, there is a top tip I can share with you here, that doesn’t seem to be advertised very much in the game: you don’t have to play with the rest of the world in either of these modes. Defenders have unlimited tickets, but the attackers have a limited number – lose them all and it’s a loss, capture all the zones and it’s a win. However, you capture the points by having more of your soldiers in the capture zone than the enemy, like Conquest. The objective is to capture a series of points, thus forcing the defenders back to the next sector, as in Rush. Breakthrough is a smaller game, with 64 players, and seems to be a mixture of Rush and Conquest. Each side has a fixed number of respawn tickets, and if you hold a majority of flags, the opponents tickets drain quicker, in addition to the kills you inflict on their forces.

Conquest is the classic Battlefield experience, catering for 128 players battling it out on huge maps over a number of flags. All Out Warfare is the main multiplayer mode, and comes in two flavours. When you boot up 2042, there are three main options for you to choose from.

Battlefield series