Isaac Clarke has had many adventures ever since the Necromorphs entered his life, but none are so strange as teleporting into the slightly-futuristic shooter Battlefield 2042. The Dead Space crossover event has kicked off giving players the chance to buy some exclusive cosmetics and jump into a new game mode titled Outbreak. In terms of getting players back into the game, it appears to have been a modest success – but some players are expressing disappointment.
Looking at how the game’s been performing on Steam recently, Battlefield 2042 had shrunk down to roughly 10,000 players at any one time. That’s still a respectable number but it’s a far cry from the game’s high points. Recently an upsurge saw the FPS game breach the 20,000 barrier for the first time in months, a swell that has been propelled even higher thanks to the current crossover. Yesterday, Tuesday June 9 to coincide with the Dead Space launch, Battlefield 2042 had a peak of 27,438 players in-game – a volume of people which hadn’t been since March.
So it looks like the Dead Space event is a success – if bringing players back is the sole goal, except that’s not all that’s happening. People may be jumping into the Outbreak event but as far as fan reaction goes it’s not exactly positive.
“Why do they call this a Dead Space event? The enemies don’t even resemble the zombies or monsters from Dead Space, and the event is buggy, boring, and too easy,” reads one post on the Battlefield 2042 Steam forum. “It’s slightly better than last years Halloween event but still pretty mediocre,” says another user in reply. Over on the game’s subreddit the story is no better either, with threads like “Im sorry but, that’s it?” popping up since the Dead Space event launched.
The core of the problem seems to be how the promise of the event, at least in people’s minds, doesn’t match up with the reality. Instead of facing off against Necromorphs or taking place on notable Dead Space locations like the USG Ishimura, Outbreak is set firmly on Earth with a series of zombie-like foes known as the Geist to kill. The sentiment appears to be that this is an underwhelming event, where the main draw is instead the paid cosmetic options to dress up as Isaac Clarke.
If you’d like to dive in yourself, the Battlefield 2042 and Dead Space event is active until Tuesday July 16. You can learn more over on the game’s Steam page.
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