The weird experience of liking a game before it's 'fixed'

I was one of the weirdos who gave Battlefield 2042 a positive review at the same time as it was being called the worst Battlefield of all time.

Its detractors weren't wrong, we were just coming at it from different perspectives. BF 2042's giant 128-player maps did have desolate stretches where you could wind up stranded, hoofing it without cover, but I liked that. It created eerie, lonely moments that brought me back to playing Battlefield 1942, as did the glitchy hovercrafts (Battlefield games are supposed to have wonky physics!) and the goofy custom game modes you could make with the Portal scripting tool.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that I wasn't singing in the same key as the rest of the chorus, and EA launched an extended 'we're listening to your feedback' campaign, overhauling the maps and refocusing on 64-player modes to 'fix' the game. …