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Battlefield 1942

So, more war games then? Sure why not, but hey, let’s set it in World War 2 ontop of that eh? Because that hasn’t been done before…

If you’re anything like me, you’re over the mass of WW2 media, whether it be movies, TV shows, games, books, whatever. Six decades after the events of the second World War and the entire planet is still desperately intrigued by it. Perhaps it’s something to do with our grandparents, the people who lived and fought through it starting to move on, a curiousness about our past which is rapidly becoming confined to history books. Perhaps as the world sits on the edge of war each day now, the time is right to look back at where we’ve been and the mistakes of the past, ideally in the hopes of avoiding them.

Perhaps though, a guy called Romain was sitting in Stockholm one day and decided that he’d come up with a rediculously good idea and chose to make it.

One of the above anyway…
Battlefield 1942

So Battlefield 1942 arrives in the BigKid mailbox. Most of us have been captivated by the multiplayer demo that was released recently and clamour over each other to be the first to savour it. Splash gets to it first; it’s good to be the king.

Vital stats then for the game. It is set in World War 2. You play as either the axis (Germany, Japan) or allies (USA, UK, Russia). Spread out among those countries are over 35 different vehicles, everything from jeeps to tanks to aircraft to ships and even submarines. All are fully controllable by the player.

There are four theatres of war: Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the Pacific and North Africa, each are markedly different in terms of atmosphere and nvironment. Eastern Europe will have you battling in small towns, surrounded by snow, while the west will kick off with the landing at Omaha Beach and allow you to press on through to Berlin. Battles in the Pacific generally comprise air, land and sea, making for a variety of ways to attack, and conversely be attacked, and the North Africa missions are dusty, vast, quite easily my least favourite, but more on that later.

Five different “classes” await you in the game, they being Scout, Assault, Anti-Tank, Engineer and Medic. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, though anyone familiar with Team Fortress will understand the basic play styles involved. The purpose is to capture and hold a certain number of ‘control points’ around the map. If the enemy’s score ticks down to zero, then you win; straight forward really.

Cue the action then. While single-player feels placeholder at best, no doubt the decision of the team to provide something off-line, the real purpose of the game is felt online, and it’s definitely where the most fun is to be had. You can have up to 64 people playing at once, though most servers seem to sit on around 24/32 which is more than enough for most maps. The action ranges from frenetic and frustrating to tedious and loathesome, depending on the map and precisely whereabouts you are on it. Conflicts in the Pacific and Western Europe are generally well paced, while Eastern Europe will put a decent amount of space in between control points, though North Africa is the biggest offender here, with minutes often passing in game without an enemy being spotted.

While the frustration of running several kilometres in the game is extraordinarily off-putting, soon enough a map change comes around and places you in an entirely different setting. There is some consistency to be had with servers sticking to particular theatres, but most rotate each map in the game, and the over all experience is better for it.

Once you’ve had enough of this running business, jumping into a vehicle is a fairly intuitive move. While some of the physics leave a little to be desired, taking to the sky is tremendously enjoyable and engaging in a dog fight over towns in the French country side has got to be about as enjoyable as this flavour of online gaming is. Controlling the larger land vehicles like tanks, APC”s and so forth is less enjoyable, but with seemingly a lot of other people in game finding it a great deal of fun, you’re generally lucky enough to just ride along as a gunner.

All in all, it’s a tremendous experience. Can it topple Counter-Strike? I doubt it, although with Condition Zero on its way a battle in retail stores will be much more telling than what people are playing online. The only real flaw in the plan is that it seems the guys who annoyed monty in CS have made their way over. The unfortunate aspect of online gaming where one player cna ruin it for everyone still remains. For the most part though you can get aorund it, and provided the rest of your team isn’t treating it as a big Death Match arena leaving you the only one attempting to hold control points on the map, then it’s a game I seriously suggest you go out and pick up today.

8/10

  posted by splash · at 1:17 am · filed under Reviews