With the destructible environments in EA’s Battlefield 1943, it really won’t. You may even find that some matches end up being fought out in craters that used to be islands.
Battlefield 1943 takes you into the Pacific during World War II (and as far as video games are concerned, were there really any other wars in history?). You play as either the American or Japanese Navies and fight for control of the five capture points on each of the three maps (there’s a third bonus map but I’ll get to that later). As long as your team controls the majority of the capture points, the team health gauge of the other team will steadily reduce. It also reduces every time someone respawns, so obviously the more kills your team has, the less health the other team has.
You have a choice between three different classes, the Scout (sniper rifle, satchel charges, pistol), Infantryman (SMG, recoilless rifle), or Rifleman (rifle, rifle grenades). Everything is unlimited, from bullets to grenades, with explosive weapons having a timer to refill once the last one you carry is used. In addition, at anytime during the battle you can change classes as long as someone of a different class dies nearby. So instead of picking up a downed soldier’s Thompson, you pick everything from his recoilless rifle to his wrench for repairing vehicles (and knocking enemies over the head with).
I haven’t played a shooter where I could destroy nearly everything on the map for a long time. Battlefield 1943 provides that in a big way. Did your target just run into a building to hide from you while he reloads? Blow a hole in the wall with your rifle grenade and keep on shooting him. Of course the entire environments are not destructible, structures such as pillboxes, towers, and aircraft carriers will take little to no aesthetic damage. Still, I love the feeling of throwing a grenade into a wooded area and watching the trees fall around it. And the sheer devastation that results from calling in a bombing run will leave the ground burnt completely black.
There have been some server issues where it becomes impossible to join games because there are too many people online, more on the 360 version than the PS3 version, but that is because EA did not expect there to be such a high demand for the game. These problems have and will continue to get better as more server space is provided. The game plays great, ignoring some graphical issues like people turning into a black box for a split second. If you can tune out the graphical glitches (and they are minor) then there’s really nothing wrong with the graphics in this game. One thing that’s off to me is that the people seem small. Especially when sniping, it’s like I’m trying to headshot ants. This is somewhat corrected by the addition of little triangles that appear over an enemy’s head if it has been seen or hit. But still, I feel like the proportions are wrong, and I for one can’t hit a thing from the air.
Plane controls are hard to pick up, but easy to master, once you know what you’re doing. You’re provided with a radar-type HUD in first person view that locates enemy planes. This is especially helpful on the bonus map that both consoles have now unlocked: Coral Sea. It’s an all out air battle, and if you leave your plane, you respawn, and no points can be earned in the enemy base (which means no parachuting onto enemy aircraft carriers and sabotaging planes). The map is nice and all, but if you play enough of it you’ll notice something interesting. The Japanese Imperial Navy wins 90% of all matches. I thought it was odd after a while that no matter which team I was on, it was always the Zeros ruling the skies and not the corsairs. In fact the only match I ever won from the US side was a 4-on-4 (as opposed to the max of 12-on-12) and our pilots were clearly more skilled judging from the scores.
I decided to delve into why that was and realized that the American Corsairs are extremely slow when compared to the Japanese Zeros. Granted that the fire from the Corsairs is more powerful and focused, but it does not make up for the sheer lack of maneuverability that the Zeros seem to have inherently. The Zero’s guns are more spaced out as well, allowing for a wider range of fire, whereas the focused fire of the corsairs needs to be dead-on its target. I hope that EA will come out with a balancing patch for this, as it makes the map far less fun. People will quit games just because they are not on the side with the better planes, which ends up giving the Imperial Navy even more advantage, because they now outnumber the other side.
Another issue I had with Battlefield 1943 was that I had been looking for a First Person Shooter game that I could play with my friends on the PSN. This is not that game. Not yet at any rate. Trying to join a game with a friend is tough, but the game allows for you to make a squad beforehand, and then jump into a game. This is all fine and dandy for the first match (sometimes). But by the time the second map loads, you will have lost all contact with your friends. You might still be in the same squad as them – and I emphasize might – but you will most likely not be able to hear them and vice versa. I have even had it happen that after the third or so game my friends are on the OPPOSITE team. Now I don’t invite my friends to games just so I can shoot them. I wanted an organized squad that I could communicate with and form strategies with, but the lack of functional voice chat makes that impossible. It is a real detriment to an otherwise fun game, and I can only hope that an outcry by the fans will cause EA to release an update that will fix it.
Oh, and aiming in vehicles is way off in third-person view. This might be on purpose however, to balance the use of tanks and such on the battlefield, because once I learned to switch from third-person for travelling to first-person for shooting, I was getting a lot more tank kills than before. But I guess that isn’t really a huge issue.
All in all, for $15.00 Battlefield 1943 is a functional World War II shooter. The ground maps are very balanced, the variety of vehicles is awesome, and the destructible environments keep game play new and exciting. I hope that in the future we will get more new maps, but I for one will not pay a dime for them. Especially not after the catastrophe that is the voice chat of this game.
Written by: Bramimond
Battlefield 1943 takes you into the Pacific during World War II (and as far as video games are concerned, were there really any other wars in history?). You play as either the American or Japanese Navies and fight for control of the five capture points on each of the three maps (there’s a third bonus map but I’ll get to that later). As long as your team controls the majority of the capture points, the team health gauge of the other team will steadily reduce. It also reduces every time someone respawns, so obviously the more kills your team has, the less health the other team has.
You have a choice between three different classes, the Scout (sniper rifle, satchel charges, pistol), Infantryman (SMG, recoilless rifle), or Rifleman (rifle, rifle grenades). Everything is unlimited, from bullets to grenades, with explosive weapons having a timer to refill once the last one you carry is used. In addition, at anytime during the battle you can change classes as long as someone of a different class dies nearby. So instead of picking up a downed soldier’s Thompson, you pick everything from his recoilless rifle to his wrench for repairing vehicles (and knocking enemies over the head with).
I haven’t played a shooter where I could destroy nearly everything on the map for a long time. Battlefield 1943 provides that in a big way. Did your target just run into a building to hide from you while he reloads? Blow a hole in the wall with your rifle grenade and keep on shooting him. Of course the entire environments are not destructible, structures such as pillboxes, towers, and aircraft carriers will take little to no aesthetic damage. Still, I love the feeling of throwing a grenade into a wooded area and watching the trees fall around it. And the sheer devastation that results from calling in a bombing run will leave the ground burnt completely black.
There have been some server issues where it becomes impossible to join games because there are too many people online, more on the 360 version than the PS3 version, but that is because EA did not expect there to be such a high demand for the game. These problems have and will continue to get better as more server space is provided. The game plays great, ignoring some graphical issues like people turning into a black box for a split second. If you can tune out the graphical glitches (and they are minor) then there’s really nothing wrong with the graphics in this game. One thing that’s off to me is that the people seem small. Especially when sniping, it’s like I’m trying to headshot ants. This is somewhat corrected by the addition of little triangles that appear over an enemy’s head if it has been seen or hit. But still, I feel like the proportions are wrong, and I for one can’t hit a thing from the air.
Plane controls are hard to pick up, but easy to master, once you know what you’re doing. You’re provided with a radar-type HUD in first person view that locates enemy planes. This is especially helpful on the bonus map that both consoles have now unlocked: Coral Sea. It’s an all out air battle, and if you leave your plane, you respawn, and no points can be earned in the enemy base (which means no parachuting onto enemy aircraft carriers and sabotaging planes). The map is nice and all, but if you play enough of it you’ll notice something interesting. The Japanese Imperial Navy wins 90% of all matches. I thought it was odd after a while that no matter which team I was on, it was always the Zeros ruling the skies and not the corsairs. In fact the only match I ever won from the US side was a 4-on-4 (as opposed to the max of 12-on-12) and our pilots were clearly more skilled judging from the scores.
I decided to delve into why that was and realized that the American Corsairs are extremely slow when compared to the Japanese Zeros. Granted that the fire from the Corsairs is more powerful and focused, but it does not make up for the sheer lack of maneuverability that the Zeros seem to have inherently. The Zero’s guns are more spaced out as well, allowing for a wider range of fire, whereas the focused fire of the corsairs needs to be dead-on its target. I hope that EA will come out with a balancing patch for this, as it makes the map far less fun. People will quit games just because they are not on the side with the better planes, which ends up giving the Imperial Navy even more advantage, because they now outnumber the other side.
Another issue I had with Battlefield 1943 was that I had been looking for a First Person Shooter game that I could play with my friends on the PSN. This is not that game. Not yet at any rate. Trying to join a game with a friend is tough, but the game allows for you to make a squad beforehand, and then jump into a game. This is all fine and dandy for the first match (sometimes). But by the time the second map loads, you will have lost all contact with your friends. You might still be in the same squad as them – and I emphasize might – but you will most likely not be able to hear them and vice versa. I have even had it happen that after the third or so game my friends are on the OPPOSITE team. Now I don’t invite my friends to games just so I can shoot them. I wanted an organized squad that I could communicate with and form strategies with, but the lack of functional voice chat makes that impossible. It is a real detriment to an otherwise fun game, and I can only hope that an outcry by the fans will cause EA to release an update that will fix it.
Oh, and aiming in vehicles is way off in third-person view. This might be on purpose however, to balance the use of tanks and such on the battlefield, because once I learned to switch from third-person for travelling to first-person for shooting, I was getting a lot more tank kills than before. But I guess that isn’t really a huge issue.
All in all, for $15.00 Battlefield 1943 is a functional World War II shooter. The ground maps are very balanced, the variety of vehicles is awesome, and the destructible environments keep game play new and exciting. I hope that in the future we will get more new maps, but I for one will not pay a dime for them. Especially not after the catastrophe that is the voice chat of this game.
Written by: Bramimond
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