Battlefield 1943

I am a huge fan of the Battlefield series, and I have a very strong connection to it. Battlefield 1942 was my first online First Person Shooter. I was so excited when I heard Battlefield 1942 was going to be remade on current-gen consoles. My expectations were very high going into Battlefield 1943, but as it turned out Battlefield 1943 is less of just a port to current-gen and more of a dumbed-down Battlefield to adhere to console gamers. The developers seemed to try to make a more casual Battlefield experience, but then again at other times it feels the developers weren‘t quite sure who they were making this game for.

For one, long-time fans of the series will be turned off by the fact they condensed the amount of classes from five to three. From three unique niche classes working together as a unit, to three generic classes that independently go lone wolf in different ways. This game seems to really downplay teamwork and cooperation. The lack of classes also limits your armory, which is a real disappointment. Having only a few weapons allows the game to feel repetitive rather quickly. It’s strange… all the classes are balanced very well, but instead of taking the Battlefield Heroes route, where every class feels equally powerful, the classes in 1943 all feel equally weak, if you catch my drift.

While veterans of the series may be let down by that, casual newcomers will also have some frustration with this game. A large problem that has plagued the Battlefield series is the infamous spawn kill cycle. You will find yourself on the losing end of a match, and the next thing you know, your team is limited to one spawn point, and every player from the other team is bombarding you base, with sniper scopes aimed at your head and airplanes going on bombing runs back and forth. 1943 really doesn’t do anything to curb spawn killing. In fact, I feel that the choice to only use small island maps, and 1/3 of the classes having a sniper rifle, increase the chance of a spawn killing cycle to spark. This will turn a lot of impatient people off to the game. People love Call of Duty 4 because it is so easy to pickup and play, not because there is a slight chance that they can spawn and instantly get sniped, or someone can coincidentally call in an air strike right where they are spawning. I feel if one Battlefield game should have tried to extinguish spawn killing, this one should have been it. Another thing is, the shooting mechanics don’t feel like they were designed for console. Most console first person shooters (see: good ones), have a certain amount of aim-assist to make up for the console controller’s lack of precision. 1943 chooses not to give you any aim-assist. Now, its certainly OK to exclude aim-assist from certain types of shooters, like Rainbow Six Vegas. In Rainbow Six Vegas, a relatively slow paced shooter, they wanted the game to be more focused on tactics than being more skilled at aiming, and the lack of aim-assist benefits the gameplay. Battlefield on the other hand, really feels like a game that needs it to some extent. It is such a fast paced experience and aim-assist really would have helped.

Not all is bad in the land of Battlefield 1943. For every less than ideal game design choice, it is countered by a superb one. One of my favorite things about the game is just how easy it is to play with friends online together. This is all thanks to the great squad system that has been in the series since Battlefield 2, but has been tweaked to work excellently with Xbox Live. Every time you join a game, you can opt into joining a ‘squad’ in which you have 3 or so other teammates. While you are in a squad you can choose to spawn at a capture point or directly behind one of your squad mates. You can spawn with one of them whenever there isn’t a good capture point to spawn at, or if they are already half way to the next destination. The squad system also lets you spawn right into the passenger seat of your squad mate’s vehicle if you choose to spawn with them. If one of your friends comes online, you can simply invite them to your squad. For the rest of the time you are in the matchmaking cycle, you stay together, and even stay in the same squad, without having to rejoin each other’s squad.

I also must applaud the Battlefield developers for choosing to up the ante to a new console standard of 24 players in an online match. This is the first console game I have played that has been able to handle 16+ players completely lag-free. I have yet to have a single-hitch of lag during my entire time with this game, which is quite frankly amazing. Though this is unheard of for console, Battlefield 1942 could support 64 players way back in 2002. The large amounts of players and the unique node-based gameplay (that has spread to every single genre imaginable) were the true draws of the series. 1943 doesn’t quite capture the large scale of battles that 1942 did. You will sometimes find yourself wandering for 5 minutes without a single enemy encounter, or on the other end of the spectrum, be spawn killed every 20 seconds because of the restricted map size. Due to only having 24 players, you are limited to play on some very small island maps. All the maps are similar in aesthetic, but gameplay is pretty different on these maps. From flat to mountainous, there is some slight variety in mapping here. The most notable map is Wake Island which has been in nearly every Battlefield game. The destructible environments are a neat diversion while you are on your 5 minute trips to the next location, but don’t really affect gameplay much. You can bomb out a bridge, but it doesn’t really affect gameplay, and just annoyingly makes you have to take a detour to the side. Most of the buildings are destructible but some in spawn areas aren‘t, which in theory is a great idea, but in practice it doesn’t really affect the game much since you will just get bombed from above through the buildings’ roofs anyways. It would have been a neat addition to be able to destroy ground with your explosives to make foxholes to use in infantry combat, or dig out a hole in the road to make a tank trap of sorts, but its understandable why this wasn’t included.

All the essential vehicles are here: tanks, planes, boats, and other land transport vehicles. The planes feel swift and vicious, while the tanks feel massive and powerful. If you are standing near a tank while it is riding by, your controller vibrates out of control, which is a really neat detail. Tanks can just crush through forested areas with ease and the cockpit view is nice and shaky which really puts you in the experience. The only thing is, who ever thought of the controls for driving should be sued. Instead of the standard driving game Right Trigger to accelerate, or the Halo’s Left Stick Forward to accelerate, this game chooses the unheard of LEFT Trigger to accelerate and Left bumper to go in reverse. Couldn’t they have done something-- anything but that? Talking about odd controls, right bumper is to change weapons while you are walking around, which I have heard of before.  Another odd side note, once an enemy is spotted by someone, a red dot appears above their head, which you can see through walls and terrain. This is a cool idea, but doesn’t always pan out too well. Sometimes you will feel like you are just in long distance firefights with red dots. It also ruins some of the mind game that first person shooters present. Instead of trying to outsmart and flank an enemy you just saw, you have to just run straight at them and hope you hit all your shots, since if you try to flank, they will know your exact location as you move about behind cover thanks to the magic red dot. 1943 is obviously focused on sniping, flying and rolling around in a tank, but sometimes you can’t always get to a vehicle or good sniping spot, which the game seems to forget about. They do give you some decent anti-tank devices for each class, but again with the red dot, if you try to peak around the corner of a building to try to shoot your bazooka, the tank will beat you to the punch. When you do single-handedly take down a tank while romping around on foot, it is so satisfying.

This game really could have made up for its lack of classes by having a boatload of unlockable weapons, like Battlefield 2 had, and so many recent console games have adapted, but instead you are stuck with the same few weapons throughout. It’s really a shame, because the game already has a worthless leveling system that unlockable weapons could have easily been slapped onto. Don’t worry, EA will probably just try to peddle them off to you for 1/3 of the game’s price later in some DLC.

The game’s graphics are very good on a power level, for an XBLA game, but have a fairly generic and unappealing art direction. The sound is great too, with booming explosions, screeching planes and soft lapping waves on the beach. This game is built like a full retail game and it shows. I was blown away that my little XBLA game was measuring up to the big boys in the A/V department.

In conclusion, Battlefield 1943 is a fine game alone, but compared to the game it is based off of that came out 7 years ago, it is just a dumbed down version on a shiny new engine. For better or for worse it feels like an early beta of a Battlefield 1942 mod for Battlefield Bad Company. If you have some stingy friends who enjoy shooters or just need to get your shooter on during the summer game droughts, this is a great game at a small price. With this game conveniently on your hard drive, you will constantly come back to this game when you are waiting on your friends, and you are feeling too lazy to get up and change the disk in your console. If you are a longtime fan of the series you might be slightly underwhelmed by the many shortcomings of Battlefield 1943, but if you are brand new to the series you will enjoy this game just fine. Either way, at $15 this game is impossible to pass up.