Like a Good Wine, Better with Age
Oddly enough, Battlefield 1942 has only gotten better with age. Sure, the graphics are rough by current standards, and a third-party service like GameRanger is needed to even play it competitively, but it is still fun. Most of it boils down to the wide open map design, which necessitates a reliance on ranged gunplay that is too difficult for PlayStation and Xbox controllers to manage. Even if that were not the case, modern shooters catering to adrenaline-junky frat dudes are a dime a dozen today, and frankly a bit boring. On the other end of the spectrum are titles like Red Orchestra 2, which can be a little too serious in their effort to simulate warfare. This first outing by DICE sits neatly between these poles, and its sense of comic frivolity has, unfortunately, not been replicated since.
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