The Welcome Return of one of the Greatest Shooters of all Time
Back in 2001, an ambitious FPS MMO called World War II Online was released. Although it was plagued with technical issues and was overly focused on "realisim," at its heart was a brilliant idea -- recreate World War II as an online shooter with a mix of infantry, armory, aircraft and artillery. Despite a slow pace and frequent deaths and long hikes after respawn, World War II Onlline held moments that had never been experienced before in an online shooter -- such as a pinned down squad being saved by the timely arrival of an allied aircraft, or the sight of tanks duking it out on the battlefield with infantry running for cover. Although it wasn't as commercially successful as its developers had hoped, it held the kernal of a great idea that would form the genesis of a better game -- DICE's Battlefield 1942. With a more arcade focus and a faster pace, BF1942 offered large maps filled with vehicles, fighting and mayhem. It introduced the concept of control points -- flags on the map that doubled as spawn points that could be captured -- and "tickets" which represented how many reinforcements an individual side had remaining. Once tickets become exhausted, one side or the other loses the game.
It was in many ways the first realization of what a sandbox shooter could be, and it pulled in a rabid fanbase bored with the Quake and Unreal-style gameplay of other World War II shooters such as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The addition of vehicles and objective-based maps gave the sense that Battlefield offered more than a Team Deathmatch varient -- it gave players the experience of warfare as two competing armies trying to take and defend territory. The use of vehicles was revolutionary, and would go on to inspire games like Halo and Call of Duty to include them.
Many developers, including DICE themselves, tried to recreate the magic of Battlefield 1942 -- the insane sandbox action, the sense of scale, and the balance of weapons and hardware to various degrees of success. Some would-be immitators have appeared over the years -- most notably Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, FRONTLINE: Fuel of War and Star Wars Battlefront -- but few were capable of living up to the greatness of the original. It's arguable that DICE themselves only recaptured the magic in the modern-day PC follow-up Battlefield 2, while struggling to translate the franchise to consoles with Battlefield 2: Modern Combat and Battlefield Bad Company. Modern Combat, hindered by using the Playstation 2 as the lead platform, suffered from a variety of design and technical limitations, while Bad Company with its focus on environmental destruction, a rich single player campaign and a new multiplayer game mode called "Gold Rush" would only graft on the classic BF conquest gameplay through a patch after its original release. Bad Company was a good game in its own right, but felt more like a new "Bad Company" style game rather than a continuation of the Battlefield franchise.
It seems like a port of Battlefield 1942 (or the original PC Battlefield 2) to consoles would be a no brainer, and although there were plans to bring it to the original XBOX, ultimately the project was cancelled over EA's dispute with Microsoft over how online play would be handled. Now, some seven years later, EA has finally brought Battlefield 1942 to the XBOX 360 and PS3 via the upgraded Battlefield 1943. And for the first time, console gamers can now enjoy the pure Battlefield experience. Longtime fans of the series may be put off by the simplified character classes (cut down to just three basic classes), arcade-style aircraft controls and a limitation of just three maps from the Pacific Theatre (four if you count "Coral Sea," which was originally unlocked when the each consol's player base reached 43,000,000 kills), but overall these changes have helped make Battlefield 1943 a faster-paced experience keeping with its status as a budget-priced downloadable title.
Battlefield 1943 infuses the best elements of Bad Company's environmental destruction and controls, with the best elements of Battlefield 1942's core gameplay to create a game that may even surpass its predecessor. With a modern squad system and the current point of confilct clearly marked on the minimap and HUD, BF1943 makes it easy to hop into the action and stay in the action, where previous Battlefield games saw a lot of spawning, running long distances and dying. Artillery strikes have been replaced with player-controlled "Bombing Raids" launched by special stations located on each map, and planes are more accessible, but still play the same critical support role they were used for in BF1942.
With the unlocking of Coral Sea and its "Air Superiority" mode, BF1943 is actually two games in one -- a sandbox shooter and a strong arcade flight sim. With controls that harken more towards Crimson Skies and Warhawk than its PC predecessor, BF1943 makes flying more accessible and fun. Where both Crimson Skies and Warhawk were heavily influenced by Battlefield 1942, the original now takes inspiration from its successors. The map design of Coral Sea, while essentially the same as in Battlefield 1942, now has the arches and tunnels featured on Crimson Skies and Warhawk maps. But unlike those games, there are no power-ups or special maneuvers that must be executed by clicking the analog sticks. The flying is much more straightforward and easy to pick up. And players who don't want to fly can still contribute by manning flak cannons on the aircraft carriers.
The three basic BF1943 maps -- Wake Island, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima -- have all been updated and improved from the BF1942 originals, though the basic layouts remain the same. To me, they feel a bit more compact and spawning and running to the next flag isn't the laborious experience it could be in Battlefield 1942. Playing the same three maps over and over again never seems to get boring given all the choices available to players, but one hopes that DICE will release a DLC pack that will contain updated maps from the European, African and Italian theatres from the original game and its expansions. Many console players have yet to experience great maps like El Alamein, Stalingrad, Operation: Market Garden, Anzio, Monte Cassino, Battle of Brittain and many, many more. Given the popularity of BF1943, one would hope that publisher EA would see the financial incentive in porting them into the new game.
All and all, BF1943 is both a nostalgic return to an old classic as well as the introduction of one of the most influential first person shooters of all time to a new generation of gamers. Players weaned on Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 will find much to like in DICE's frentic sandbox shooter. And at just $15, there is more value to BF1943 than nearly any downloadable game on the XBOX Live Marketplace. This is a must-buy for shooter fans, and it may even prove more enduring than many traditional retail games. Let's hope that EA continues to return to their back catalog for new XBLA releases. As dated as it is now, there's definitely an audience for other games such as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, the classic Command and Conquer titles, and many other PC games of years past that can gain new life on both XBLA and PSN.
