Battlefield 1942 Hands-On

World War II has been the theatre of choice for many PC games over the years, with Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault among the most notable of the recent FPS releases. There have been countless others - turn based strategies, dogfight simulators, tank combat games, and battleship bridge simulators galore that have graced the hard drives of PC gamers over a good chunk of time. There's a certain feeling of satisfaction one gets with making the world free for democracy or trying to change history by playing on the other side. But in many of the WWII games over the years, there has been a certain focus on one facet of the war - the game can be any one of the warfare simulators, but it would rarely include others, let alone encompass most of them. More specifically, a WWII FPS shooter may contain a tank or two, but never air or sea power. Or a flight simulator may have ground forces, but they are more like targets to be fired upon - certainly not the focus of the game. And, in most cases, all of the enemies (other than the player) would be controlled by an AI rather than another human, making the experience ultimately unsatisfying.

This neighborhood is really romantic, I'm thinkin' of moving out here.

I'm aiming for that desert-lizard over there.

But now, with gaming technology advancing to the level it has, there can be a game that includes all of the facets of (then) modern warfare. EA and Digital Illusions CE are teaming up to bring us Battlefield 1942, a FPS that longs to be much more than what it is. I've had a chance to look at the beta, and so far, I like what I see.

The game is best described as a HALO-style FPS (relatively speaking, of course). That is to mean the player is any of 5 types of soldiers, specializing in whatever he/she chooses - from a sniper rifle-wielding scout, an assault rifler, a bazooka-toting anti-tank trooper, to a combat medic and an engineer capable of laying anti-personnel and tank mines. But the interesting thing is that any player (as in HALO) can utilize any of the available vehicles - and there are quite a few available vehicles.

The beta only has two maps currently - a desert battle between the German and British forces (called Tobruk) and a Pacific Island assault between the Japanese and Americans (called Wake). Both of these maps are Conquest-style maps. Each side (Axis and Allies) are allotted a set number of tickets, which steadily dwindle as each side gains frags, controls command points, and generally wreaks havoc on the opposing side. If one team runs out of tickets, or the attacking team (the Axis in both maps) gains full control of all of the command points, the battle is over. My favorite thus far is the Tobruk map. Tobruk is more limited on the types of available vehicles, (no sea or air power here!) but is not lacking in the fun factor. It is as a desert should be - wide, expansive and pretty flat. Moving from point to point by foot on this map takes a good long time, and doing so without the cover of a vehicle can be hazardous to your health (you can say that again - Ed). With the player able to use tanks, APC's and jeeps, there's no shortage of available transportation. In Wake, the island is a shaped like a giant C, with command points running in a line across the island. It's a bit more confined, but all of the vehicles are available for use - right down to a HUGE battleship capable of shelling the shoreline clean of entrenched defenses.

Many (all) of the vehicles can contain more than one person - in the case of a tank, the primary operator drives the tank and fires the main gun, while the passenger fires a top-mounted machine gun. An APC can house a driver, machine gunner, and 4 passengers. If the machine gunner gets killed, one of the passengers can quickly take his place. A fighter plane can house a pilot/bombardier and a tail gunner (and you CAN bail out of a plane mid-flight - you spawn with a parachute!), and I will personally attest to driving a battleship and trying to park it RIGHT in the middle of the island! (It didn't work. It quickly became a new home for the fishies.) The vehicle physics are not at all accurate, in order to enhance the gameplay, and to keep the pace of the game moving quickly.

In addition to the myriad of vehicles, the game also allows you to take advantage of the stationary defenses - towers that contain machine guns, anti-aircraft turret emplacements and massive artillery cannons that work much better when a scout is feeding you coordinates. (Said cannons are what brought my seafaring adventures to a horrible, grisly end.) Truly, the game offers a veritable plethora of death-dealing devices for your pleasure and amusement.

Hey, smoking puff in the tank is strictly forbidden.

Welcome to paradise. Kabooom!

Graphically, this game isn't exactly groundbreaking, but it's certainly no slouch in the eye candy department. With all the details maxed-out, the focus shifts to some really nice, high-resolution textures and the excellent lighting and shadows, so it all becomes pretty pleasing to the eye for a predominantly multiplayer game. Battlefield is on a par with MoH: AA, in terms of quality and bringing a WWII war-torn battlefield to life, but the game's merits are not carried on the strength of the graphics. Its true strengths lie in the gameplay and vehicle combat.

Basically, this game boils down to teamwork. Just as in real war, no one person is going to win the battle for either side, it boils down to which team works together the best. The game provides a very quick and easy communications setup, all of which uses the function keys to quickly call for backup, artillery strikes, warn of enemy advancement, etc. Also, maximizing the effectiveness of your armor units by loading up on extra people is a must, since an anti-tank trooper can take out a vehicle quickly, the more people firing on them, the better.

Finally, I should also mention here that there is some work left to be done on the net code, and on the game's stability. Of course, these problems are to be expected with betas, and I don't hold them against the developers in any way - but these bugs need to be ironed out quickly before the game's release. But when the game is running well, I have nothing but good things to say. I'd like to check out a few more maps and game styles, but this one is shaping up very nicely. It's faster than a standard tactical shooter, but not like an all-out UT-style frag-fest. It strikes a very happy medium between the two - kind of like MoH: Allied Assault.

The feeling you get from being a lone bunker defender who's going up against two German "Tiger" tanks in BF1942 is truly unique (and ultimately suicidal). With some net code tweaks and proper server support, this game could easily be bigger than MoH: AA (and it certainly is more massive - Ed).