By Drew Maier (March 13, 2003)

Electronic Art’s latest shooter Battlefield 1942 is a must-buy game. Whether you like first-person shooters, World War II battles, or just good old fun, Battlefield will not disappoint. After having spent hundreds of hours playing through great Half-Life modifications such as Team Fortress Classic, Counter-Strike, and Day of Defeat, I must say that I was wondering what new Battlefield 1942 could offer to the genre of multiplayer shooting games. After loading up the game, installing the necessary patches from the Internet, and booting up the game, I realize how much games before Battlefield were sorely lacking in terms of originality. Playing the game once will get you hooked for weeks to come.

The premise is simple: a game that allows players to fight famous battles from the European, North African, or Pacific theaters of World War II. Despite the title, the battles span all throughout WWII. There are a total of sixteen maps. Such examples are Stalingrad, Berlin, the storming of Normandy, Wake Island, Midway Island, El Alamein, and my personal favorite Gazala. All of the locations have a distinct feel to them. The North African battles, for example, are mountainous and wide open, whereas the European ones such as Stalingrad feel very closed-in and chaotic.

There is a single-player element to the game, though unless you have a slow Internet connection or are afraid of online jerks, you will never play it. The artificial intelligence is nowhere near comparable to the skill of real players through playing online. The multiplayer interface makes it quite easy to pick a server based on its speed, map, or number of players, and load up a game.

The round begins by picking teams, either Axis or Allies. Japanese, American, British, German, and Russian forces are available to choose from, depending on the location of the battle. Then a class is picked. There are scouts with sniper rifles, anti-tank men with rocket launchers, assault men with automatic rifles, medics with the ability to heal, and engineers who are equipped with mines and detonation packs. Different weapons kits within the classes allow for many variations in how to play the game. The weapons are accurately modeled as well, featuring Thompson automatic rifles, Colt pistols, and the notorious Axis potato masher grenades, to name a few.

There are several modes in which to play: capture the flag, deathmatch, and conquest. Capture the flag and deathmatch are nothing new to multiplayer shooting games. Conquest is the most widely played and enjoyable mode. This involves players fighting to eliminate enemy forces through either killing all of them or taking all of their bases. Conquest battles can be very dramatic and exciting when both sides are short on reserves. 

The most unique aspect of the game, however, comes with the ability to man vehicles and machinery. There are jeeps, tanks, planes, bombers, anti-aircraft guns, battleships, and APC’s (mass transport vehicles). Nothing beats hopping into a plane and dive bombing the enemy stronghold on Wake Island, or leading a Panzer division through the torn streets of Berlin. The physics of the vehicles are modeled so that anyone can operate them easily and are not hyper-realistic. The only real problems with vehicles as it stands are how people can abuse them. Some players will wait at spawn points and kill everyone in sight, making the rounds a repetitive process of dying. Vehicles really make the game a step above all others in creating the sense of an all-out war.

Also helping to create the sense of war are the graphics. Each map has a different color scheme and layout to make each map have a distinct feel. Subtle details such as swaying of trees, scratches on the glass of a sniper scope, and detailed shadows help to make the game feel less synthetic. Playing on high quality with 1024x768 resolution, the game runs very well on a 1.4Ghz system with a GeForce4 video card. The game does have very high system requirements, though, and requires a relatively new graphics card, either Radeon or GeForce, in order to function adequately. Also a necessity is a broadband Internet connection. There is so much going on, especially with large battles that can have as many as 64 people, that 56k modems will simply make the game unplayable.

The sounds of the game are good, but not great. There is not much else than explosions and gunshots in the audio department. Some music could have been added in to add variations in repetitive sounds.

Battlefield is mind-blowing to play the first week or so, but how does it stack up in the long run? I’ve had the game for a few months now and still boot up to play it everyday. The various classes, vehicles, and maps result in an experience that results in endless hours of playtime and well worth the $50 price tag. With those possibilities in mind, Battlefield 1942 can be recommended to anyone who loves being a part of the action of World War II.