Crouching under a grove of palm trees, hidden by tall grass, I stare down the barrel of my sniper rifle patiently waiting on the American troops to come charging over the hill. My team has silently coordinated a beautiful plan of attack that has pushed our enemy into a single corner of the map. Our planes are flying above their base continually pelting their position with payload after payload of bombs weakening their attack plans. My teammates have moved our tanks into a position that should help us prevent any type of moving assault that our enemies might be assembling. With my weapon locked and loaded, my job is to pick off any ground troops attempting to flank us from either side of our position. As a further precaution, we have secured our recently seized bases with enough explosives to ensure any attempt of a hostile takeover will be extinguished by the flip of a switch. This match will be ours as long as we keep it together and hold our position. It is just a matter of minutes now….
I wouldn’t call Battlefield 1943 a sequel, its more of a re-imaging of Battlefield 1942 designed for console gamers. The developer, DICE, has taken the core pieces of what makes a Battlefield game fun and delivered a nice downloadable package for both 360 and PS3 owners. The console edition of Battlefield 1943 hosts 24 player on-line battles spanning three maps from the Pacific Theater of World War II. Players join the ranks of either the Japanese Imperial Army (IJN) or the United States Marines (USMC) and are pitted in a head-on conquest to control Wake Island, Iwo Jima, and Gaudalcanal. The basic concept behind the gameplay is simple: storm the beach, capture one of five objective points, advance to the next point, and repeat. Each capture point is a base with a flag pole in the center. Occupying the area surrounding the flag pole will slowly raise your teams flag. When the flag reaches the top of the pole, the check point is yours. If the opposing army enters your area, the flag will have a yellow X displayed over it letting troops know it is under attack. If the enemy soldier is alone, your flag will be lowered and their flag will begin to rise up the pole. If the invading soldiers are not stopped before their flag reaches the top of the pole, they win control over the checkpoint. Victory is determined by two health bars that represent each team at the top of your on-screen display. Holding a capture point will slowly deplete the opposing teams health bar. The more capture points your team holds, the quicker the other teams health bar is depleted. When the health bar runs out the match is over. On average, each match lasts anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes.
Playing as the Japanese Imperial Army or the United States Marines you choose between one of three character classes, Infantry (automatic assault rifle), Rifleman (heavy gunner) , or Scout (sniper rifle). Each class has a different secondary weapon as well. Infantry get an anti-tank cannon, Scouts can deploy dynamite that is detonated remotely and Rifleman are armed with a grenade launcher. Selecting a class does not keep you tied to that specific set of weapons for the duration of the battle. When soldiers are killed they leave a pack behind which can be picked up in exchange for your current weapons. You can also choose to change classes each time you die, which gives you an opportunity to select a class that may be more affective against the current attack you are facing. Battlefield 1943 weapons have an unlimited supply of ammo but weapons still need to be reloaded between rounds. The reload times for weapons are a little slow so conserving shots fired until the time is right is a matter of life or death in the game. This also prevents players from running around spraying bullets everywhere since there is a need to conserve ammo. When you are killed in the BF1943 you have three choices when respawning into the action. You can opt to auto-spawn (default), which means you will appear at the flag closes to the current action point on the map. If you want more control over your starting point you can select a flag of your choice, or you can choose to restart near a specific squad member you would like to team up with in the field. Selecting your spawn location adds some strategy to re-entering the game and it prevents players from having to run across the entire map to jump back into the action.
The game also gives you a chance to commandeer various ground and air vehicles that are scattered across the map adding to the intensity of Battlefield 1943. Each map hosts light infantry vehicles armed with machine guns, tanks, and fighter plans. Most vehicles will spawn around the different capture points and offer a wide range of strategic options when assaulting an enemy flag. During a match the use of vehicles can be the difference between victory or defeat. Ground vehicles are the reason the ability to change your character class becomes important. If your enemy is rolling into your base with a tank they can be hard to stop if you do not have anyone playing as the infantry class. Tanks can be defeated, but they can take a lot of damage. In most of the matches I played in, storming the enemies stronghold with a tank backing you up proved to increase the odds of taking over their position. Each team can also take to the skies in fighter planes armed with bombs and machine guns. The flight controls may feel a little backward to a lot people who haven’t played a Battlefield game before. If you find it difficult flying the friendly skies I suggest you try out the tutorial that’s available through the main menu. Once you are comfortable with the dual thumb-stick controls you will be experiencing WWII dog fighting and find yourself raining hell from above in no time. Being vehicle-less doesn’t mean you don’t stand a chance if an enemy tank is approaching and all you have are a couple grenades and sniper rifle. There are plenty of turrets and anti-aircraft weapons scattered across the map that inflict a powerful punch against mobilized armies. DICE has designed BF1943 using their own Frostbite engine which compliments the powerful guns attached to these vehicles nicely. Using this engine allowed the developers to make explosions from the barrage of gunfire, grenades, and bombs have an affect on the environment in-game. Running a vehicle into trees and fences will bring them crashing down, fire from tanks and rockets will blow holes into the walls of buildings. Enough damage will, eventually, destroy an entire building and expose hidden enemies allowing ground troops to pick them off one by one.
The game is host to a lot of small features that shouldn’t be overlooked. To start, there are no health packs in BF1943 keeping players distracted from the cause at hand. Health is regenerated slowly similar to Halo 3. Hiding behind a rock or a building for five to ten seconds after taking damage is more than enough time to heal up before jumping back into battle. Pilots have the ability to abandon their plane and parachute to safety before their plane is shot down. Parachuting is nice a way to grab a capture point that is further away from your teams aircraft carrier quickly and quietly at the start of a match. Its also fun to point your plane at your enemies stronghold and bailout before impact, giving you a front row seat to the devastation you have delivered upon them. DICE also put a challenge to players that I thought was interesting. They promised players a fourth map that could be added to the game via download for free. The catch being that they would not release the map until 43 million kills had been recorded in the game. To the surprise of the developers, the 360 audience reached that goal within the 1st week of the games release. All of these different mechanics added together make each match in Battlefield 1943 always feel different from the last. The fight for dominance of the map is continually shifting back and forth keeping you on your toes. I played a lot of games that started out with my team quickly taking over the entire map and within minutes we were down to one flag and finding ourselves pinned into a corner. The majority of the matches I play seem to remain close until the final few minutes of the battle.
A few things did disappoint me during my play sessions but the audience is more to blame than the game itself. Playing with my 360 headset on I expected the usual juvenile banter echoing in my ear but I found something else, silence. In game a like Battlefield, cooperative play is very rewarding. Working together to achieve victory is what the game is all about. Its refreshing to play a game without the constant chatter of racial and sexuality slurs, but I was a little disappointed that people weren’t working together. The other problem I have experienced is a lot of console players are treating the game like Halo or Gears of War. I ran into a lot of people who were focusing on kill counts as opposed to capturing and protecting objective points on the map. I have seen people sitting in a building sniping opponents who are off in the distance while the flag next to them was being captured and they didn’t seem to notice, or care. As the audience matures I expect these issues to dissipate making Battlefield 1943 a welcome addition to both the Xbox Live and PSN libraries. Its possible, the success of this title may change the way developers look at downloadable content going forward. After playing thirty-five plus hours of Battlefield 1943, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing. If you have an extra $15.00 burning a hole in your pocket I suggest giving BF1943 a try. Unless you hate fun, it should not disappoint.
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