Holds its own in the online shooter genre and at a great price.
Battlefield 1943 puts you into the Pacific Theatre playing as either the American Marines or the Japanese Infantry in World War Two. There is no single-player option what-so-ever and no bots either. The only offline option is the tutorial and I'm not sure a tutorial alone is worth £10. The onlien multiplayer is where it's at in this game and thankfully it's fantastic. The player count is limited to 24 but the maps have been designed around this number. Even though these are old maps from 1942, they have been tweaked slightly to better accomodate this smaller player count.
The maps you'll be battling on are Wake Island, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. All three are symmetrical with the Americans spawning at one end and the Japanese on the opposite. Control points are dotted about the maps and the more your team control, the quicker the enemy teams life bar will deplete. The life bar will also deplete by killing enemies, although the focus here is certainly capturing rather than killing.
You can do the killing in a number of ways and there are 3 distinct classes to help you do this; Anti-Infantry, Anti-Tank and Sniper. The former has a typical action bolt rifle and grenade launcher whilst the Anti-Tank has an SMG and a rocket launcher. The Sniper is pretty self-explanatory. To better suit the quick, casual gamer looking for some instant Battlefield action; all the classes have infinite ammo and now have regenerative health to bring the series up to the modern standards set by Halo and Call of Duty. The classes also have secondary abilities to accomodate for the classes missing from previous Battlefield games. For example, the Anti-Tank class can repair vehicles and the Sniper can place mines. The classes are well-balanced and you're bound to find a favourite.
There are plenty of other ways to take care of business in Battlefield 1943. You can take control of jeeps, tanks, boats, planes, AA guns and turrets. They're great fun to use, especially in the first person perspective. All can be jumped into pretty easily and get killing but the planes are the exception. I recommend the tutorial if you don't want to be mocked for failed take-off after failed take-off whilst fighting online.
Getting kills and capturing points give syou experience and allows you to rank up. Unfortunately this doesn't really do anything other than a new badge next to your name and it's a bit disappointing that no other rewards were made available.
Another advancement DICE have made to keep 1943 feeling modern is destructible environments. This is thanks to the Frostbite engine that was used to power Battlefield: Bad Company in 2008 and it works well here, lending a bit of unpredictability to proceedings whilst still keeping gameplay fair and balanced. This also makes traversing the maps more fun as tanks and jeeps can now break down fences and trees rather than having to keep to the roads. The new air raid function works similarly to the air strikes found in Call of Duty's online multiplayer and this also causes buildings to explode, making them much more effective than those found in Activision's series.
Battlefield 1943 also looks really good. It's very easy to forget that you're playing a downloadable game. There are moments when it will become apparent that it's not a full game as destruction can sometimes be inconsistent and the water doesn't look particularly great either. Other than that, it all looks really nice with detailed weapons and vehicles, great looking explosions and the maps also look really nice. Sound effects are also authentic and sound great on a surround sound system with bombs going off, buildings collapsing, water splashing and bullets flying past your ears. The only problem is how hilariously loud soldiers scream upon death, it's certainly unrealistic and can take you out of the action a bit.
Despite a few visual niggles and disppointing ranking system, Battefield 1943 is a fantastic game. As a multiplayer experience it can easily hold its own among hits like Call of Duty and it's incredible that it only costs £10. There's nothing else like it on Xbox Live Arcade or PSN and any fan of shooters looking for an addictive game to tide them over until ODST and Modern Warfare 2 should definately pick it up.
By Tom Acres - Systemlink Blog
