The year is 2142, and this is a battlefield. I love dramatic openings.It seems like EA cranks out Battlefield games almost as fast as theycrank out their sports games. But we all know the difference betweenthose two genres of games; one is awesome and has guns. My vote is forbattlefield. The real question is how does this futuristic Battlefieldstack up when they no longer have real guns and vehicles to go by?
For some reason they still need to make a story line for thebattlefields, as if to justify their existence besides letting us takeshots at other people. I’ll try and sum it up faster than their singleparagraph (it really is only a paragraph long). The next ice age hascome and the European (EU) and Russio-Asian (PAC) forces are fightingover the dwindling resources. That’s it, now go shoot each other.
No story, but don’t pick on them for that, like I said before (andwill probably say over and over through this review), Battlefield 2142is bringing us something we’ve all always wanted. Mech styled combat,or at least something newer than Mechwarrior 4. I’m sorry to say thatthere aren’t as many walking robots as you’d like to see. You only haveone style, and you’ve already seen it in the previews.
A lot of people might be thinking that they saw a mech pouring outfirepower in the video, and it really does pour out firepower, but sodoes everything else. They made the mech very anti-infantry due to mostother vehicles having more firepower to their name. Those othervehicles consist of tanks and a mobile spawn point with an EMPlauncher. If you want to take out foot soldiers, there is no better waythan with the walker. This is mainly due to the fact it has the bestturning speed to the vehicles with guns that can pose a good threat.One thing you’ll be able to do with the new mech is turn the top partindependently from the walking part, much like the tank turret. They’veevened out the mech by making it so the mech can’t look too high up,meaning it is easy prey for those who learn to fly or who simply get ona roof with a rocket launcher.
Some of the other vehicles you’ll see are two different variationsof tanks. Variation one is hover based. I know you all must be gettinggiddy with excitement about the idea of a tank that hovers, but let metell you, nothing bets the standard issue rolling tank (aka, variationtwo). The hover tank only has one thing up its sleeve that the othertank doesn’t, it can strafe, but it lacks the turret turning ability ofa normal tank. That alone is enough to make it avoidable if you have achoice between them.
Besides the tanks you’ll have armored unit carrying type vehicles.These guys aren’t meant to roll into the fray and stay there. They area spawn point which is handy, but you’ll want to hide them behind abuilding for optimal use. Their other main use comes in during the newtitan mode, which is very fun by the way. The one other use they haveis that they are a capsule launcher. I know, it sounds weird, but letme explain. During titan mode you’ll have the ability to launch ontothe other enemies titan and assault it. This vehicle will allow playersto launch these tubes into the air and somewhat guide them to wherethey want to land, without harm to yourself. It is rather neat to seeseveral of them launch all at the same time. That’s when you know thereis a coordinated squad on the move.
As far as flying vehicles go, you’re down to two here. You’ll have thehelicopter type and the plane style. Nothing super fancy I know, youdon’t get an endless list of planes, but this is good. I was never onefor the “17 new planes and 36 new tanks!” due to the fact they were allvery much alike. Seeing as how they use to love variations, it is goodto see how they chopped things down vehicle wise. This way you’ll knowhow to fly them from the get go and won’t have to wonder “I wonder whatis different”. The nice thing about the helicopter style one is you canalmost ram the thing into the ground as long as the bottom hits first.A lot of people will hate this, say it’s unrealistic, and it is. It’sjust nice for people like me who suck at landings and don’t want tokill everyone inside of the vehicle.
That is something you can be punished for now to boot. If you jumpout of a helicopter that goes slamming into the ground, you cansometimes take team kills for this, which I think is great. It keepspeople from jumping in and crashing them, especially since thehelicopter one is a mobile spawn point as well. Nothing like havingfour people vote to punish you at one time to ruin your day.
One of the things that was supposed to be a grand implementation with2142 was the fact you could pick your new unlock between games as yourrank went up. In true Battlefield style, the game was very buggy on dayone. Ranked servers weren’t working at all; it was a huge error too. Alot of people were losing hours of game play points and sometimeslosing all of their points. This has been more or less remedied andthings seemed to be working most of the time. Sometimes I still have toswitch servers or restart the game for my points to take effect on myrank, sometimes a day or two. Either way, I generally tend to get them.
There are only 4 classes in 2142, but with all of the unlockoptions; no one will be the same on your server. You have a total of 8different unlocks per class along with squad leader unlocks and unlocksthat’ll help your soldier out in general. The class unlocks are set upin a tier style system like the rest of them, meaning if you want thatthird one up, you have to get the first two. For the classes you have 3item unlocks before you get a weapon unlock. Item unlocks can beanything from mines to helmets that share info with your squad, to thedefibrillator (a must get).
You earn ranks by earning points; points can be earned for doing alot of things. You could kill a man, defending an area, assaulting anarea, taking the flag, damaging a titan, healing people, replenishingammo, and even following orders. The last one is the best improvement Ithink, it only furthers the want and need of people to work together.
One thing you’ll find out about the classes is that none of themare better than any of the others. They all have their perks, but itall comes down to the player in control. Generally if you square offthree assault units against an engineer, the engineer should be takenout no problem. The assault class was built for taking out people, letalone if the number is on their side. I have seen this go backwardsbefore. Engineer is my favorite class, and I always find it odd when Isurvive a full out assault by myself. I guess the sniper that shoots mein an enclosed hallway with his one shot rifle must feel the same way.This only goes to show, that the classes aren’t unbalanced, you justneed to know how to use them right.
Titan mode is the newest mode that is the big crowd drawing itemwith this game. In titan mode, each team has a huge warship that theyneed to keep up in the air as they take out the enemy one. There aretwo ways to take out a titan, but step one is one hundred percentalways the same. You have to capture and hold missile silos, missilesare the only things that can hurt the shields around the titans. Theylaunch a missile every 2 minutes or every time they are captured.Meaning if it goes neutral, and you take it back, it fires again. Onseveral occasions I would hang back and wait for my silo to get takendown to neutral, only to storm in and take it back again for the nextlaunch. It seems cheap, but with some of the other tactics you’ll seeon the field, this is the least of them.
Once the shields are down on the titan, you can either continue tohold the silos and pound their titan into submission or storm onto it.You can only storm onto one section of the ship though, and you canonly reach it in two ways. You can either get an expert flyer to takeyou there, and possibly land on the titan, or use the armored vehiclewith launcher. Once inside you have to take out some control consoles,four in all, and then go after the main reactor. The main reactor is atough little thing, but if you have a recon guy with detonation packsor an engineer, it can fall a lot faster, but the recon guy seems towork the fastest.
There is a downfall to the titan mode though, if the commando moves thetitan, it causes huge lag and glitches with bodies. A lot of servershave banned moving the titan due to the lag. Since the titans areloaded up with guns, they can be a great weapon to use with the silos.You’ll be able to tell if the titan is moving based upon something thatisn’t so much a glitch as a coding “whoops”. That is the bodies on thefloor will slide around. More than once I’ve seen a man continuouslystorm a hallway over and over since he would never fully die, just becritically wounded. This caused him to fall down and stay in place asthe titan and the rest of us moved, this made it look like he wassliding back down the hallway, where another assault guy was ready andwaiting to defibrillate him back to life so he could storm once again.If you miss with your life bringing zap though, they’ll slide throughthe wall into god knows what.
The list of things wrong with battlefield 2142 at launch waspretty large, some of it server based, some of it code based. Mybiggest complaint besides the rather annoying point loss was the factthey are still not supporting widescreen monitors. The highest is still1128 x 864, come on EA; give us wide screeners some love. Another thingyou’ll notice that might irk you is that when a titan is destroyed, itexplodes. This often causes connections to skip half a beat to where itmight disconnect you, and isn’t an all too terrible uncommon experiencefor some. This means you lose all those points you just earned. Thereis nothing like seeing 100 points leave you because of something thatshouldn’t happen.
In the end, it is a very fun online shooter. Don’t even hope tohave fun with single player, it is exactly like BF2. 16 player mapsonly with bots that aren’t too smart. If you get this game, plan onplaying online. That’s where all the fun is at.
"Battlefield 2142 (PC)" is on sale October 17, 2006 and is rated T. Shooter.
