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Battlefield 1942 Review

EA's latest World War 2 FPS is one of the best, if not the best, online FPS's ever... read the full review..

Battlefield 1942 is the latest game in the Realistic First Person Shooter genre. As the name implies, the fighting takes place in 1942 using the weapons that were utilized at the time in WW II and on actual battles that took place in 1942 like Battle of the Midway, Kursk, etc all taking place in 4 Theatres, South Pacific, North Africa, and Eastern, and Western Europe.

Presentation:
You're first greeted by a nice little intro that shows mainly the vehicles in a CG video shooting their weapons, nice the first time you see it but having to watch that intro everytime you boot up the game is aggravating. The main menu is sweet and simple, point to what you want and click on it and you're ready to go. On the main menu in the background it shows a very dim CG video that loops of some different fighting, very similar to the opening CG video. Its not that pretty but you can easily get to what you want to do.

Gameplay:
BF1942 consists of your typical FPS kill the enemy gameplay. What makes it great is how you do it. Choose your method of murder I like to say since at your fingertips you have the ability to:

A. Hop in a tank and blow someone or something to hell or you could just use your alternate fire machine gun to fill them with lead and if the tank you wanted is occupied by someone you can just jump into the top gunner position located on the top of most of the tanks where you'll have a machine gun at your disposle(although you'll be a sitting duck up there).

B. C'mon fly guy, tanks not your thing? Why not take control of some of the many planes you have available to you on certain maps. Fly around, shoot other planes or drop bombs on enemies to blow them to smitherines. Just like with the tank though, some of the planes have other weapons available for a 2nd and/or 3rd guy to jump in where a guy can take the machine gun mounted on the back of the plane and on a bomber you could have someone take the gun located on the bottom of the plane.

C. Jump in a jeep, run someone over.

D. Join the Navy. Control a destroyer or various other ships. Remember, if the gun is on the ship then you can use it so don't forget to utilize your cannons and blow up the mainland or just another ship. Oh yea, I almost forgot, there's a reason that some ships have an underwater radar.... yep... they're called submarines so go ahead and hop into one of those if you like and blow up an enemy ship but beware of depth charges.

E. Tired of that damn plane dropping bombs on your base? Thats why there's anti-aircraft! Get in one of these suckers and blow those planes to hell! Remember, hitting them in the engine blows them up alot quicker. Anti-aircraft is also effective against well.. anything, like troops or tanks, but once again you're a sitting duck this way.

F. Cannons, yes there are cannons mounted on beaches on maps where there are ships. That way you've got a fighting chance.

G. Be a regular Assault soldier? Sure, I guess you could and be equipped with a good machine gun, a handy dandy knife, a pistol, and some grenades but don't forget about....

H. Scouts would be better named snipers since that is their primary weapon but you get the regulation pistol all troops get, the knife, and something rarely used, binoculars. Effectively used binoculars are deadly since anyone in a cannon or anti-aircraft can switch to the view of your binoculars and blow up any target that you're seeing.

I. Anti-Tank's are well.. best used against tanks but hard to use against infantry. The reason being you have the knife, pistol, and the anti-tank bazooka type gun which is hard to aim against infantry since there isn't any spread damage like you might find with a rocket launcher type weapon in quake 3.

J. Medic's are similar to the regular Assault soldiers except they are equipped with a little bit weaker machine gun and instead of grenades they are able to heal themselves or teammates.

K. Engineers are probably the most interesting class for an infantry soldier. Engineers have the pistol, knife, and what seems like a sniper rifle type weapon minus the scope since its one shot and then you have to reload which can take forever. What makes them so interesting is the fact that you can lay down the little mines that when a vehicle goes over them it blows them up and well... you can place dynamite and blow people up with that which is VERY fun since the dynamite blows up a fairly large area but its quite difficult to lay down dynamite since you usually want to put it in a place where enemies will be and usually enemies are already there so you're usually killed while placing dynamite.

The modes you can play are the usual capture the flag(you know... capture the enemies flag(bring it back to your base and get a point if your flag is at your base when you return with the enemies), team death match(one team against another), and the only mode you'll probably play which serves as the backbone of the game would be Conquest. In Conquest each team has tickets which are like points and they go down by people being killed or other factors that depend on the map(like one team having more than half the bases under their control). You capture an enemy base by standing at the flag pole for 10 seconds if there are no enemy soldiers there, when if there are you won't be able to capture it since the game won't let you.

In each of the modes you're either on the Allied side or Axis side. Depending on the map you'll be either the U.S., Soviets, British, German, or Japanese. All the vehicles in the game are based on the vehicle that the country you're playing as used in WWII in 1942, so you won't be using a Tiger Tank in a game where its U.S. vs Japanese.

Online Multiplayer is where you're going to want to play. You can play with up to 64 people online. Don't even bother buying it if you want to only play it offline since all you get out of that is a little history of each battlefield before you fight and a bogged down computer since the enemy A.I. uses up so much system resources its not even funny.

Controls are the usual FPS story, WSAD to move around, your mouse to aim, left click to shoot, right click for alternate fire. you know the story. The only time controls get bad is when you're in a plane which will take some getting used to since planes and the mouse are very good partners but it can be done very well if you can get over the initial frustration of crashing everytime for a little bit. Occasionally, it'll be hard to tell what direction you're moving in while in a tank since you need to use the 'inside the tank' view to see where your gun is aimed at so you could have your gun aimed to the side and be moving in a different direction than you're seeing. There is an easy fix to this though, look right under your view and there is a little icon of a tank that shows where your gun is aimed in relation to the rest of the tank making it easier to actually tell where you're headed.

Overall its a solid game and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it stole the throne from CounterStrike as online FPS king. The only problem is you need a pretty high end PC to run this beast which can be a problem.

Pros:
1. great graphics
2. damn fun(isn't this all that matters?)
3. very historically correct except for 1 thing(look below)
4. being able to fight on WWII battlefields like omaha beach is wonderful
5. amount of vehicles available to you and all the weapons

Cons:
1. High system requirements
2. offline mode is just plain nutty
3. problems running the game some people have because of their sound card(soundblasters specifically)
4. long loading time between levels

Scores:

Gameplay- 5/5
Graphics- 4.5/5
Presentation- 4.5/5
Sound- 4.5/5

Overall- 5/5(not an average)

System Requirements:
500 MHz processor; RAM: 128 MB; Video: 32 MB supported Direct 3D and Hardware Transfor & Lighting capable video card with DirectX 8.1 compatible driver

MODS: find tons of mods for this game at www.bf1942files.com including a bloodpatch and one that gives historical data to each battle while waiting to load it and pictures of the propaganda by each country to convince their citizens to join their military. **Edit note: Due to request to add the names of weapons you can use I've done the next best thing. All vehicle names and weapon names can be found at www.battlefield1942.com**