AttackTheSun

The premise of the new Battlefield game from EA developer DICE is that the next ice age has begun. Most of the northern hemisphere is under snow and ice and now the EU and the new Pan-Asian Coalition are fighting for the remaining land. Most of the battles in 2142 occur in Europe and in northern Africa. The signature game mode of the Battlefield series, Conquest, is back. DICE has added a new game mode as well, Titan mode.

Titans are flying battleships/aircraft carriers that can dominate the battlefield. They have 4 air to ground cannons, 2 AA guns, deploy aircraft, and deploy soldiers. They can move across the entire map, but they have almost no speed. There are 2 parts to Titan mode. The first part is identical to Conquest, you run around the map trying to capture silos (which act the same as flags). Silos will wear down the enemy titan’s shield until the shield is destroyed. Then the fun part begins. You board the enemy titan, destroy 4 consoles to open up the reactor room of the titan, and then you destroy the reactor. At the same time, the enemy is boarding your titan and trying to do the same thing as you. Also, the silos continue to fire missiles at the enemy titan. You can quickly destroy the enemy titan by controlling most of the silos and attacking the enemy reactor at the same time as the health of the titan’s hull and the reactor are linked to the overall health of the titan. If a missile damages the hull of the titan, the reactor will be damaged as well.

Battles in the interior of the titan are very intense, although they aren’t as good as the battles in the Warlord palace in Battlefield 2: Special Forces. There are many ways to get into an enemy titan. First, you can bring an APC (it acts as a mobile spawn point) near a titan and launch an escape pod to the loading dock. Second, your squad leader can place a spawn beacon on the enemy titan. Third and most common, your teammate lands a transport airship on enemy titan (it acts as a mobile spawn point) and you respawn there. Finally, your commander moves your titan close enough to the enemy titan so that you can launch your escape pods onto it. Titan mode is a great addition to the Battlefield series and really refreshes the gameplay.

Since Battlefield 2142 is set 136 years from now, all the guns, tanks, planes, and equipment are pure speculation. The PAC has hover tanks, while the EU has regular tanks. The new vehicle type in the game is the battle walker. The driver is armed with a plasma/energy cannon and a rocket launcher. The gunner gets a machine gun and an EMP missile launcher. The new aircraft are a mix between a helicopter and a jet. They land and take-off like helicopters, but they have a little more speed than helicopters and have jet engines instead of propellers. It’s nice not to have jets, which were nearly impossible to shoot down, rape you every game. That said, the new anti air gun has many problems. First of all, it is very hard to lock on to an airplane. Secondly, the flak that it shoots is too slow to be used in an AA gun. Finally, there is way too much bullet drop in the weapon. But, the new anti ground weapon is excellent. It fires a super fast energy projectile that does pretty good damage to vehicles. It will take you 3 hits on the front armor of a tank to kill it, 2 hits to the side, and 1 hit to the rear.

2142 drastically changes the point values. Captures are still 2 points, but everything else that was 2 points in Battlefield 2 are now worth 1 point. That said, you can still score very high. You now get an extra point for scoring near the area that your squad leader ordered you to move to. Lets say your squad leader orders you to capture a flag, you get a bonus for each kill near that flag and for the actual capture of the flag. This really promotes teamwork. Also, you get titan attack and defense for each kill inside a titan, depending if the titan is friendly or not. Destruction of titan weapons will also get you bonus points.

This game really emphasizes rank. You start the game with virtually no weapons and equipment, two kits don’t even get grenades. Fortunately, there are only 4 kits: Recon (sniper/ special ops), Assault (medic/assault), Engineer (which is actually useful now), and Support. Each kit is customizable, once you unlock certain items, such as the defibrillator, you can add it to 1 of 2 open slots for extra gear. Recon is going to be a very annoying class. It can have antipersonnel mines, explosive packs, and an assault rifle at the same time. So expect more mine whores in this game, as there is no real downside to doing it. DICE finally came up with the idea of a counter to landmines; engineers can unlock a special device that disables land mines. (Thank god!) There are also universal unlocks for the 4 kits these give you longer sprint times, quicker recovery times, grenades, extra grenades, and more. Unlike Battlefield 2, 2142 has more frequent promotions and will occasionally give you field upgrades, which last until you disconnect from the server.

In the few days I have played Battlefield 2142, I have encountered numerous problems. First of all, on launch day, EA put out a patch on the EA downloader (a poor rip-off of Steam). Launch day patches just piss me off because it shows that the company released a game knowing it wasn’t finished. Second, just to stay on a server, you have to either uninstall or update a Windows security update. Third, I had to update PunkBuster (anti-cheating software) to stay on a server more than 2 minutes. Fourth, the titans have the “Battlefield shakes” when they move. Also they create huge amounts of server lag. Fifth, dead players will occasionally fall through the floor and will be impossible to revive. Finally, the pods do not always kill vehicles they land on (they are supposed to destroy all vehicles they land on and then you pop out and kick some ass).

Battlefield 2142 is a very good addition to what Battlefield 2 brought to the series. The commanders are more important, squad leaders are more important, and unlocks are extremely important. But, there are many problems with this game as well. The new assault rifles have horrendous accuracy. This is especially prevalent in medium/long range combat, which some of the Battlefield 2 guns, the G3 and the AK 101 especially, was very good at. Prone accuracy is garbage too, which really messes with the realism of this game.

The biggest problem I see with this game is that the unlock system gives veteran players such a big advantage that by the end of November, new players will be owned by veterans. Mostly because recon players can cloak, new players have no sprint, and the basic weapons are garbage. To help balance out this problem, there are rank limited servers, although they don’t do a great job. Overall this game feels like a beta, it doesn’t have the feeling of a finished product. I put most of the blame on EA for rushing this game to the market.

Scores:

Sound: 8.5/10. If you have an X-Fi sound card, like I do, this game sounds amazing as it is meant to run on that sound card. If not, too bad. 5.1 surround sound or really good virtual surround sound help out alot in this game. Definately worth the investment if you like the game.

Graphics: 8/10. Battlefield 2 looked great when it came out, but there have been no upgrades to the graphics engine from Battlefield 2. Most shooters look much better than this game.

Replay value: 10/10. With the frequency of the promotions and the overall unlock system; you will want to play this game for many, many hours.

Playability: 6/10. If you do not have more than a gig of Ram, don’t bother with this game. Also there are so many problems with the game that it really brings down the experience.

Overall score: 7.9/10. I would love to give this game a 9+/10, but there are way to many problems with bugs, weapon balance, lag, server connection, and the stat tracker doesn’t always work as quickly as it should. Also, Battlefield 2142 feels too unrefined for a higher score. The in-game spyware pisses me off.

Verdict: Battlefield 2142 has potential, but it needs at least another 2 months of work by DICE.

-Nate

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Gaming, Battlefield 2142, EA, DICE, PC Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.