Last winter I got this game and became addicted to it very quickly. I am very interested in the history of World War II and the events surrounding the eventual triumph of the Allied forces over the Axis powers. This game gives some insight to what it may have been like on the battlefields of Stalingrad, the air raids of Great Britain and the storming of Omaha Beach. Grant it that if you died on Omaha Beach in 1944, you didn’t simply get to re-spawn and continue the good fight but this game “feels” genuine.

Ironically this Electronic Arts game was released one year to the day (September 11, 2002) of the infamous 9/11 bombing of the World Trade Center in 2001.


Battlefield 1942

Warning: Very violent and graphically destructive. Not intended for young children! My Rating is PC-17

It is during World War II that you are called upon to serve in military duty for your country. What country? Which would you like to serve? It is your choice in multiplayer mode but in single player campaigns you are on the side of the Allied forces. No, you are not always American but maybe British or Russian. The game takes you through some of the major battles of World War II in first person experience. You are a single soldier in a unit with goals to obtain to win the scenario. You are not bound to be a foot soldier, you can commandeer any vehicle not in use already. You may use any available tanks, trucks, airplanes or boats to transport you and others in your unit and to attack or defend.


Gameplay

The game is played using the keyboard and mouse to control movement and targeting. The keys can be assigned to your custom taste but default is the standard W-A-S-D for forward, left, backward and right. The mouse controls your view and targeting. As my little brother so eloquently put it, “So, you’re playing another one of those games where you are an arm with a gun?” Err..um…well, yes.

You are a soldier with a selection of weapons to choose from. Which weapons you carry depends on which type of soldier you choose to be. You can be a medic, assault, engineer, anti-tank or a scout. I like to play the engineer because I use vehicles a lot. Engineers can repair damaged vehicles and keep them from being destroyed. Umm… don’t stop to repair a vehicle while you’re in a firefight or you will get shot pretty quickly.

The object of most scenarios is to either keep or obtain control over check points. It sounds pretty easy but it can be very difficult. Some are almost impossible if you have the difficulty setting high. For example, “Iwo Jima” is so hard with the difficulty settings at default you can only imagine what it was like for real.

Settings
The difficulty settings are set by adjusting the AI skills. I usually play with AI skills at 90% and it is a challenge. You can also adjust the amount of CPU devoted to AI control. I usually keep this set at 20 to avoid any potential glitching or slow downs.

You can also set the ratio of Allied to Axis team for multiplayer games. You can set it for 1 Allied and 4 Axis team members for a real challenge. Of course if you set it that way and play Axis you won’t have much of a challenge.

Setting up multiplayer games also allows you to choose how many total players allowed. By default this is set to 32, which is 16 on each side unless you change the ratio as described above. Setting the ratio as above to Allied-1 and Axis-4 would spawn roughly 4 Axis players for each Allied player making the teams, Allied - 7 players and Axis - 25 players.

You can adjust the music and sound effects volumes and quality. You can also set the video resolution and graphics details. For those who have slower machines or older video cards you can set the graphics details lower and lower the resolution to help the game play smoother.


Graphics

This is where the game shines for the most part. The graphics are realistic and sharp. Soldiers have real faces and landscape looks like real foliage. The buildings and vehicles are extremely detailed and precise. The down side of this is that it takes a really good video card to appreciate the detail. Anything less than a 64MB graphics card is going to have trouble with the video textures. I would recommend nothing less than an ATI Radeon 8500 128MB or GeForce3 TI 500 128MB card to enjoy the full video of the game with no slowdowns or hiccups. It would also be best played on a powerful PC, I would recommend nothing less than a Pentium 4 1.8GHz, Athlon 2600+ or faster CPU to really enjoy the game. I have played it on a Pentium III with a GeForce3 TI 200 64MB and it was not too bad, but when there were a lot of players on the screen in the same locale it would slow down and the frame rate would drop below acceptable.


Sound

Sounds are realistic as well. Explosions are done just right and with a good bass speaker, you can really feel the impact. The vehicles all have realistic engine sounds and even suspension creaks and squeaks while driving over bumps. I use a 3D surround speaker system and when airplanes fly overhead you can hear them pass from behind to in front of you. There is no setting to control 3D but you can turn on or off acceleration and set the sound quality to 11khz, 22khz or 44khz. I always use 44khz for the best sound quality but if you have and older sound card or a slower processor you can set it lower to help the game.


Multiplayer

This is the best part of the game and it’s the part that will keep you coming back to play over and over again. Once you have gone through the single player scenarios you have become familiar enough with the game to experience the real addiction… playing against other people online. When playing in multiplayer mode, there are several different game types you can play.

Co-op
This is my favorite type of multiplayer game. You join a side and fight against the opposing side. There is usually the same amount of players on each side unless the host changes the default settings. The game can start with as few as one player because the computer will generate robot players to fill in the empty slots. The game starts each team with an allotted amount of tickets. Each scenario is a little different so depending on the scenario one team may have more tickets than the other. Tickets can not be gained, only lost. You lose a ticket every time one of your team dies. You can also loose tickets if your team is not holding enough checkpoints or sometimes for not holding all check points. The team that runs out of tickets first looses. This is a total shoot out, kill-em-all experience that can be fun for hours on end.

Capture the Flag
In this type of game your team must capture the enemy flag and return it to your own base for points as many times in the allotted time frame as possible. The team with the most points wins. This is also fun to play and can take up a few hours on a rainy Sunday when there is no football on TV. This type of game requires at least two human players to start.

Team Deathmatch
This is a kill-em-all death match that requires you to kill, kill, kill. There is a set amount of time to obtain the most kills for your team and the team with the most points at the end wins the match. This game requires at least two human players to start the match.

Conquest and Objective
There are two other types of multiplayer games that I have not played yet. They are “Conquest and Objective”. In Conquest, you must take over all the checkpoints and hold them for a certain amount of time to win. Objective gives you a mission that must be completed in order to win.


System Requirements

* Windows XP/Me/2000/98 (NT and 95 NOT supported)
* 500 MHz Intel Pentium III
* 128 MB RAM
* 4x CD-ROM drive
* 1.2 GB free hard disk space
* 32 MB hardware transform & lighting capable video card with DirectX 8.1 compatible driver
* DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
* Keyboard; Mouse

Recommended System

* Windows XP/ME/2000/98 (NT and 95 NOT supported)
* 1.8GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent
* 256MB RAM – (Game uses massive memory – the more the better)
* 40X CDROM
* 1.2GB free hard drive space (Recommend ATA 100 or ATA 133 for better game play)
* 128MB Hardware T&L capable video card with DirectX 9.0b driver
* DirectX 9.0b compatible sound card (Recommend Sound Blaster Live!, equivalent or better)
* Keyboard; Mouse


Mods

This is another fascinating area of this game, the ability to download add-on modifications that change the look and feel of the game. Some actually change the game so much it’s like playing a whole new game. I only have a few mods for this game but they are all fun. My favorite is “Desert Combat”.

Desert Combat
Desert Combat is free downloadable add-on for Battlefield 1942 that changes everything to “Modern” times. Instead of Allied versus Axis it is now Coalition versus Opposition. Instead of Mustang fighter planes you now can fly Apache helicopters, F-14 fighter jets and even Harrier jets. The Jeeps are replace by Hummers and some tanks are replaced with the Bradleys. In addition to these changes this mod also adds new scenarios to the multiplayer section of the game. This is the mod I play whenever I play this game anymore. The Apache helicopter is a !@#$ to learn how to fly but once you get it you are a single force of destruction that nobody, not even tanks can escape. The real trick is learning how to land the sucker!

Other Mods
Some other mods you can download free are as follows.

* Eve of Destruction (The Indochina Vietnam Conflict)
* Galactic Conquest (Star Wars based – does not change the Co-op games)
* Aftermath (Warped futuristic post nuclear war)

These are all fun and have their own additions to the game and best of all they are all free. Most of these mods only affect the multiplayer aspect of the game and some only a portion of the multiplayer but they are worth downloading. You can find mods for Battlefield 1942 by going to http://www.google.com and running a search for “Battlefield 1942 Mods”.


Conclusion

This game is fun for hours on end but is not intended for young children. It is a very violent and destructive game, which is why I like it so much. There is nothing like taking out a hard day on a few AI Nazi’s. Make sure your computer is capable of playing the game before you buy it and remember that the system requirements only guarantee you will be able to install and run the program they don’t guarantee that you will enjoy it. If you follow my “recommended system” you should be able to enjoy the game without glitches, choppiness and slowdowns.

Thanks for reading,
Gr8ful :-)


Recommended: Yes

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