Pros: Great online team gameplay, variety, fast paced, fun, addictive.
Cons: High system specs, uses gamespy, little bit arcade like, addictive.
The Bottom Line: This game is a great online fps shooter, good value and great replay. Really fun if you like counterstrike, day of defeat, or yuck WW2 Online.
zlmajors's Full Review: Battlefield 1942: The Complete Collection (Pack) f...
BACKGROUND
Ok I am not ashamed to admit I love war games, I have for some time. A while ago I saw an ad for WW2 Online, and I was enthralled by it. I followed this game from its beta stages to it going gold, and finally to its abysmal failure due to it having WAY too many bugs in its final release. Later on (almost a year) when its parent company finally worked out the bugs and got a game that was worth playing, well all the WW2 fans had already been burned on WW2 Online and weren't going to waste money anymore on WW2 Online. (I still smile when I say the name of the game WW2 Online, it was so buggy you barely could even put it in the genre of online gaming)
Later on I discovered Day of Defeat, a MOD for halflife. This game started out looking quite a bit rough (just as did counterstrike) but now is a very nicely refined game, complete with multiple classes of soldiers (american and german) that fight over a map with different flags on it (think capture the flag).
What do these two game have in common? Battlefield:1942 is basically the combination of the two. Much more stable and better looking than WW2 Online (thank god!) and on a much much (yes that is correct, 2 much's) larger scale than Day of defeat. Battlefield:1942 also uses a large amount of vehicles. What I will say is that day of defeat is more realistic in its pure infantry vs infantry role than Battlefield:1942.
Now that you know the background for this game let me get down to the specifics of what I like and didn't like.
THE LOWDOWN ON THE GAME
Battlefields...
The battlefields in 1942 are rather large, it can take you a good 5 minutes to walk (as a infantry soldier) from your home base to the enemies home base. This gives the maps a realistic feel that you don't find in many game of this nature. This also gives way to expansive terrain modeling that simulates quite impressively the wide open areas of Kursk (big tank battle on russian front), of tobruk (big desert battle, africa); but on the other hand it also makes you feel the urban battle scenes of berlin and stalingrad, with their many blocks of battle scarred land. What is very cool about the battlefields is that there are so many to choose from. Most games come out with 5 or 6 in its initial release, but 1942 came out with: bocage, omaha beach, berlin, stalingrad, guadecanal, midway, wake island, tobruk, and I know 1 or 2 more in africa and at least 1 or 2 more in mainland europe.
Rating for Battlefields A+
VEHICLES...
Ok now the vehicles, wait uh I have to wipe the drool off my face, ok thats better. The vehicles are abundant, no online ww2 game has incorporated (or even attempted to incorporate) this amount of vehicles into a game like this ever before. Ok yes WW2 online tried but failed worse than Sadam Hussein did when he tried to be sympathetic after 9/11. When I say vehicles I am not limiting myself to the land sort either, you also have a good number of planes (japanese, american, german) available ranging from the b17 bomber, the torpedo bomber, all the way to the dive bomber stuka for the germans. Vehicles also include submarines, landing craft, destroyers, battleships, aircraft carriers, shore batteries, you get the point. Long list.
What is really cool about the vehicles is that whatever "type" your into, be it the very speedy and nimble jeep, to the lumbering goliath of the m-14 (or is it the m-10) and the tiger tank, your choice you can pick what type of vehicle you want. Let me be a little more specific, the vehicles spawn and if your the first one to a vehicle you can control it. Many vehicles can have more than one crewman. Tanks usually can have a infantryman manning the heavy machine gun ontop of the turret, while some like the halftrack can hold quite a few passengers.
Final grade for vehicles A+
INFANTRY...
Ok now although they exceed the standard in vehicles and battlefields, they do not do anything wonderful in infantry. But they do not do anything bad either! They have a pretty usual assortment of ground pounders, including:
The scout: the scout is a scout sniper, armed with a bolt action sniper rifle and a pair of spotting binoculars, the binocs can (once activated) act as a spotting mechanism for the heavy ship batteries (big guns on that battleship and destroyers), they can actually see through the binocs when they are activated to aim their guns.
The assault infantryman: This guy is armed with a BAR (bad ars rifle err I mean uh Browning automatic rifle or the german sg44 which looks a lot like the ak-47 (which a lot of people say is based on the german model). He basically has a gun that will cause good damage.
The anti tank soldier: This guy totes around a very big.. tube, great graphics from his perspective when he has to reload too. Dangerous to tanks.
The Medic: Has a submachine gun, and a medic kit. They can heal others and themselves. Sortof a medium soldier in that he is dangerous up close but not really dangerous.
The Engineer: This Soldier has a bolt action gun, but more importantly carries mines and explosives. You have a set amount (I believe it is 5 or 6) of either type you can lay. The explosives you set up then run off with a plunger devise to blow them up, great for infantry, and apc's and do some damage against tanks. Also important is that the engineers can do repairs to vehicles. Very important to that tiger or m-10 tank killer way off at a forward base (these two spawn only at base camp, far from the front at times) so to be able to elongate their life is important. The engineer is like a sniper, but less distance shooting and a few very nasty surprises up his sleeve.
They did the graphics of each soldier and the weapons very well, I wa impressed with the detail in reloading and other factors. It would have been nice to have a heavy machine gunner on both sides but with all the emplacements this can be a moot point.
Final grade B+
GRAPHICS
Ok unfortunently this game doesn't break into new ground with its graphics. Don't get me wrong, they are very peasant to look at, and if you like day of defeats graphics you will like 1942's graphics. Same style even down to the vehicles, which is very cool since you can drive these!
Final grade B+
SOUND
I admit I am not a huge sound fan, just to have good sound is enough for me and this game does this in spades. While the sounds don't make me break down and cry, it does have all the appropriate sounds at the right time. Ships, guns, airplanes etc etc. The game also has an extensive communication menu that lets people use premade sounds (roger, need a pickup, artillery spotted!) and others. These do help the team gameplay.
Final Grade B+
ONLINE PLAYABILITY
Ok so I have a problem here, I use a 256k ADSL connection so my online experience is going to be a huge bit more fun than the average 56k'er, but from what I hear from other players who use 56k's this game can be played but does have some disconnection issues. From my perspective I've never been dropped during a game, and only 2 times while the map is changing and the server is having to reassign every player. What I don't like about it is that it uses Gamespy to power its server search engine. I've never been a fan of gamespy because it just doesn't have as many options as does say counterstrike. For instance I don't like that you can't pick favorite servers.
SYSTEM SPECS
WOAH NELLY the specs for this game are high indeed, on my pentium 3 1000ghz with a nvidia gforce 4 and 256 ddr ram, I can only have medium graphics with fast (not very fast) framerate. Harsh system specs for anyone under say 600 mghz, especially if you still have a pent 2. Don't even try if you don't have at least a video card that was released within the last 2 years.
THE FINAL WORD
Get this game, uh if you have the system and like the fps shooting games, especially WW2 games, get it, don't think soldier GO GO GO!!
I do not know if this game is scheduled for release on the mac, as far as I know it does not have a mac version currently released.
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