My initial thoughts on hearing about Battlefield 1943 were not quite positive. I wondered, “Are people really that interested in returning back to WWII when we’ve gotten so used to modern warfare and especially so in the Battlefield series? And why pay $15 for this title, when we can buy Battlefield Bad Company for only a couple dollars more?”
After playing it for a couple hours, I know now. Bad Company’s main gameplay mode was Gold Rush, a new mode that had one side attacking and one side defending for lengthy periods of time as the attackers tried to blow up the gold crates and push the defenders back. Battlefield fans complained about the mode, as the mode that we are so used to is Conquest: capturing and holding five flags all over a map and killing the enemy enough to reduce their tickets to zero with the more flags you hold, the greater the significance of each death from the enemy team. The developer DICE agreed, and put together a free DLC pack of the Conquest mode for Bad Company, but it was honestly a poor shell of what it could have been.
Fortunately, 1943 is straight up Conquest and is a true return to why we fell in love with the Battlefield series in the first place. For what the game is, it does everything right: three classes that are unique and effective, covering the spectrum in how you want to play: up close with an SMG, midrange with a rifle, or long range with a scoped rifle. Each class has a secondary weapon and function: the rifle class has a grenade launcher for assaulting areas, the SMG class has a rocket launcher for attacking vehicles, and the sniper has C4 to lay traps to destroy bridges, walls, and vehicles. Kills are quick (a few shots from a rifle, and also two-three shots from a sniper rifle, unless it’s a headshot), vehicles and airplanes are effective, and there is persistent stat tracking and leveling.
Plus, the game allows you to join games with friends as a squad, although it’s limited to 4 players per squad just like in Bad Company. It’s also running on the Bad Company engine, so it really feels like you’re playing a simplified, yet still engaging Bad Company. Whether that’s a good thing or not really comes down to the player. I liked Bad Company so I’m finding 1943 quite good, and to be honest, I can’t think of anything bad about the game: it’s solid, balanced, and enjoyable. Maybe a few more maps would have me playing longer, but if you’re on the fence, I’d say go for it.
i kinda stumbled onto spawn-killing last night from both sides of the boat. In one game, I was attacking an enemy flag and noticed that the 4 guys defending it weren’t looking in my direction. As I slowly mowed through them, I noticed more and more guys appearing, none looking in my direction! I tallied something like 11 kills in about a minute. The very next game, a squad of snipers were mowing us down from a higher position as we kept spawning at a much lower flag point than them. It took me about 5 deaths before I wisened up to not spawn with my squad.
Is this fixed? Will this be fixed? Don’t know. All I know is that one huge kill-spree currently accounts for 1/3 of my kills.
That’ll give us a squad of 4…but will the game keep us together!?
cool you got it? let’s party up some time…our usual play time seems to be weeknights around 9pm est heh
as for the spawnkilling, i don’t think it’s too big of a problem. i believe there’s safeguards in place (maybe 1 sec invulnerability for the spawner and no pts for the spawnkiller) if spawnkilling occurs at the starting base of the two teams. the starting base is not to be confused with the 5 flags on the map, however. with the 5 flags, i don’t think there’s any invulnerability and it’s a legitimate strategy – if you want to spawn on a flag where ppl are constantly getting killed, that’s the player’s choice since they have several options where to spawn: one of several squadmates, any of the flags your team occupies, or the starting base. if players keep spawning at the same flag and keep getting killed instantly, i’d say they may deserve to lose that match…
i think the game will only keep us together if we try to stay mediocre. the moment our squad of 4 starts dominating and are all on the top of the player list, we’ll probably get split for the next game. the team making criteria between games seems to be balance first, then squads.
in any case, if we get split it’s easy enough to just quit and join a new game as a squad because i think if you come into a new game as a squad of 4, you have higher priority of being kept together since there’s no statistics from previous rounds that will separate us.