By Egon Vennik The basics of Battlefield game play is that there are two huge teams running around a huge map in order to try to retain control over 5 specific places (flags). To achieve this objective, each player can choose from a variety of specialist functions, and each team has a number of vehicles at their disposal.
Previous Battlefield games revolved around the Conquest game play mode, which in 2142 remains unchanged insofar as I can tell. Although there are a few variations, the general theme is that each team starts with a limited number of times it's players can respawn, and holding more than half of the flags steadily depletes your enemy's number (as does killing them). I immediately disliked it, and still only enjoy a select few maps in this mode.
Boarding titan via APC Titan mode is fundamentally an evolution of Conquest - you are still running about trying to capture flags (now in the form of missile silos), but this time they are used towards a more tangible objective. Each team has a huge Titan airship as a primary base, and captured silos fire missiles at regular intervals to slowly destroy the enemy Titan. This gives a much better feeling that your actions are achieving something - capture silo, witness missile launch, notice a definite dent in the HP bar of the enemy Titan. After you have inflicted sufficient damage on the Titan, you can press the victory by boarding it to attack from the inside. I found this action- and objective-orientated game play much more satisfying.
Troops safely exit a air transport. Players should be aware the learning curve in Battlefield is quite long and steep, exacerbated by advantages from obtaining unlocks (discussed later). Don't expect to install and blast away like some shoot-em-up, initially movement can feel clumsy, fingers search among the myriad of key bindings and everything is best approached with a bit of patience. Don't be too apprehensive about joining in on-line, there is a single player mode to obtain basic experience but unlike smaller team play games ineffective players are absorbed by the large numbers, so provided you're not crashing loaded troop transports nobody notices. But seriously, please stop flying the damn troop transports.
Don't exit vehicles hastily. It takes some time to learn to minimise the highly frustrating deaths that can seem outside your control, "favourites" being spawning in an air transport a second before it plummets into the ground, stepping out a vehicle just as it moves an inch more, being blasted to smithereens while failing miserably to free your tank from some minor foliage, walking into the overpowered yet minuscule sentry guns, or the sudden appearance of "respawning in 10" with no apparent cause even in the console. If you can control the initial desire to scrub your PC of the bastard game and gleefully torture the disk with a lighter and penknife, there is a lot of enjoyment to be had.
There is a heavy bias towards the vehicles. BF veterans frequently comment the combat is much less vehicle biased than previous games, where it must have been really bad. They are vastly more powerful than infantry, who (particularly on the demo) have little at their disposal that can cause any damage to armour at all. Whilst the full game allows experienced engineer players to acquire weapons which are much more effective, infantry combat is still reserved for the immediate area around objectives.
At the objectives things are much more balanced, to the point that a vehicle is a liability against sneaky engineers. There's cover to use while targeting the weak spots on armour, obvious places for mines and heavy gun emplacements even offer other infantry classes a chance. However, it remains that you have very limited use without transport. If you lose your vehicle in any of the empty spaces, expect to be useless for a long, long time. Thankfully silo areas spawn vehicles in Titan mode, and there is a suicide button on the class select screen.
The most effective vehicles, the gunship and the walker, are also the most popular ones - with 16+ players on your team and usually only one or two to go around, the best men do not get the job very often. BF games are frequently touted as a "sandbox" experience, and certainly players can find a wide variety of ways to make themselves useful, but it can also be restrictive as to what extent players can exercise specialised vehicle skills in any given round. Instead, players should approach it with the aim of achieving objectives, making use of whatever is available at the time - pity then that the vast array of available medals (which can award substantial points towards an unlock) are rarely objective orientated, it's notable that there is no "number of titans destroyed" medal, but there is one for spending 10 seconds in a parachute (incidentally, surely a Halo medal should be awarded for the free-fall time...)
With the large number of objectives and people to complete them, games can turn into a scrabble of a skirmish, which can leave the player feeling a little aimless. It is quite a contrast when you get a good game going, with the well designed squad system dividing players into small, effective teams - teamplay is heavily rewarded in BF2142, both via results and via the artificial points system. Clans from other games, typically limited to a pool of 8 players at most, scoff at the huge clan armies that exist in Battlefield. Clanning in Battlefield is often more public-server focused however - it rapidly becomes clear that any loose affiliation of players will more regularly be able to find a solid squad to join. A good squad makes the difference from a game that can be quite fun and a game that is a lot of fun.
Additionally, each side has a single Commander player who can issue commands to the entire team, as well as perform other functions like move the Titan around, call in air strikes or supply drops. A good commander gives the team leadership and cohesion, greatly increasing he odds of winning. Unfortunately, the position doesn't always attract good leaders, and Commanders getting high points does nothing to help. The voting system should eventually alleviate this, currently votes usually fail due to lack of participation, something that should improve over time.
Graphically, the visuals do the job plenty well enough, and are probably deserving of some credit if you're into aesthetics. Any reader can make up their own mind from the various screenshots*, movies and demo, but it's worth pointing out performance is actually pretty good. Using a 7800GTX, 3700+ AMD64 with 2gb RAM everything works fine at the high settings, which might not be spectacular but big open spaces can have a lot going on when servers can have as many as 64 players. I did however end up turning them down to a mix of medium and low settings as visibility is notably better (there is no significant config tweaking in BF2142, and note absence of widescreen options). The two teams should also be more distinguishable, for infantry it's black with a little white vs. black and slightly less white. In practice, friend or foe is identified from the colouring of the name floating above them.
Creative's X-Fi range of cards are promoted with the game, and from the options screen it appears you require one to obtain the best sound effects. Sticking with my old Audigy however, the audio is unimpressive yet hard to fault. Gunfire sounds sufficiently meaty, vehicles sufficiently... motorised, perhaps positioning could be better in stereo mode.
Lag can be a problem, but considering the amount of stuff that must be getting crammed down my measly 512k connection, I have to say the netcode generally isn't bad. game play does not rely heavily on 'twitch' skills, so a small amount of lag does not have the consequences it might in other games. 32-player servers are my mainstay and provided you select carefully, lag is rarely a problem, on 64-player insanities it gets a lot worse but still better than I had expected.
I am not a big fan of "experience point" systems bringing artificial advantages for experienced players to pwn n00bs all the easier with, so you can probably guess my opinions on making them permanent under the guise of "unlocks". Further, a significant time investment is required before you can be fully versatile. Some "unlocked" weapons are significantly superior to those initially available, so adapting to requirements carries a penalty. The concept does however mean you get continual rewards for your efforts, and maxing out the options for one specialist class is pretty easy. Crap round? At least it got you a few points closer to the next unlock.
With any major franchise, every new release brings much moaning from some quarters of the incumbent game. BF2142 is no different, with the main criticisms being that BF2142 is little more than a major modification or expansion pack for BF2, a game which they feel has been inadequately supported. As a Battlefield newbie, for me the game play is quite fresh and it is not a case of whether it is better or worse, but rather whether it is good entertainment or not. I cannot evaluate the veteran's arguments beyond the evidence that BF2142 itself does not feel complete and polished.
A press release admires the "nearly 18 months of development", but this is a short time for a triple-A title, and it shows. Many aspects of the game give a feeling that it needs a good six months more work to put it together properly. Titan mode is particularly afflicted, once inside players often stick out of what they're hiding behind, bullet tracers whizz through walls, mines float through solid floors, "injured" players drift through the titan, making them difficult to revive. I don't want to moan on about every bug, partly since bugs can be patched away - most of those I find most infuriating are already noted for patching, though some of these issues surely could not have gone unnoticed during QA testing.
A cynic might wonder if, on day of release, there was a grin or two in the offices at id Software. BF2142 and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, two obviously competing games, were due to be released at roughly the same time. Did id throw in a red herring release date and watch EA rush to be first to market? BF2142 was released as announced but clearly several months too early, while ETQW endures a delay of several months - perhaps it will arrive when it's done? PC game makers, id Software included, generally seem more concerned with the state of the platform than competing games, but if I had to bet on anyone falling for such a ploy I'd place all my chips on EA.
Battlefield is a cash-cow franchise for EA, and they milk it hard. When you first open the box, you are confronted by the famously alarming slip of paper, a leaflet advertising Creative X-Fi, and a booklet which is a 21 page advert masquerading as an "Official Gaming Guide" (the manual is 24 pages). During game installation, you are invited to install some GameSpy software, and if you choose not to it still puts files on your disk and slips an invitation to install it on the Start Menu folder. Then you're invited to register the purchase with EA by handing over your personal details, and fill out a marketing survey. The survey promises a freebie of some kind - this isn't a free unlock, but a trivial tip.
All angles are covered in the pursuit of revenue, for most games there is a free dedicated server program, but here server operators have to pay for a licence if they want to run ranked Battlefield servers. Obviously this cost is passed onto their customers, who provide the public servers that the game is completely reliant upon.
The slip of paper previously mentioned refers to the monitoring of in game advertising, a subject which deserves an article in itself. I'm not ecstatic about adverts within games, and it is difficult to imagine them being thematic, given it's supposed to be the year 2142 during an ice age and everybody at war. The adverts haven't been activated yet but there are a significant number of billboards that look likely positioning, my impression is they will detract somewhat from the theme but otherwise not get in the way. Server hosts must have awfully sore backsides by now, they pay for all the hardware, bandwidth and maintenance (not to mention the EA Rank tax) that is utterly crucial to the game and yet who is getting paid from the advertising being displayed to players on their servers? Consumers should be wondering why they are being bombarded with marketing and yet receiving no price discount.
Copyright protection is further evidence of the focus on revenue. CD-Keys are required for installation, and on-line authentication, so it is excessive to require that the DVD be in the drive for on-line play. How much does all this copyright protection cost anyway?
Battlefield 2142 game play is fun and interesting, despite it's flaws. Take any review site that breaks scores down into categories and I'd have to give it a good 7 or 8 out of 10 for each, it deserves it for graphics, sound, game play - all the usual categories. It's a multitude of other things that drags it down, has you sighing when you should be grinning. Granted, some of these issues are the fixable kind, but if comments from BF2 players are anything to go by I'm only so optimistic, despite the promises. One can't help wondering if this would have been a really great game if there was less focus on revenue and more on development.
