Battlefield 1942 Review

Overall Rating

Diverse, fun, big, easy online use

Single play sucks, problem with griefers, not even close to historically accurate

Battlefield 1942 (BF1942) is the game I have played THE most in my life, easily. Me and my friends were part of a clan and played this game obsessively for the longest time. Seems near every night we'd hop onto "Ghetto Berlin" or "G-Unit Wake only" server. We'd pick up our medic or engineer kits and off we go. We got so good that if was an absolute shame to us to not be in the top 10 on 64 person servers. We were gods.

BF 1942 multiplay is the best I've ever played. It's strategic, long, and varied. There are several maps that I never got tired of namely Stalingrad, Wake Island, Berlin, and Iwo Jima. The main objective is capture spawn points. Having more points means not only more vehicles but it means more places to defend. The way you capture one is to stay in it long enough to make it neutral (no one can spawn there) and then eliminate all the players from the other team and keep them out long enough so that it's yours.

Spawn points as before said can also spawn vehicles for your team, which is a big advantage, but only if it's wielded right. Unlike some games where vehicles are gods all but one of the vehicles in BF can be killed in one hit from the right thing, and in some cases in the right place. A light tank hit in the back by a bazooka won't stay intact for very long. Same with a plane and jeep, no matter where you hit them. A heavy tank can eat two rockets in the back but they move significantly slower and is still toast when it runs over a land mine. The only exception to the "1 hit" rule is ships, which if you think about it is fairly realistic. A ship that takes a plane bomb still floats (unless hit in the weapon arsenal but that variable isn't included here).

Infantry fair fine in this game too. They can choose one of 5 classes which will determine his weapon and special utensils. All infantry get a knife, pistol, and all but an engineer get frag grenades. Medics can heal, engineers get mines and dynamite, anti-tanks get bazookas (don't be fooled though in thinking this is the best, the rockets have no area of effect so they have to be a direct hit, which can be tough with the parabola in which it travels.), assaults get machine guns and are only good for going against other infantry, and snipers, well are snipers.

The game is very balanced and every good team needs at least one of the aforementioned. A team of all snipers and medics will bite it against a tank due to their lack of proper explosives. Sure they can spam it with grenades and that does work but a lot of them will hit the dirt before that happens. A team of all anti tanks is either poorly organized or full of noobs or both. Assualts will have no problems with them. And so on.

With all this team talk though, don't be fooled into thinking everyone is a team player. Really this game puts two teams of heroes against one another, not that it still isn't fun because you can find some people who will work with you. Generally though, people do their own thing (a problem fixed by Battlefield 2 I hear).

The biggest downside to this game is the single play which was obviously put in without any thought. The story mode is lame and even lamer are the bots. The bots will run you over, shoot teammates, crawl on the ground running into each other in a place where the enemy isn't even present. Not to mention when the enemy does see you you will have no trouble mowing them down without even moving as they couldn't hit the ground if they tried. The bots are sad, sad, sad.

I would definitely recommend this game to anyone with an internet connection. Each game is different and you will have lots of fun watching and being part of the funny and strange (but not in a bad way) things that happen (ie-driving off a cliff on accident, bailing out and watching the jeep fall on a member of the other team). Go buy it.