Somewhere between a sneeze and a giggle, lies...Sniggle

At a Glance

Gameplay:

Graphics:

Controls:

Replayability:

Total:

8.0

8.2

9.5

10.0

8.925

Synopsis - Relive the epic battles of World War II on a scale never before conceived. There aren't any AI or bot players. Every role is owned by the online player. FPS and Vehicular combat combine into a challenging Battlefield 1942.

Review - The problem with a lot of recent first-person shooters lies in gameplay. They might be easily controlled and offer some degree of innovation, but most of the time the concept is the same. The great thing about Battlefield 1942 is that it’s not easy to master. As a soldier on the battlefield you can do a whole lot of things. If you want to drive a tank: go right ahead. If you want to fly a bomber: be my guest! Or maybe a boat is more to your liking? Perhaps you simply want to camp upon a hill and snipe people. Getting good at this game doesn’t mean that you only need a good aim; you will also need to hone your skills in a variety of

military activities and learn to work cooperatively with fellow soldiers. Winning a battle isn’t done with just a horde of tanks; you need to have people in every position, because while a sniper may be good at taking out infantrymen he doesn’t stand much of a chance against a tank.

There are a couple areas where EA Games could have taken some lessons from FPS's that came before this game. Number one, by far, is the CPU and memory usage. BF1942 is a downright resource hog! Any and all CPU and RAM will be narked by this game. Not a problem, unless you ONLY have a 1.2Ghz CPU with ONLY 512MB RAM. This really only leads to issues if you attempt to run any other application. Such as TeamSound or Roger Wilco combat voice engines. This is where my test machine, an AMDk71.2Ghz w/512MB RAM flopped. Frame rates dropped to less than 9fps. That is pitiful.

The other area where they could have taken some hints, is in the medic classification of soldier. The medic is essentially ONLY useful to the medic himself (in terms of healing himself) unless team voice software is used. EA Games should have done what Return to Castle Wolfenstein did. Allow a player to either wait on the battlefield for a medic to revive them, or allow them to jump back to the limbo (spawn) menu. Without this, when you are dead, you are dead. Now some might argue that this is more realistic. Well yes, it is. But there is a fine line between realism and entertaining gameplay.

Overall, the game is VERY addictive, despite it's couple of shortcomings. Additions that would be nice to see would be in-game voice software, as well as some of the runtime bugs.