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[cTx]SGT.Viper

11-15-2006, 07:20 AM

Battlefield 2142 review

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Battlefield 2142 Review
By: [cTx]Denis C.
October 21,2006

Do we need an intro…

The Battlefield brand has been around for many years and on different consoles. Being as it was a big jump in style of playing with the popular Battlefield 2, Electronic Arts brought online battlefield to a new level. This month EA release the long anticipated Battlefield 2142 for PC.

The story line is different and unique as your placed in the northern hemisphere of earth where the end of the world is coming and the ice age type of event is happening there. Various countries are fleeing to the warmer areas such as Africa and resources are limited, which is where the battle begins. The main factions are the EU and the PAC forces, while EU is self-explanatory and the PAC is the Russian-Asian country.

The good, the bad and EA

For all those veteran players such as myself this game has a similar feel to it. The control setup is very similar and allows you to customize it to your personal preference. I had little problems setting up the game, so when it came time to play the learning curve was easier for me. For those who got to play the demo version, loading up the game you will see how to play in Titan mode, which is a new feature to this game. When you get to load up the full version game, you can create and chose up to four accounts and for all you clan addicts there is also an option to put in your prefix. Loading into EA account server was super fast compared to BF 2. Once in the main menu you can setup your video settings, control for movement during the game and various other options like voice over IP and setting up a buddy list so you can see when your friends are on and join them in the server their playing. This game can be played with no Internet connection but why punish yourself when the real fun is playing online. The server list search has improved which advance options to search a type of server to play on.

The Titans are coming

As I mentioned before we have the Titan mode and Conquest mode. EA has suggested that the Titan mode is best played on a 48-man server, which I would think keeps the quality of the game optimized and reduce lag time. In Titan mode the game style has changed compared to Conquest where your tickets don’t count and what really counts is control of the missile silos and the defence of your Titan. Now for you veterans out there defence may be a new word but you will learn, so now it isn’t all about shooting away but also defending what is yours. By taking control of the silos you’re controlling the directions of the missiles that are launched every few minutes. The missiles are used to take out the enemies shield until their gone. Once the shields are done all hell break looses are you continue to fire missiles to destroy the hull of the Titan. A quicker way is to board the ship and destroy the four consoles and then go for the core of the ship until it is destroyed. What I have noticed is there isn’t a clear dominate winner as all the games have come close by a small margin. In Conquest you can have up to 64 players online per game and it is your typical capture the flag and you have a certain amount of tickets. Each time you die you loose a ticket and the more flags you capture and control the quicker you loose tickets. The team that reaches zero tickets looses the round. Bonus points are given to the winning teams commander and various awards are given out during the game as well.

Walkers, not the one’s your grandma uses

In 2142 you will have your various tanks, flying carriers and truck like vehicles to move around and fight away with. The new addition is the Walker that is best described as a mech fighter. You can have a gunner to help you out to help destroy and defend your Walker but although it has various fighting options, it is slower then other vehicles and prone to being a target. The personnel carrier is great tool when boarding the Titan or being launched out away from enemy fire but it takes some getting used to as your flight path is short and little time to manoeuvre. A cool new feature when in your heavy fighting vehicles is a short burst shield to protect you, use it wisely as it takes time to recharge and short in duration. The fight seems to be more on the ground then in the armoured vehicle since you now have more option to destroy them and don’t seem to be as strong as they were before.

In BF 2 you received a new weapon once you gained a rank. In 2142 you can receive up to 40 unlocks shared among four type of infantry. You gain new unlocks when you increase your rank and you do this by bonuses during the game like defending, techniques used, amount of kills per round and various other methods which will rack up those points to gain rank. You quickly gain new ranks but as time goes on it takes longer to receive the new rank. I worked quickly on my engineer and now have access to EMP, mines and an anti-air gun to lock in on aircrafts. Some features can only be used on a particular kit while other unlocks can be shared such as the grenade option which I used when I selected support or recon kit for example.

Scotty I need more power

Although EA has a minimum and a recommend option for playing this game, to truly enjoy it you need to go beyond it and have a beefed up system. In BF 2, I had a AGP NVIDIA 6600, 1024 ram, AMD 64 3000+ and used a SATA 160 gig Hard drive by Western Digital. This being an example of the minimum I would experience slow downs and sometimes would die even before I could return fire. In this test I had done some upgrades and now using a AGP ATI X850 XT PE, Zalman VF-900 for my video card, AMD 64 3700+, Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM, 2064 ram by Mushkin and in both cases used Cable as my internet connection at their best speed available. This is a modest system and of course I could go higher end this was great for me to enjoy the game at the highest settings. The graphics are eye candy for sure and comparing BF 2, EA has improved the resources needed to play the game including loading times, which used to take forever to join a game.

Keeping it real

Although I love the Battlefield series and this is newly released there are some things I really need to get off my chess. With all the patches of BF 2 the #1 complaint in the game was the regular server crashes, even after a years worth of patches. In 2142 it happens several times a day on the server, so with all the beta testing and even a patch before the game is released I wish they would fix some basic fundamental problems with the game. The game sometimes spikes and the lag comes into play, with my clan buddies experiencing this as well, there seems to be some issues with connectivity. Switching from one weapon or another is a slow and painful process which makes it hard to defend yourself and even at times just trying to switch weapons in game takes a few times before it actually switches. A few pet peeves I have is how you customize the engineer for example with mines and EMP yet the settings aren’t save next time you log back into the game, which to me is a pain to do. When you shoot point blank sometimes it is like the matrix and you just can’t kill your enemy or how many bullets do you really need to put in someone’s back before their dead. In my favourites I have one server in there but when I refresh the list after a crash it shows it unavailable even though I know it is online. To join my favourite server I have to manually enter the IP of the server to get back in the fight. Little things have come up like the fact I am driving in a tank yet somehow I get a notice someone just killed me yet I am still alive or some veterans couldn’t cross over without issue or how the gun drone shooting your enemy yet it is shooting into a wall instead of looking straight ahead in a corridor where it was placed. I know with a new release you are bound to get issues but some of these problems are the same ones in BF 2 as they are in 2142, which to me you should resolve before expecting your loyal fans to buy into a new game hopping the problems will be fixed. On a final note on the con side of things, to ask your fans to pay a monthly fee to beta test a game is a little cheap in my opinion since were doing you a favour by letting you know what is wrong with the game and not the other way around. Also the advertisement for buying the game via EA downloader and allowing you to play the demo game me the impression at the time the game was to release a day later yet it was only to download the demo or download the game onto your computer yet such a tease since you can’t access it for days.

Being a loyal fan I bought the game in advance of its release and overall I am happy with it. I think it has excellent value for money because every time I play the game, I never get bored. The nature of the game involves a lot of strategy in each opponent you run into and being in a clan using a microphone to talk to your team mates helps gain the victory and makes it fun too. In conquest it is all about getting the flags, destroying your enemy and all offensive. In Titan mode, it is crucial in defending the silos and defending the titan consoles when your shield is down. Everyone wants to blow things up and go on the attack but strategy, defence and team works are crucial to winning in Titan mode. For me I hope players realize this because the games are so close that if your team doesn’t’ work as a group, you will loose more times then not. I just hope EA gets their act together quickly when it comes to patches and all the glitches in the game promptly so that we can enjoy the game and not get frustrated with the obvious errors like server crashes. All in all it is worth buying the game and whether you’re new to Battlefield or a veteran you will not regret picking up a copy of this game.

This review was done by a [cTx]Denis C. He has done a great job on his first review. Please send me a PM if interested in having us do a review for you!