 |
But didn't you say something
about finally getting to drive tanks and shit?
|  | | | | Did you just hear something? | |
Ahh, yes! Once you hop into one of the various war machines scattered about the map,
the game begins to shift favorably towards not sucking. Hop into a jeep and
give your buddy the medic a lift over to the next base, where some wounded ally
has just shrieked "MEDIC!". Once you arrive, there's an APC full of
troops ready to go make some noise in enemy territory...they only need death at
the business end of your 75mm gun-totin' Panzer. Bodies fly. Debris rains down.
Fist-pumping occurs. A few of your victims' allies try to flee in a kubelwagon,
only to receive an assfull of TANK! KABOOM! Pieces and parts dance about in
a parade of sparks, flames, and smoke pillars. Then, as you're admiring the
mayhem you've harnessed, it's all cut short with a panzershreck up the
tailpipe. Cheap Cobra junk. It's ok, after a brief time-out period the Joint
Chiefs will again be willing to put you back in harm's way, only this time you
hop into a deadly P-51 mustang, which immediately changes the scope of the
game. While already easy to appreciate in terms of size, the scale of
the maps becomes apparent once it's viewed from air. And the planes themselves,
while awkward to control without a joystick, add one hell of a dynamic to the
battle. In fact, flying the planes almost feels like a different game. Don't
worry, if you're not a fan of flight sims the flight model in BF1942 is
forgivable, and while challenging, it's also fun as hell. Conversely, if you're
the sim-anal type, worry. It will feel arcadey and you will be duty-bound to inform
everyone else how unrealistic the planes behave and how they wouldn't have shot
you down in real life. Fag.
But wait...there's...more...?
Fuck yeah, there is. While you're stalking
Tiger-II's and humming the Ride of the Valkyries in your mustang, you'll need
to keep in mind that they have planes too. And chances are that you
won't be in the air long before you are noticed...and attacked. Land-based flak
cannons also pose peril to potential hot-doggers, so fly smart. Maps in the
pacific theater feature naval units such as carriers, subs, destroyers, and the
throbbing nigger-cock of the arsenal, the BATTLESHIP! Perhaps I'm just
partial to 60-ton boats with 16-inch guns that fuck everything all kinds of up,
but the battleships in BF1942 are extremely deadly. Park one of these
motherfuckers off the coast of your enemy's base and subject him to an
unparalleled barrage of blowshituptedness. Or if you prefer the military
precision route, you can stay a mile or two back and have a scout feed you
fucking artillery coordinates. Oh yeah, daddy. The interface is really just
a periscope flanked by horizontal and vertical sliders, but its badass
nonetheless. Just be sure to have a destroyer somewhere nearby, as they are the
only vessels which can detect those pesky submarines and drop depth charges.
The carrier is big, slow, and virtually defenseless against anything that
doesn't fly. It seems perhaps a little smallish in proportion to an actual
carrier, but as far as the game is concerned the scale is incredible. Alarms
will sound on the ships when they are about to sink, and when they DO sink it looks
like they are sinking. Neat. When this happens, be sure to make your way to the
nearest lifeboat, because it's usually a long swim ashore, with only the sharks
(!) to keep you company.
That all sounds just dandy. But...
Yes, but...there are flaws. Previously I stated that the hit detection wasn't up to
snuff for a shooter. This is in part due to some suspect netcode which seems
very unstable at times. Add this to the fact that the game tends to run choppy
on systems below 1ghz at anything besides medium detail AND finding out as soon
as you install the game that it requires a retail patch just to play online,
and well...it feels a bit rushed. Not that there isn't polish in the areas that
matter, but basic functionality is perhaps the most important aspect I look
for in a game. It must run if I am to play it. For the purpose of
relativity, my reviewing system specs are as follows: AMD Athlon 1800+, 768 MB
of ram, GeForce 4 TI 4400, SB Audigy. With this setup I was able to get about
45-50 fps at 800x600 with max detail and 64 sound channels. That is, until
other stuff got on screen with me. Tank battles would slow to a near-unplayable
crawl and naval battles usually persuaded me to find the "quit" key.
This, to me, doesn't suggest so much that the game was rushed as it was sold
broken. I hunted the EA support forums for some kind of fix, and all I found
was a suggestion to enable hardware sound acceleration. I could have sworn this
was already enabled, so I double-checked and it of course was not. Enabling
this solved just about every problem I was having with the choppiness, at the
cost of having sounds occasionally cut out. Small tradeoff. Now at the same
resolution everything hums along at a pretty solid near-60 fps, with a few dips
when the action heats up. But the hit-detection thing is still a real bummer.
Being able to lead a shot in a shooting game is a necessity, especially for
sniping. If they could fix this, Battlefield 1942 would be near perfect. As it
stands, it will have to settle for being pretty goddamn good.
Graphically, the game is above standard. Especially in the area of land textures, which is
currently unrivaled. Tropical islands look, well, tropical; deserts are meshed
with soft dunes and cracked earth. Trees and such are quite well rendered.
Vehicle models are good, and particular attention is paid to scale. Player
models, however, are kind of a mixed bag. While the uniforms are sufficiently
textured and easily identifiable, the models themselves are fairly low-poly and
seem blocky. The exception is the player faces, which actually animate
expression and lip-sync to radio commands. Explosions are big and pretty. And
they sound pretty too. Deep, bassy explosions that send shrapnel
spiraling around with distinct clangs and pings as they land Overall, the sound
is pretty solid. Even if it does cut out a bit at times, what is there
helps make the experience pretty immersive. Every vehicle has a unique sound,
from the gentle hum of a zooming jeep to the symphony of sqeaking iron against
asphalt pouring from the tanks. Artillery whistles just overhead and always
sounds too close for comfort. Planes...sound like lawn mowers...flying
lawn mowers, and the ominous buzz of the hovering bomber adequately signals the
arrival of dread. For a few doses of TEH FUNNAY, try bailing out of your plane
at extremely high altitude and sail towards the earth without opening the
chute. Pure comedy in any language. And with a physics model based on The Dukes
of Hazard coupled with the damage model from the A-Team, expect to see the laws
of science thoroughly mocked.
Buy it/h4x0r it/skip it?
|  | | | Me vs Yamato
(not pictured: burial at sea) | |
Buy it. Loads of fun, despite the few glaring flaws. Just be warned that it will
need a decent system with plenty of ram to be acceptably playable, and that
problems like hit detection might be too large to address in any patch. Replay
value well beyond the official game modes, plenty of mod support and novelty
servers for stunts and such. This is probably the game of the year, for what
it's worth.
You
hear that EA? I'm telling them to fucking buy it, so if it's not too much
trouble, could ya maybe finish it? It's an online-only game, for
chrissakes. While it might defy logic to judge a game based on the types of
folks who happen to play it, I think it applies when the designers forgot to
add any reasonable mechanism to an online-only game which would allow
the average player recourse against retarded teamkilling cocksockets. Kicking
troublemakers in a non-moderated server? Impossible! It's indeed a shame that
with the limitless amount of fantasy persona granted to each and every user of
the internet, more often than not people choose Richie Rich's evil cousin as their alter-ego.
But that's how it is, and it ain't just happened overnight, EA. You might have your pretty-packaged Road to Rome expansion pack waiting in the
wings, but until you patch my copy to include the BOOTTARD button, count me the
fuck out. I'm no rocket scientist (No, really! Every time I see a shuttle
launch I say to myself, "How in the fuck did they do that?), but
I'm pretty sure it would be just as easy to implement a legitimate voting
system in BF1942 as it is in any number of games that have similar problems
with friendly fire. Kinda hard to avenge the Holocaust when you have several
Hitler sympathizers in your platoon ramming jeeps into your planes as they taxi
down the runway.
 Bodybag
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