Battlefield 1943 (PS3) Review

By BlueZeroBlueZero
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bf1943_Wake-Island-Domination.png

I feel confident that I can review Battlefield 1943 based on the 30 minute demo. I can do this since the demo was representative of the full game. With the luck of server rotations, I would be playing on Wake Island only. Writing about the demo and calling it a review of the full game is usually something that would get you fired from mainstream video game review sites. Luckily, I can only fire myself and I’m not going to do that. The real reason I am confident to review a demo as the full game is that I basically experienced everything there was to do in the game during the 30 minutes. My prior Battlefield 2 and especially my Bad Company skills allowed me to dominate the competition. Thus I was able to “accelerate” my game like all those gamer drinks promise they can do:

Game Engine and Controls:
Since BF 1943 is directly running on the frostbite engine, you are going to notice that the game plays almost identically as Battlefield Bad Company. DICE has made some small modifications to the engine to make 1943 in some ways better than Bad Company. To start, there is no infantry health bar; if you survive damage, your character will slowly recover. This is an improvement to Bad Company’s darkening of the screen when your health was low. It made sniping and seeing difficult and was generally annoying if I wasn’t playing a class that could heal in Bad Company. In BF 1943, thank god DICE has fixed the way that running is handled. In Bad Company, you had to firmly hold the left thumb stick to continuously run. This was a flawed design, especially compared to the superior Call of Duty 4 running by just hitting the left thumb stick in for a second. BF 1943 follow the correct way to incorporate running controls: you just tab the left thumb stick and run as long as you are moving the thumbstick in a forward direction. Your character feels a lot more nimble while running and I used it effectively to avoid enemy tanks. A general feeling with the BF 1943 controls is that they are implemented well. I was able to pull off some good aiming and dodging. Basically, I felt empowered by the controls even though they were on a console. My PS3 controller did not disappoint.

Server Issues?
I should briefly mention that I didn’t have any problems getting online in BF 1943. I played the demo July 19th, which was after all the demo traffic dropped off I guess. People online complained that they couldn’t get onto servers. That was probably the 360 version or before EA added more servers. The server issues, for anyone that had them, is not a huge issue. Yes you paid $15 and it’s mainly an online game. These server issues were nothing compared to the pain suffered by the hands of Sackboy in his LittleBigPlanet. THAT was a server issue. I could see Media Molecule just assuming their one server running windows 95 and 1 ghz of CPU would be able to handle that anticipated game. EA responded very quickly to solve whatever issues were out there. I didn’t suffer so boo-hoo. The servers will be online till EA decides to yoink them for Madden 25.

BF 1943 Domination
As for the actual game, I was able to play around 3 rounds, with 2 full rounds of domination. I started the game on the losing team and they were losing so badly that I couldn’t save them. Since BF 1943 is based on the existing Bad Company engine, I had zero learning curve. I primarly played the anti-tank class and was randomly chosen Japanese to start. That class gets a crossbow looking smg (like the crossbow from Bioshock for some reason) and a Anti-Tank rocket weapon that looks like the one in Battlefield 2. Note that this was the Japanese weapon look, the American weapons looked different. That anti-tank class also gets a wrench, so tanks can once again dominate instead of air. I spent probably 10 minutes in a tank capturing points before I finally decided to jump out because a bridge was destroyed. I made my way over to the next spawn point and got my instant melee kill with the wrench. I next moved to the airfield and captured that easily. I pulled off epic Anti-Tank kills and had the range with my primary weapon to keep enemy infantry at bay. People playing BF 1943 must either didn’t know what to do or are PS3 noobs (ala 3rd level FPS tier. Xbox 360 is the 2nd tier and PC is the Godlike 1st tier. Just look at games like Unreal Tournament and Quake and you will agree about their mouse and keyboard domination. The Wii doesn’t show up in the FPS tiers for lack of competitive FPS) Anyway, the people weren’t much of a challenge. I ended up getting first in points and kills for my team.

bf1943_Wake-Island-Airfield.png

The next round, I was put on the American side. I decided to try out the sniper class. This class also seems very powerful because they have some sort of C4 like weapon they can lay down and then remotely detonate. Thus I used it to destroy fences to quickly cap the airfield as well as take out a enemy jeep on the move. I probably got some kills with the sniper rifle, I can’t remember as I finish writing this review days after I played the demo. There is probably not much to see there folks. A sniper rifle is a sniper rifle. They are either overpowered or weakened. It seems like they aren’t overpowered since not many people were playing them. Fairly, I can’t evaluate the sniper weapon as I didn’t encounter many snipers in the demo.

Planes
At one point I got into a plane and was able to control it relatively easily. The controls were not airplane inverted so up on the controller moved the plane up in altitude. Enemy planes have a red box to signify they are bad. This makes it really easy to line up the machine gun. Since I was Japanese, I knew that even though I had critically damaged the enemy plane as we approached each other I had to go all the way. I continued to fly right at the enemy plane even as he was slightly descending and got my kamikaze kill in for the day. The Wake Island ancestors would be proud, I brought them much honor. My other time flying I dropped some bombs and did alright.

bf1943_Planes.png

DICE has consistently tried to weaken the air units after in Battlefield 2 the jets were unstoppable under flying masters. In BF2, jets could easily aim their machine gun and pick off infantry. The jets bombed the hell out of people on the servers. They danced around anti-air missiles and destroyed rival air assets. There were no jets in Bad Company, only a helicopter which was weak compared to a tank or a machine gun. In Battlefield Heroes, the plane is very weak and gets destroyed by infantry weapons. The plane is supposed to be strong against tanks but I haven’t seen it proven in battle. In Battlefield 1943, the plane is again much weaker. The machine gun doesn’t seem like it does that much damage and the bombing was difficult to use with my limited time. I doubt that planes will dominate the battle as long as DICE continues to learn from their mistake. Battlefield 2 should have been called JetDomination 2: Revenge of the Planes.

I briefly tried out the anti-infantry class as the demo was on its final rotation for my time limit. It starts out with a bolt-action gun and a grenade launcher. I tried out the weapon on the carrier but wasn’t able to try it out. I wouldn’t play with this class anyway since the anti-tank class seemed to be the best. I’m sure that the grenade launcher is as powerful as it is in all games.

Overall:I’m going to wait for the PC version of 1943 since the game needs mods for longevity. There will be someone out there that will remake the BF2 or other oldschool maps for PC users to enjoy. Another factor for my decision is that I will be getting/building a new PC soon so I might as well pay the same price and get the hardcore competition.

PS3 Reviews Game: Some people say that Warhawk is a better game, some people are stupid. My processor could render more aggressive online opponents for Battlefield 1943. The smooth framerate and budget price makes me happy but there is a small problem. Three maps do not impress me. You’ll completely forget about this game when Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 2 comes out even though 1943 isn’t bad. I look forward to rendering that beautiful and colorful Call of Duty….

*Images from EA BF 1943 website

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