Battlefield 1943, a.k.a. Maybe it actually works now, awesome.
 

Battlefield 1943 is a download title - heading to XBLA, PSN and PC - due out in the summer and likely to be priced somewhere in the $15/£15 area.

Some things we now know about the game:

• Based on the Frostbite engine that powered Bad Company.
• Will include destructible environments, and buildings can apparently be completely obliterated now.
• 3 player classes: Infantry, Rifleman, Scout
  • Infantry - A close-combat specialist that packs an SMG, hand grenades, an anti-tank rifle and a wrench.
  • Rifleman - A mid-range class that carries a semi-automatic rifle, a rifle grenade, hand grenades and a knife
  • Scout - The sniper class, is kitted out with a bolt-action sniper rifle, C4, a pistol and a sword
• 24 player limit.
• Conquest mode only.
• It will feature three of the series' best maps: Iwo Jima, Guadal Canal and Wake Island.
• No health or ammo packs, both automatically replenish.
• There will be support for private matches.
• There will be player ranks and levels, but no unlockable weapons/perks.

Turns out the game is a little bit of an accident in ways:
Taken from sources, mainly the hands-on from VideoGamer.com: [ source ]

JoyStiq have a hands on with Battlefield 1943:

[ source ]

I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye on this one, as it sounds rather promising.

It doesn't seem as fully featured as BC's multiplayer (obviously), but there are definitely some changes that seem for the better (private matches for sure is something BC needed). Normally I'd be disappointed by a game just having one mode to play, but Conquest is so goddamn fun that it's forgivable. This is definitely gonna be a first day download for me.

And in fairness Conquest is all BF2 had too, so Battlefield players shouldn't be too surprised by it.

As I said in the general news thread, I'll certainly be interested to see if this turns out better than BF:BC was. If it's just another deathmatch game masquerading as a squad game I'll give it a miss though.

Not to change subjects but I heard that BF:BC is considered a horrible FPS. Umm...why? What exactly makes it horrible? Ive always found it to be a good shooter with a gritty and thick GFX engine.

The problem is two-fold. In single player, the balancing is ridiculous, it almost feels like you're supposed to die a lot of the time and you're essentially just charging in, killing a couple of guys, getting killed, respawning and repeating ad infinitum. There's no depth of tactics to it at all, just outright blasting shit.

Multiplayer, for all the tactical play there could be, it just plays like a massive deathmatch. There's no incentive for tactical play and in fact, the way the bases are laid out often encourages you to piss off on your own and avoid the main fighting to sneak a capture.

It's not a terrible game, it's just not as good as Frontlines and barely an improvement on Modern Combat. Frontlines' technical limitations actuially made it a better game to play in a round about way. They wanted 25 a side but that much voice chat would have lagged the shit out of everyone so you can only communicate with four people at once. Whilst this would at first suggest that nobody talks to each other, what actually happened is that players quickly realised that a four man unit is incredibly effective in the game and everyone who squadded up was butchering hordes of death-matchers. Also, by only having bases on the frontline capturable, the fighting is hugely focused in a small area so despite the huge maps, there's always something going on. You get a bunch more points for a base capture than a kill and points mean upgraded secondary weapons each battle so people actually capture bases and make an effort to win the damn game rather than the tendency in Battlefield for half the players to be camping as snipers.

Shin: Are you talking about the Battlefield thing that was on the 360 way back when? Because that was hardly anything like BF2. I loved the shit out of BF2 but hated that version when I tried playing it. Or is this Bad Company we're talking about?

Bad Company, although the criticism of it just being a huge deathmatch holds for the whole series on consoles to date.

Like I say, it's not a terrible game but there are better deathmatch games if I want to play that and better tactical games if I want that, it's just stuck in the middle and a bit nothingy as a result.

Dunno about on the 360, but in BF2 voice chat would only function between yourself and your squadmates. I believe the leader of the squad's commands would also go through to the commander, so the commander only had to listen to a handful of people at a time. When you had most of the people on your team actually using voice chat it could make for some really effective times. I do wish they had it so only the front point or two were capturable for the PC version, though.

BF2 on the Xbox had global voice chat but then it was only 16 a side. Still, you had to use the mute button quite a lot. Wasn't it Kaos who developed the PC version anyway? I think Dice took over the series from the console versions. Could be wrong though. The last Frontlines patch made it so squad leaders can all talk to each other and you can talk to anyone you're sharing a vehicle with which is dead handy as a vehicle with only one person in is a really easy target.

I think Dice did the PC version...I remember them doing BF1 and don't remember ever seeing a splash screen for anything called Kaos, but I also haven't touched the game in at least three years.

Dice did all the battlefield games, Kaos only did mod for battlefield like desert combat and they were soon hired by dice himself after that and together they made battlefield 2.

Actually I think we're both right. Kaos Studios was formed by a bunch of people who left Dice after making the PC version of Battlefield 2. They're essentially all the old people from Trauma Studios who made the Battlefield 1942 desert mod thing who were then bought by DICE, who sold Trauma Studios after the PC version of BF2 came out, at which point they formed Kaos, hence Frontlines being a lot more like 1942.

Edit: Darn, beaten to it.

Eurogamer have a new hands-on up for 1943, and it sounds somewhat promising: Battlefield 1943 Preview - Page 1 // Xbox 360 /// Eurogamer - Games Reviews, News and More

So in a twist that no-one everyone saw coming, Battlefield 1943 will be 1200 points/$15, and will be hitting the 360 and PS3 in June (PC players apparently need to wait until September).

[ source ]

Sounds like a fair price, and a bit cheaper than the $20 some people were predicting. Even at that price though, I hope they still manage to add some free extra content later on (like they did with Bad Company).

Given it's three maps and some stripped down gameplay, I don't know, I don't see why that should be 1200 rather than 800. True it could be worse at the $20 mark, but just thinking about it this is one of those things that'd be a no-brainer must purchase at 800, but becomes a 'question mark, must try the demo, relies on people I know getting it', purchase.

Another thing I didn't even realize was that a new copy of Bad Company only cost $20. Even though it isn't the exact same game, it runs on the same engine and has the same mode in it, along with over double the number of maps and a single player campaign to boot, all for just $5 more. I'm still interested in 1943 because I actually like WWII shooters and I wouldn't mind some variety after playing tons of BC, but if someone hasn't played BC I'd say maybe they should invest in it rather than 1943 unless it somehow turns out to be drastically different.

Don't know if this has been mention, but given the lack of activity on this thread I'm guessing not, but BF1943 is hitting next week on both XBLA and PSN:

[ source ]

So, anyone thinking of picking this up?

I was a huge fan of 1942 when it first came out, and I'm interested to see what this ends up as. However, the fact that its an "edited" edition makes me a little warry. I'll wait for reviews from friends before taking the plunge.

Or just, you know, downloading the demo if there is one.

Since it's XBLA I believe there has to be a trial mode, though what that will consist of will be interesting, since this is a purely online venture.

Bad Company had an online demo, which only let you go up to rank 4 (I forget if your stats carried over to the full game or not) and only consisted of one map. My guess is that they'd do something similar to that.

Anyway, I've still been strongly considering picking this one up. The price is still a bit iffy, and I think it's kind of stupid that they're holding a map back, but the change of setting from BC appeals to me. I guess I could still go either way at this point.

At least the achievements/trophies are pretty easy to get, if that's your thing.

I purchased it tonight. It's pretty much exactly what I always liked about the battlefield games. Simple, and fun. The only downside I can see so far is that they removed prone, but I'm sure it's because they want to keep gameplay fast.

Just downloaded the demo because of an impromptu party invite by omagnus and devo, lets hope a successful game comes of it!

I started downloading the demo and had a serious problem connecting to XBL last night. It would connect for 2 minutes and then drop out. I had to unplug the unit and the router for about two hours before the connection was stable again.

I hope this is as good as I remember...

This is literally the best menu system I have ever played. 10/10

The stunning music fills the player with confidence as they try out portions such as "Quick Match", or "Achievements". A visual eye-candy of Planes speckles the background and is a clue to the Easter egg of the menu, which comes in the "Tutorial" section: There, it features an actual mini-game of a 3D World War II first person shooter, obviously put in as a nod to the menu system's roots in being a prelude to games.

Don't have an Xbox? Don't want to waste spend 1200 MS points until you know what the game is like to play? Well, now you can have the authentic Battlefield 1943 experience right here in your browser.

YouTube Video

My favorite part? The one where you obviously leave the room and just continue to press the A button as the game repeatedly rams it's cock into your limey asshole.

Played the demo of the PS3 version and I didn't have any problems connecting (probably because there are less people playing it), though I didn't get to try out playing with a squad. The game ran smoothly though, and I had a fucking blast with it (definitely picking up the full version, just need to run out and pick up a PSN card tomorrow). My only complaint would be the lack of voice chat, but I don't know if it's just not present in the demo or if no one else actually had a headset (being the PS3, I'm willing to bet the latter).

If anyone else is getting the PS3 version, we definitely need to get a squad together.

Voice chat only works within a squad. It's to cut down on massive chatter that would exist across an entire team, although the team sizes in this aren't large enough to present the level of the problem that they seem to be worried about.

Better than nothing, I guess. As long as it has some form of working voice chat this time around (the voice chat in Bad Company was fucking terrible, didn't even work half the time even after they patched it).

Normally i hate WWII shooters, but this one was cool. Played the demo, and I found pretty much to be Bad Company with WWII era style. Its a colorful, bright game...but Rock...did you notice they really kinda went lazy on the voices in this game? The people when they die are identical to Bad Company's. That was lazy I think.

Overall I really thought it was cool. If I have the money to blow, i'll go ahead and get it. MvC2 first though, then BF 1943.

Well it is basically the same game just reskinned with a WWII theme, so it's not surprising they did the least amount of work possible. I like the changes they did make though, and I still think it's different enough to warrant buying even with all the time we've put into Bad Company.

So yeah, you better buy it. :p

Tried this morning since servers were supposed to be fixed. No one to play with, but I did manage to get into Quick Match and played for an hour or two. Its pretty fun.

This game can seriously get fucked. After endless searching earlier I finally make it into a game, one which is horrifically unbalanced. "Oh well, the game moves the teams around" I think to myself remembering how Skills and I, having entered the game through the 'Play with a friend in a squad' function, had been split up after a round because we were doing too well. Nope, no dice, just unbalanced teams for a few rounds. Sod that.

Then later when I return to try again, the game has a new trick up its sleeve. It was letting me join games easily enough, though it decided that I was doing too well at certain points and froze my whole Xbox up. Five times.

The most frustrating part is when it's good, it's fucking fantastic. This is great fun when it's working. The problem is that that's fucking rare.

This is shoddy fucking work, and if I was part of the team responsible I'd be about ready to top myself from embarrassment.

Chalk up another two refunds. Omagnus and I scored one for how continually fucking broke this thing is. Even though the news ticker says Quick Match is fixed, going in this afternoon results in yee olde ass fucking again. I recommend Devon try it if she's as annoyed as I was.

Devo, Ultima and I: a fucking force to be reckoned with. Also, the only three people doing a damn thing on our team.

Best Squad Award 15 times. Seriously though, fun times guys.

We definitely came the top squad most of the rounds we played, but I swear last time I checked the stats page I only had the badge x8. To be honest, I don't entirely trust EA's stats reporting, it seems far too flaky and unreliable (I know Skills mentioned it took ages for the game to acknowledge the Best Squad achievement he'd already earned).

I also wonder why the game doesn't give you actual stats to look at rather than that stupid awards page. If you know how many people I've killed, how many flags I've capped, etc, then why can't I see those numbers?

Yeah, I'm still disappointed I didn't get my 1006% rank upgrade. Should have taken a picture of that, that was a really "WTF?!" moment.

Stats are very broken. There is a page tied to it on battlefield1943.com that gives you slightly more interesting numbers, but not only were they entirely incorrect the other day when they were up, right now they aren't even available. Super.

http://www.battlefield1943.com/soldier

Log in and use that link to find yourself, but chances are good that it'll be fucked up in one way or another.

Regarding "best squad". I have been in it well over 20 times now, but I've only got the stamp for 9 of those, and the achievement for it didn't pop until I started playing without joining a squad whatsoever. Came in first overall while not in a squad and oh there it was.

Hell, half those stamps seem totally random. The five airplane kills in a round one took me many rounds of fulfilling the said conditions before it would show. I think I got it on my fourth consecutive round of getting at least 6 plane kills, if not more.

Soldier profiles have apparently been disabled according to a news story on the site:

So yeah, don't even bother.

Also, if I'm not mistaken (and the thing is actually working), apparently the Xbox kill count is already up to 27 million. Christ.

I'm surprised too.

Imagine if this shit actually worked properly? It might have been unlocked already.

Reading some comments on a news bit about the BF1943 server issues, saw someone reply to another user who mentioned the issue with squads potentially being split on map change.

Apparently, provided there's room on your team, you can do the My Squad > Invite trick (that we found works in game to get a squad back together if something goes wrong) even if the people have been moved to the other team. No idea if it'll work, but could be worth bearing in mind if we encounter that issue again when playing.

It only works when the other guy isn't dicking around in a plane.

Well, it's either that or explode randomly in a vehicle with a suicide claim, so there is no real avoiding it.

Try teamswapping when you're dead. The "suicide when you want to change teams and still alive" has been a rule pretty much as long as I can remember for any team-based FPS game.

That's fine RR, except this isn't teamswapping in the sense that most FPS games punish you for. There's no menu option to teamswap, so you can only do it if you're friend is on the other team. And it only happens if the game has decided to split you and your friends (who were on the same team, in the same squad) onto opposing teams. It's the fact that the game is at fault for the need to swap that it's sort of a kicking whilst you're down thing to punish you for points because you're trying to correct the game's fuck up.

Soooooooooo... I guess Ill be sticking with Left 4 Dead, huh?

I've found it's running perfect now. I love how fast the 360 unlocked the Coral Sea map. It was fun for abit, but I probably won't play that mode too often. The one thing I'm absolutely glad for is that chatting is limited to your current squad. It sucks if you have more than four friends playing a game, but you're all going to be matched up in an Xboxlive party anyways.

Either way, I'd be more happy with not being able to talk to some friends over having to listen to some of the idiots that are most likely playing. Really, does anyone want to listen to some idiot/little kid whine about not getting into a plane, or how you "Stole his kill/vehicle/plane." or "You're such a fag/noob/bitch/slut/etc."

No one is actively talking in the game channel anyway. The squads you get thrown in are already in their own party chat.

Game runs the exact opposite of perfect, but you're fortunate to have that. The amount of times it won't let me join a friend's game, or split the party after a round, or randomly disconnect me, or have crippling lag, or freeze, or something, is still about a 6 (or more) to 1 ratio to having the thing actually work as it should.

This is doing nothing but give me headaches. I am very glad that, in the end, I didn't pay for it. It is a wonderful game marred by the worst execution I've seen in years. I'm going to give it a week to improve. I'll drop it afterwards if it's still garbage.

Air Superiority mode is fun until you realize that everyone on your team is just going to bazooka the planes on your carrier repeatedly (seriously, happened every time I did this mode) and that it's easy to dominate if you're more than competant enough to know how not to fly into the side of a mountain. I've gone 15 and 2 and 18 and 3 and all sorts of shit in that since it's so easy.

Unfortunately, it'll ruin pilot stats for those of us who specialize in that in the main game. Getting the fighter efficiencies shows a lot more talent when you get it in Conquest than in AS. Real men know how to pop tanks.

AS stats should be segregated from the others, but that won't happen. :(

I'm pretty sure that Battlefield 2 on the Xbox used to occasionally throw your mates onto the other team but I suppose there was no party system back then. The reason they do squad chat rather than general chat is that voip takes up a shit ton of bandwidth. Limiting people to only talking to their squad or anyone within 3 feet of you or in the same vehicle was the only way they could get smooth gameplay with 50 people online in Frontlines, having general chat would have made the whole thing unplayably slow.

I must say I'm finding the concept of having to kill yourself to change teams being a "punishment" quite a difficult one to get my head round. If you want to play on the other team you kill yourself and get invited over. Aside from letting down your current team by switching out, exactly how does this actually hurt you? It can't take that long to die and switch surely so you're not missing out on much of the match during transition are you?

You get penalised in points and stats Shin. It's counted as a suicide, so you get -10 points, and do hurt the team you end up on.

Ah, I didn't realise the negative points switched teams with you. Every other game like this I've played restarts you at zero points when you switch teams. I can see then how that would be annoying although again, the final score doesn't directly affect your enjoyment of playing the game one would hope.

I think as far as stats go though you know you've never killed yourself except to change teams so unless you're worried about impressing people with your awesome Battlefield stats or maintaining some spot of a leaderboard then that's not really a problem is it?

And if you are worried about those things then I think you really, really need to get out more.

No, not worried about it, but it's still punishing you for the game fucking up. It's more about the principle that the actuality.

Game has been deleted. I feel better already.

Yeah, this shit has gone beyond being frustrated with the game to actually being angry enough to be nippy at each other in the voice chats.

There is no point to having your entertainment actively piss you off when it's meant to be something to relax with, so fuck this. I think I'm about to follow suit with Omagnus's fantastic idea.

I was wondering when this was going to happen. All I'd hear about is how broken the shit is (or if I happened to be in party chat, how frustrating aspects of the game were) but you kept PLAYING IT like battered housewives that just couldn't be assed to seek help.

The game didn't even have the kindness to lie and say "that's ok baby, I'm sorry, it won't happen again" after physically assaulting us though. After all the bruises and missing teeth all we got was a "clean the blood off the carpet, bitch". :(

So are you all going to get Worms instead or what?

Soldier profiles are up, but still seem off in terms of stats. My most used class is Japanese Sniper? Huh? Or, somehow my playtime is higher than Omagnus's, my score is lower, but I still have more than double his points per minute.

Oh, neat. Division is hard.

Don't know if I can trust the other numbers after that. Some seem ballpark correct but I can't be sure. (Pretty sure Omagnus has more than 67 Allied Tank kills.)

I also can't find Ultima or Devo with it, although it does find Miles, who has less playtime than the both of them.

I'm sure people have complained about the issues on forums and probably to EA its self - but has there been any offical word from them about this garbage?

There have been no official statements outside of the postings made on the website, which consist mostly of "You love us too much, we have to fix this!" and various other coy rewordings of "oops, we fucked up".

At this point, it seems it would be easier for them to fix the problems, delete the current version and put up something entirely "new". There seems to be far too many "basic" problems for a patch or two to fix.

Both the patches and any new version would be required to go through that nebulous magical whatever-the-fuck that is the Microsoft certification process. If they could bypass that though, super. Bethesda's skipped it with the fixes for Fallout DLC, but that involved them actively admitting a problem instead of...well, this.

Half the problems this thing experiences are on their end, dealing with their servers, such as the squad splitting fuck ups and the other various connection issues. Freezing, error handling, and visual problems aside, there's not much (outside of the gameplay balancing issues Devo wants) that could be fixed with an all new product belched out right away.

I'm willing to try again in about 4 to 8 weeks, see if anything's been touched up, but that's about it. Here's hoping, since the core product is wonderful when it isn't choking to death on it's own vomit.

Which is again the reason they'd need something new and not just something patched.

Without getting too nerdy on me - does anyone know if the server issues are in the way the game talks to the servers via bad programming or the servers themselves or what? At this point, Superman Returns has fewer bugs and more fun in it.

Drop it like its hot.

In the simplest terms, most of the issues (both those already fixed and still remaining) fall into the latter category, while comparitively few of them fall into the former.

If the errors were in the way the game talked to the servers, it would be a lot more clearcut, because pretty much everyone would be getting affected. Since it's the servers acting screwy, some people luck out and then the actual GAME is fine, and then others can't get past the wall of bugs in the servers.

DO I NEED TO TELL YOU WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH ALUMINUM TUBES

YELLOW CAKE

I actually bought this yesterday on the insistence of Phong and Harvey and had a real blast playing it for a few hours. There are a few graphical glitches here and there and whilst the squad splitting can be annoying, it's easily remedied by everyone except the party leader quitting then getting re-invited. Takes about 20 seconds to fix, if that.

The game itself is pretty fun, although I imagine less so without a squad full of mates. That there's only three jobs makes for some balance issues and they really need to make the tanks suffer more damage from rockets although perhaps I'm just too used to Frontlines where any tank can be killed with three rockets and they're homing rockets. I'd prefer a layout of the maps that lead to a more definite attack and defence direction, all too often you capture a flag only to be shot in the back by people capturing the one behind you but again, that could just be too much Frontlines.

It's certainly worth a tenner though if you have some mates to play it with.

Tanks can be two shotted if you hit them in the ass. Armour is weaker back there. There's less distinct vehicle damage zones than in BF2, but the concept is the same.

I have found that, sometimes (most of the time), when you try to rejoin your squad after getting split, the damn thing rejects your connection attempts. At least, that's how it was before this last weekend. Perhaps that three hours of downtime actually resulted in some work being done.

The game may well be less annoying than it was, but it's still plenty frustrating, mostly now because of the sheer number of idiots populating the battlefield. I'd be very surprised if many people beyond the GFFer (and associates) filled squad were doing anything sensible, and the number of people I found just randomly camping useless locations. That coupled with issues where the game ignores damage sometimes, vehicles are random as shit (lol @ Devo's jeep image), and various other inconsistencies.

The game can be fun, but it's fun tinged with a lot of frustration and annoyance, and the rather irritation-free fun I've been having in Burnout Paradise reminds me that I don't need to put up with that kind of bullshit annoyance in games when I have so many better options available. Hell, I'd rather risk reload glitches in Call of Duty 4, as ultimately that's still a far better game in my book.

Ha ha, what? Burnout is your idea of frustration free online gaming? You mean you enjoy joining a game, suggesting someone actually starts a race, getting ignored while the host attempts all kinds of 8 man challenges, failing all of them because there's one person in the room just driving around in circles and ending up with everyone just driving up and down the bridge jumping into each other endlessly?

If you want to play team games with more than 4 a side with any sort of tactical sensibilty across the team then you need to start forming bigger parties or prepare yourself for a lifetime of dissapointment mate. There will always be idiots who are playing just to get their kill averages up or to get achievements or to fly the planes because everyone else is a jew nigger fag bitch noob and until they get rid of leaderboards and achievements or make the leaderboards based on highest number of base captures, that's here to stay in games like this. I think it's Frontlines where you get a single point for a kill and ten for a base capture and that encourages people to play it properly, capturing bases rather than dicking about as a sniper in a stupid spot but even then you get queues for the helicopters and people taking them without waiting for a co-pilot.

That doesn't mean you can't have fun though. A group of four or so should be enough to mount a reasonable assault on any flag, especially as you can spawn on your squadmates so can keep up the pressure and there will be the same number of idiots on the other team as on your own so the numbers are still balanced.

Different people get different things out of gaming. Some people like to be the highest scorer every time, some people like to be on the winning team, some like to scream insults down the mic at strangers and some just like to dick about with their mates. I'd never be so bold as to tell you what to play but I imagine you'd get a lot less frustrated with team games if instead of always playing the newest games (Which will attract a vast number of casual gamers just pissing about), you played something a bit older, meaning the try-it-for-a-bit-then-buy-something-shinier brigade will have moved on and the only people still playing will be those who really like the game and probably have a deeper understanding of the sensible tactics and what have you.

In my experience, you get much better matches in unpopular games, assuming you're the type to take your gaming seriously rather than just playing for a laugh.

99% of the people I've encountered in Burnout online these days are interested in actually doing challenges, actually doing events or something else. It's not been difficult to get a good group of people together at all, and I'd be happy to host a session of races with you and other GFFers online sometimes.

Anyways, that's for another thread. I know you get dumb people in all sorts of games, I'm not arguing that point, but it's the number of idiots I encountered in BF1943 PLUS the various gameplay issues on the game's side that make it frustrating. When there's no perceivable lag why the hell should a clip of bullets to the back of someone's head, that the game tells me are hitting, not work? And then one shot at distance on the same dude later results in a kill?

But yes, the number of idiots I've run into is crazy. So many games I'd find it was just me and Devo (and bear in mind this was before all you guys decided to buy the game, so it was literally me and Devo, sometimes Ultima if the game would let him join us) would be the only people doing anything on our team. And with just two people it's hard work, and depressing when the second we'd stop defend a flag and go to take another the one we'd just left would start flashing as it was being claimed by the enemies. I did bloody well in BF1943, and at times it was a lot of fun, but the fun/frustration ratio was too heavily tilted in the annoyance camp for me to continue wasting time with it.

Played more of this last night and I'm enjoying it more and more. It's slightly annoying that people hang around waiting for planes and leave the carrier in boats on their own but that also works in your favour. On Iwo Jima especially, rather than rushing straight for the shore, you're better off getting two gunners and driving a boat around the far side of the island. You can then pick off people in boats on their own very easily, kill any idiots waiting for a plane on the deck or using the flak guns then capture the nearest objective on the shore (The beach on the Jap side, can't remember the name on the other side) from behind the enemy. Leave a couple of people there to guard it (And if they're snipers keep picking off people on the carrier) then roll up all the bases from behind. You can then rely on people being idiots and coming ashore alone and keep picking them off as they come. I ended up in a squad with a couple of random guys for a couple of matches last night and we wreaked havoc like that with just the three of us. People's almost obsessive need to get loads of kills rather than ever defending bases means you can predict what they're going to do a lot of the time and attacking a base from behind is successful 90% of the time.

I also spent a while on the horseshoe shaped island, camping out with a sniper rifle halfway down the cliff in the middle of the island. You can see four of the bases from there and can't be seen from the nearest road. You can pick people off from range and when you see a tank coming, sneak back up the hill, wait for it to pass and then fuck it up with dynamite.

The more I play this, the more I'm enjoying the number of fucking idiots who play it. It's like none of them have ever played an objective based shooter like Battlefield before and just makes it far too easy and fun for those of us who have.

From what I've played it hasn't been as bad as it was before Coral Sea unlocked. Now, I've actually seen planes available with no one rushing towards them as if their life depends on it. Granted, there are still idiots who have no business flying planes getting into them (I know I can't fly a plane for shit, so I just stick to the ground where I can actually help my team), but it's nowhere near as bad as it was when the game first came out.

I guess as well people have realised that the planes aren't nearly as lethal as planes and helicopters can be in Battlefield 2 or Frontlines. With a decent pilot and co-pilot in a helicopter you could singlehandedly win a match of either of those. It's incredibly easy to shoot down planes in 1943 and their bombs aren't even that great.

I dunno.

I can win battles in a plane against an AA gun, and using it anyone can destroy mobile armour extremely well. One (or two) decent pilots can halt most heavy attacks the enemy can mount, including the bombers. I'm not saying I'm great, but if you're anything above the level of "mentally handicapped" and have a little bit of practice, the things become pretty damn strong.

I guess the level of power is offset by how idiotic they knew the player base was.

You need enough people to populate the map to make it fun though. With too few people it'd just come down to who could run around capturing bases quickest that won, essentially the best jeep driver. I agree that losing a squad member to the other team can be frustrating but it's also kinda fun being able to kill them and then gloat about it down the mic.

As for planes vs AA guns, I've probably had more assists from hitting the plane once before the pilot stacks it into a hillside trying to get under my line of fire than I have had straight kills. I'm not saying they can't be powerful, I'm saying you need a modicum of skill to make them deadly whereas in previous games of this genre an average player can dominate a match just by launching massive barrages of rockets from a helicopter and keeping moving so the appeal of easy points is rather diminished.

Also, as with pretty much every game of this genre, there is still nothing much funnier than planting explosives on a parked plane and waiting for someone to try and fly off in it. Battlefield 2 on Xbox especially you could get monstrous amounts of points by sneaking into the main enemy base as a sniper and loading up the helicopter with C4, then getting to a safe distance and focussing your sights on the cockpit. Anytime someone climbed in you just pressed the trigger for an easy headshot and if they happened to get off the ground (If you were reloading or something), you just blew the C4. It's amazing how many people don't learn and just keep piling into the same chopper over and over getting killed the same way every time. BF2 even had the camera point at who killed you when you died and most people still wouldn't come to try and kill you.

Having a fucking blast with this game. Starting to get the hang of sniping. I'm still goddamn terrible with the tanks, but other than that I'm consisently placing in the top few slots. Shin's right, the sheer hugeness of the player base means you're playing with a large majority of people who are fucking terrible, which is awesome for us. Most games each team has 3-5 players that are responsible for 90% of the work of their teams.

Haven't hit any freezes or lag issues at all since I picked it up last Tuesday. That day we had squad split-up issues 3 times, but not once since then.

I agree you should be able to start a game with more than 4 people (you can only go in as a single squad, right?), but I don't seem them ever making full-on private games. Unless you actually had 2 full teams I don't see the maps really working, it's already borderline too few people as is with 24 players. The game seems to be geared much more towards pick up and play style. Weird that you're still having Squad split-up issues. I haven't had it happen since last Tuesday, and it doesn't seem to be happening at all with the other people I play with either. So I don't know if we're just lucky, you're unlucky, or if they actually did specifically address that.

Personally my on real gripe (and I'm new to Battlefield so maybe this is old news) but spawning is super fucked up. If you spawn in at a base that the other team is currently trying to capture, it's a hilarious chain of either you spawning right behind them, or right in front of them. It's hilarious and awesome when you're spawn killing people as you're taking a base, but it sucks when you're trying to spawn at your base and you get knifed in the back instantly.

Also it's completely bullshit if you own the base that has the Air Raid a single dude from the other team can run in and set it off; only the team who owns the base should be able to call it :(

No, that would be bullshit. SOmetimes if you're the only person trying to cap a point on your team, sneaking in and wiping out the defenders in one go works pretty well.

You know what should be implemented though? A limit on how many times you can use the bombers in a round. Per player I mean. If you were the last one in there, you should not be allowed to be the next one in. It would, hopefully, cause less camping of that fucking shit, it's so aggrivating.

There's also the fact that DICE have previously put out Battlefield games capable of being played by less players that the entire map requires. I'm not sure about BF1942, but in BF2 nearly all maps could be played in various player number configurations, with the out-of-limits zone being changed (the whole "You are leaving the play area, return in XX seconds" stuff) and the number/location of bases shifting to better suit smaller numbers. Why not offer that sort of option as it'd be piss easy to do. Or hell, why not just let the players choose if they want to start a server with just two people? You can eliminate all stats gathering from private games, so people couldn't achievement whore or stats boost, simple.

I agree with you Shin, the game maps as is would be terrible with a handful of players, the odd time I ended up in a game that was only 6-8 people a side it felt pretty empty, but why not allow people to make that choice themselves?

P.S. I stuck up my review on Prime Gamer, so you can all go and post there about how you disagree with me - Prime Gamer Review: Battlefield 1943

I actually had a really long post regarding your review where I agreed and disagreed on several points, but I decided it went on too long and I like you too much to post some of my comments on some of your opinions. In general I think a lot of the gameplay and other things they've done were done specifically to cater to a casual arcade pick up and play experience, for better or worse.

I honestly do feel I have to call out one thing specifically thought that really bothered me on your whole review; I find it sort of hilarious and odd that you slam it repeatedly for lag and connection issues when you haven't played the game in the last 10 days of the 18 since release. I don't doubt you had a bad run with the game, but I play the game mostly with people from Europe and specifically asked them about this today, and none of them have had the slightest issues with lag or connecting whatsoever since a few days after the game came out. And this is while I was in a game with them and there's a guy from Japan, 2 people in the UK, 1 person in Ireland, 1 person from the Netherlands, and another from somewhere else in Europe I don't know about. And I honestly just spent time looking at multiple message boards, and except for one or two people who seem to be having issues with connecting to EA Online (which is the problem I was having day 1), just no one seems to be having these issues at all the last week or two. I mean, maybe it's possible you could log on today and still somehow have the same problems, but it strikes me as odd you put out a review complaining heavily about online issues at launch with an online-only game, but haven't played it anytime recently. Unless you have another account or something?

I think you'll find - and feel free to point out any instances where this is not true - that I refer to all times of having connect issues in the past tense and point out that these are problems I experienced when playing the game during its first week and some. I acknowledge that things are now seemingly better (I say seemingly, because all I can go on are people's reports such as yours).

I'm reviewing a game based on my experiences with it, which largely consisted of issues trying to actually connect. Yes, I haven't played recently, but that's because the early experience annoyed me sufficiently to put me off playing (and not entirely to do with connection issues, but those were a big part of that).

I'm not quite sure what you expect me to do when reviewing the game, ignore all the shitty experiences I had? I'm pretty sure I point out that it's a good game underneath the crappy stuff I ran into. Plus I really don't go on about connection stuff too much (there's a block at the top, and it's referenced in the summary). Fair play if you disagree with me and I'm really pleased for you if you're having a good time with the game, but my experience with it was much different and the review reflects that.

Daravon, if you're game, I'd be interested to put up a counter-point review on the site if you'd be willing to write one (I don't mean just sit there slagging me off and saying I'm wrong, but present your own point of view as you clearly have a different experience with the game).

In Battlefield 2, on the maps with airstrikes you had to crouch in front of it, out in the open while you aimed it, meaning a semi-decent sniper could cover the thing and kill anyone trying to use it. That meant to use the air strike effectively, you had to sweep the area for snipers first and have a couple of people covering you while you used it, so in a game with semi-competent players it tied up three or more people to drop an airstrike and the console was generally miles away from any bases so they were out of action for a while getting there and back, often resulting in a lost base.

So essentially, the bombing raid bunker needs to have an open door so you can shoot the guy using it. If you're in a plane when someone on the other team launches an air strike though that's about the easiest 30 points you're likely to get in the game just for shooting down the bombers.

Like SD, I've not had any connection or lag issues at all since starting to play this last week so I guess it's fixed. In fact the only single moment of annoyance I've had with this was yesterday when I threw some C4 at a tank and it fell straight through it and didn't go off (And the tank driver noticed me behind him with predictable results). The moral of the story is the one I would have thought everyone had learned after Castle Crashers, buying an online only XBLA game in the week of release is a really dumb thing to do.

Only buying Crashers a week later would have solved nothing.

From the sounds of things, whatever they did that other weekend during that three hours of downtime really must have fixed a lot. People who have started playing since then certainly seem to be having far better of a time of it than the people who started (and got fed up) playing before hand. You can't really blame either party for thinking the way it does considering all they've experienced is one or the other.

Anywho, I'd be very, very down for open door bomber bunkers, that would solve a few issues with their relative power. Now a solution for the camping of them and I'll be ever so happy.

And, indeed, buying months after release still wouldn't have helped. You'd have had to waited, what was it 8 months or so before any issues to do with connections got fixed. So not really the same. Plus Behemoth is a 2 man team, EA/DICE is a pool of hundreds of experienced devs who should know better. Let's not start comparing apples and solar systems now.

As Skills said, it's clear that they've actually fixed a lot on the connection side of things and that's great. If you're having an excellent time with the game then brill, I really am pleased for you. However, for all the fun bits I encountered there was a lot of annoy stuff. Originally that was connection issues, but once those started to subside it was more the weird quirks that occurred far more often than I was willing to put up with.

For example, Shin, you mentioned putting C4 on a tank and it dropping right through. I had at least 2 times where I shot a tank at very close range with a rocket only to see the rocket fly straight through the tank. I had a couple of times where I threw C4 down and the C4 either fell through the map or didn't actually materialise properly. I've unloaded whole clips into people (with the hit indicator telling me I was hitting) to no effect. I've had people firing at me from about 2 foot away and no triangle appear over them or on the map (that one was happening a lot actually). I've been killed as I was exiting a bombing run shelter before I had any sort of control over my character. I've accidentally set of C4 when I was too close and killed myself, but not the enemy stood between me and the C4. Etc, etc, etc.

It is a good game. The Battlefield series has always been strong and well designed. It's just not a very well put together game.

I think you're both kind of deliberately missing my point there. I was implying that one should wait a bit until other people have played a new game, reported the bugs and they've been fixed before buying it. Luckily for most of us here, we have you two to do that for us and as long as Skills keeps picking up those refunds it's not costing anyone anything anyway. :)

The best way to stop bombing run camping is to plot up somewhere suitably out of sight with a sniper rifle I find. Doesn't help much when the campers are on your team though. I'd have thought that C4 on or near the door wouldn't hurt either. If it doesn't kill the person inside, you can just wait for the bombs to be released and hit the trigger as only a real fuckwit would stay in the bunker after that point.

I think the thing to remember is that this is an XBLA game and cost a tenner, not a full £35 game so the odd glitch or lack of polish is perhaps fair enough. You could say that it's so cheap because there's only three maps but anyone who played BF2 online will tell you you only ever got to play three maps anyway. I think I've had £10 of enjoyment out of it already to be honest and I'll be playing it on and off until either Frontlines 2 comes out or BF:BC2 comes out and isn't a bit rubbish.

Maybe. :p

The thing is Shin, you can argue that it's only £10 so some issues are forgivable, and maybe it's more forgivable, but it's still £10 I've paid for a game from a highly experienced developer who I expect better of. And my point is that the number of little bugs and issues was enough to make me question why I was bothering with it when there are games as good or better and free (or largely so) of any such bugs sat in my game pile. About the only reason I'd be down for playing it now is because a bunch of you lot were on and games with mates are nearly always fun, but then I'd still rather fire up Halo 3, Left 4 Dead, Rock Band, Burnout Paradise, Gears 2, Ace Combat, CoD4, GRID, etc, etc, instead.

Fair enough mate. I'm quite into it mainly because I love games like these, nobody plays Frontlines online anymore and Bad Company was a real dissapointment so it's been a while since I've had some decent objective based squad FPS action.

Oh yeah, I love these kind of games too, hence my annoyance in disappointment. I put a shit ton of time into BF2 and was looking forward to a similar kind of thing. Sadly I think the lack of depth also hurts the experience over time too, as I did start to miss some of the variation of playing as the rather different classes and opportunities BF2 had. If Frontlines is so good maybe I should check it out, though do you mean the online games are almost dead?

Well there are still people playing it but whereas once you had a choice of several busy game rooms, there's generally just one 50 player game going on and a few smaller ones. Not necessarily a bad thing as the only people playing it now are those who play it properly and you can pick it up for about £7 second hand. I know a lot of people didn't like it though, mainly because the sniper rifle needs a lot of leading to hit properly, the game fogs out to hide redraw distance deficiencies and with 50 people in a room it occasionally lags a bit. £7 is worth it for the single player campaign though in my opinion which is the best of any game like this I've certainly ever played.

For the first time since I bought it, I experienced a flawless play session. Could be because BIG APPLE 5 AM, or because it was GELB KICK SOME ASS FORCE, but I dunno. Worked super. Has me enthusiastic, too.

New personal record, too. 21 kills, 0 deaths, in the same damn aircraft the ENTIRE MATCH. People are terrible at this vidya.

Also, "I'll be right there" has a new space in the dictionary of awesome.

Played this last night with Tails, Daravon, Devo, Mo0...

...But I was so goddamned drunk I barely remember anything.

You were going on about some crazy shit that made no sense and that X14 kept killing you.

Story, please. Need to determine if it unseats "Uh oh."

We're on (I think it was) Iwo-Jima, and after about a forever timespan of fucking around with airplanes, I decided to take to land because our team sucks and doesn't have any capture points. Skills is all "Where are you at?" but he sees me on the radar and is all "I'll be right there."

As I'm heading up the hill to the Signal Station the first thing I see as I hit the peak is a plane nose dive into the ground where the flag is full speed with Skills bailing out at the last second right before the explosion. It was fucking hilarious. He lived, too!

But like Skills said, we had a blast because we spent the majority of our matches last night both in planes, GELBing it up because everyone else sucks too much to shoot us down.

I was singing the theme from St Elmo's Fire for some reason.

And theres a TON of cheap sniping. I think X14 was camping on a hill by one of the flags and kept taking me out.

Well, spawn camping is always bullshit - but there was a couple of times where something insane would happen. Like I was hiding in a bunker with Daravon (who ran out and got himself killed) and I just kept lobbing grenades out the door to keep whoever it was at bay and it was like they shot me from around the corner and up a hill. Totally what the fuck.

You realize this is awesome because you apparently don't remember that we actually figured out that you were committing suicide, and "X14" killing you was actually the Suicide -10 popping on your screen, and you were totally misreading it.

Well, the text in this game is seriously fucking tiny. :(

Also, yeah, I killed myself a couple of times, but even you pointed out that there was a lot of absolute bullshit going on.

If Devo's saying things have improved then I might have to try this again. I do still have the game so might be tempted to fire it up if a bunch of GFFers are on.

In before SURPRISE BOATSEX.

Looks more like boat spooning to me.

Just a heads up: If anybody is having air related problems give LeHah a call, as he is the one who controls the sky.

Also of note is that one does not simply fly into Mordor GELB TERRITORY and live to tell the tale. Just ask Daravon. All chillin' in the air like hey guys whats up and I'm like MY GUNS

Don't ever doubt my sky-controlling powers again, man. I owned that hill and that sky and the goddamned plane and the bullets that riddled my body but did not kill me.

Why? Because I control that shit and I'm all up in that mutherfucker and the rest of you gotta pay tithe to my being all things awesome.

(Context: I think we were playing the Iwo Jima map and I was running up the side of a mountain to get to a better vantage point against a tank in the distance. Goodhand/Kyndig was already up there - but as I got closer, he started taking fire from an airplane. He says he wasn't killed but he did disappear from my view, at least - where upon the plane turned its guns on me for a good four seconds straight and I took every shot and kept running like Steve Prefontaine and made it to the hilltop, proclaiming THAT I CONTROL THE SKY.)

God damn this game is hard using an SDTV. Our house got hit by lightning the other day and it took out the crappy old tv in the bedroom. As such, we moved the HDTV I have hooked up to my 360 in there and I'm having to play through the old SDTV in the front room. You can't tell what colour the little arrows are, the map is next to useless and sniping at distance is pure luck as you can't really tell where people's heads are. Hence I'm mainly playing Guitar Hero at the moment as all the other games I've been playing lately (This and Sacred 2 mainly) really need an HDTV to play properly. I'm going to try and pick up a crappy second hand tv for the bedroom this weekend so I can have my HD one back.

I agree with this - but mostly because the goddamned text in this game is so fucking small. I'm getting extra points for assisstance or rifle efficiency and I can only barely make it out half the time.

Still haven't gotten use to sniping. It seems to be something I can do with great skill on PC and can barely do on a console. The thing that really throws me off is the "fade to black" effect when you're putting another bullet into the breach. I have nothing against bolt action rifles - I use to be incredibly good with the Karabiner 98k in Day Of Defeat, to the point where the sniper rifle in that game sucked because all I needed was iron sights - but the whole one second pause between looking and then loading is really tough to deal with.

With sniping in this you have to remember that the bullets dip over distance. Also you need to lead your target to allow for any lag in your connection. I find sniping from long range leads to a lot of assists rather than kills as a result, unless your target is standing still or running straight towards or away from you. Middle distance though you should be alright. Generally if you're shooting from one objective to the next nearest a sniper rifle is a better bet than the rifleman rifle I find. Much closer than that and you're better off with the rifle as you can crack off the shots that much quicker. A good place to practice is on the horseshoe shaped map. Stand about halfway up the hillside in the middle of the horseshoe and you can see all the bases on the arms but generally won't get spotted from the road. You can get some good long range sniping practice in and not get shot at too much although from there you aren't really helping the team effort much.

And heres the thing. In the couple days I've had the game, I've turned into a pretty deadly shot with the rifle-fired grenade. I'm hitting targets WAY off in the distance - we're talking almos a quarter away across the map. I'd probably be even more effective if I wasn't constantly taking sniper fire from bunkers (which leads me to mention - why the fuck can't you go prone in this? That drives me nuts!)

I get that theres lag and that theres lead time for firing (duh, AA Turrets alone) but for some reason I can get crazy assisstance bonuses with a regular rifle but can't hit a tank if its parked in front of me with a sniper rifle.

Now this is the story all about how
This tank got flipped, turned upside down
And I'd like to take a minute just sit right there
Ill tell you how I flipped Daravon's tank through the air

In west Wake Island born and raised
In the blue sky is where I spent most of my days
Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool
And all shooting some faggots out by Village (school)
When a couple of planes they were up in no good
Started shootin bullets in my neighborhood
I got down to red health and my mom got scared
And said you're 'bout to get shot down you better get out of there

I gunned it to Airfield and when I got near the
Icon said Daravon's in this tank right here
If anything I could say this chance was rare
But I thought nah forget it, yo homes be right there

I pulled up to the 'field about seven or eight
And I yelled to my plane yo, homes smell you later
Hit the B button bailed the fuck out of there
To watch it hit Dar' and send his tank in the air

But seriously though. I bailed out almost ground level and the plane t-boned Daravon's tank at full speed, exploded and made it barrel roll, which he somehow managed to land properly. Shit was amazing.

You know how I do son.

and by "do" you mean "get hit with planes" right

I should probably take the time to learn how to do something other than ::planes:: and ::kill niggas:: but Battlefield strategy does not come easy to a Gears player.

Additional Spam:
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e1...p/HowIWin2.jpg

Note the words "capture" or "strategy" are nowhere on that chart

If I had a dollar for every presentation or flowchart I was in, I'd be a rich man.

Flowchart OF THE DAMNED

At some point we need to get a bunch of niggas on Air Superiority mode. It is the most terrible, unorganized (people will go out of their way to crash into you or land on the opposing team carrier to camp) piece of crap ever, but I was playing with Daravon for a bit earlier and I was in tears laughing the entire time.

Maybe it's because I get some sick enjoyment out of watching people who can't fly planes attempt to play the mode (or in this case, watching certain people attempt to do fancy maneuvers only to hit palm trees) but god damn it I had a blast.

There really isn't as much pressure to win as there is in normal mode, you can pretty much just fart around until the match ends and the hilarity will make itself.

Air superiority mode's winner is determined by the team who has the least folks in the negative 100 point range.

I heard the real determining factor is how many people you can plane-joust into mutual death.

I saw one where both planes actually collided, ceased all forward momentum and exploded backwards. It was fantastic.

I managed to get the second highest score in an Air Superiority match without ever actually getting in a plane, just pissing about in an AA gun (I was rolling a joint at the time).