What is it? - The fourth game of battlefield's legendary series base on future war environment of 2142.

Game profile - Award winning future war simulation.

The good about it - plenty of mods provided by EA.

The bad about it - little extra-ordinary game experience.

I rate it - 6.5/10



Battlefield series by Electronic Arts is one of the played and beloved games by todays gamers. After great success of Battlefield 2, EA

The basics of Battlefield gameplay is that there are two huge teams running around a huge map in order to try to retain control over 5 specific places (flags). To achieve this objective, each player can choose from a variety of specialist functions, and each team has a number of vehicles at their disposal.

Previous Battlefield games revolved around the Conquest gameplay mode, which in 2142 remains unchanged insofar as I can tell. Although there are a few variations, the general theme is that each team starts with a limited number of times it's players can respawn, and holding more than half of the flags steadily depletes your enemy's number (as does killing them). I immediately disliked it, and still only enjoy a select few maps in this mode.

It takes some time to learn to minimise the highly frustrating deaths that can seem outside your control, "favourites" being spawning in an air transport a second before it plummets into the ground, stepping out a vehicle just as it moves an inch more, being blasted to smithereens while failing miserably to free your tank from some minor foliage, walking into the overpowered yet miniscule sentry guns, or the sudden appearance of "respawning in 10" with no apparent cause even in the console. If you can control the initial desire to scrub your PC of the bastard game and gleefully torture the disk with a lighter and penknife, there is a lot of enjoyment to be had.




























































With the large number of objectives and people to complete them, games can turn into a scrabble of a skirmish, which can leave the player feeling a little aimless. It is quite a contrast when you get a good game going, with the well designed squad system dividing players into small, effective teams - teamplay is heavily rewarded in BF2142, both via results and via the artificial points system. Clans from other games, typically limited to a pool of 8 players at most, scoff at the huge clan armies that exist in Battlefield. Clanning in Battlefield is often more public-server focused however - it rapidly becomes clear that any loose affiliation of players will more regularly be able to find a solid squad to join. A good squad makes the difference from a game that can be quite fun and a game that is a lot of fun.

The slip of paper previously mentioned refers to the monitoring of ingame advertising, a subject which deserves an article in itself. I'm not ecstatic about adverts within games, and it is difficult to imagine them being thematic, given it's supposed to be the year 2142 during an ice age and everybody at war. The adverts haven't been activated yet but there are a significant number of billboards that look likely positioning, my impression is they will detract somewhat from the theme but otherwise not get in the way. Server hosts must have awfully sore backsides by now, they pay for all the hardware, bandwidth and maintenance (not to mention the EA Rank tax) that is utterly crucial to the game and yet who is getting paid from the advertising being displayed to players on their servers? Consumers should be wondering why they are being bombarded with marketing and yet receiving no price discount.

Copyright protection is further evidence of the focus on revenue. CDKeys are required for installation, and online authentication, so it is excessive to require that the DVD be in the drive for online play. How much does all this copyright protection cost anyway?

Battlefield 2142 gameplay is fun and interesting, despite it's flaws. Take any review site that breaks scores down into categories and I'd have to give it a good 7 or 8 out of 10 for each, it deserves it for graphics, sound, gameplay - all the usual categories. It's a multitude of other things that drags it down, has you sighing when you should be grinning. Granted, some of these issues are the fixable kind, but if comments from BF2 players are anything to go by I'm only so optimistic, despite the promise. One can't help wondering if this would have been a really great .

Ths is good buy for now.