Battlefield 1943 (Xbox 360)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

So how does it actually play? Is it worth 15$/1200 points? Let’s summarize by looking at the Good, the bad and the ugly.

The Ugly:
The game was plagued by extreme connection issues at launch. DICE clearly did not expect the kind of amount of people who bought the game and thus the first 24-48 hours it was very hard to find a game and if you found a game it was often laggy and you got kicked out after a while. DICE and EA have since then added lots of news servers and from my experience they have fixed this problem for most people. I still mention this so that anyone who just tested the trial and got upset knows that it is now fixed.

The Bad:
It would have been nice if they had supported more than 24 people per game. It is not a deal breaker as the maps have been redone for this number of people but as there are some problems with people queuing up for planes it means that you easily get stuck in a situation where you simply are too few on the ground.

It’s a bit of a downer that private matches require 16 people to start. So if you set up a private game with friends you have to fill 16 slots before you can play. The reason is of course because EA and DICE do not want servers to be “wasted” with just a few people on them but it can be annoying when you want to play with just friends. EA and DICE have said that they will not lower this number.

Squad communications are a bit odd. I was mostly lone-wolfing and realized that there is basically zero communication in the team channel. Squads can talk to each other but even inside squads I noticed most people were silent.

Is 3 (4 with the special air-map) enough in the long run? Will Dice and EA turn this game into micropayment hell just as with Battlefield: Heroes? I definitely could accept to pay a bit for new maps but that might as well split the community as not everyone pays.

The Good:
I saved the good to last because there really are mostly good things I can say about this game. It is an absolute blast. It doesn’t matter if they made it simpler and removed stuff from Battlefield 1942 as they at least kept what made this game fun. I can’t count how many times I’ve been in matches where the battle has been flowing back and forth until the end when one team gained the upper hand in the last second. One example from a game on Iwo Jima yesterday:

We had 4 of the 5 flags on the island and just lacked the airfield. Most of us spawned at the nearest flag and there were 6-7 of us moving forward engaging the enemy, hiding behind boulders and houses, taking out tanks, slowly pushing closer and closer to the flag. Our airplanes thundered above and dropped bombs while the enemy planes came in low strafing us. Finally after at least 5-10 minutes of intense battle we finally took the flag just to realize that we had lost several of the other flags because we did not defend them properly during our all-out assault. Now we had to push out from the airfield to capture back the other flags. The battles that followed were just as intense as the first assault and in the end we won with just a few kills.

Nothing is also as rewarding as sitting on a hill sniping, noticing a tank moving up the hill towards you and laying out dynamite and blow him up as he moves in for an “easy” kill.

It might not be a realistic shooter but it most certainly is a fun shooter.

We are using an addition to our scoring system to provide additional feedback beyond a flat score. Please note that the final score isn't an aggregate average of the new rating system.

• Graphics: 8
• Audio: 8
• Value: 9
• Features: 7
• Fun: 10

Pros:

+ Very nice maps that work well for 24 people
+ A blast to play
+ Easy to pick up

Cons:

- “Only” 4 maps of which 1 is just for air-geeks
- Squad communication could be better
- Only 24 players supported.
- A lot of features from Battlefield 1942 removed

In the end we cannot do anything else than recommend this game. It is very well priced and you will get hours and hours of fun out of it. Therefore we award this game the following score:

Final Score: 9 out of 10 and the Bjorn3D Golden Bear Award.