Are you ready to fight for glory?Who'd be a game geek in the summertime?
You know what the weather's like at the moment? Back in 2002 it was just as hot. Any sane rational human being was out in the sunshine, soaking up the rays while listening to tinny music on their portable radios, sipping on a drink clinking with ice. Not me, not me nor my three friends. We were yomping across desert plains watching the horizon erupt in fire as enemy bases were overcome and captured. We were riding the wings of B-17 bombers as they swept low to deliver their deadly payloads. Or we were chugging around in clanky old tanks, knocking the living shit out of enemy troops as they poured from their bunkers to try and defend their positions.
Battlefield 1942 became something of an obsession. We quietly upgraded our work machines so that we could indulge in lunchtime gaming sessions, taking the fight online and teaming up as squad buddies to stick it to faceless Battlefield players the world over. We howled in frustration as aimbots and hacks slowly ate away at the game. We rejoiced when new Battlefield games arrived with Punkbuster in place, levelling the playing field so that cheats could no longer hide behind impenetrable shields.
So what has this got to do with the here and now? Well, since those heady days, DICE - the tiddly developer behind the original Battlefield game has turned into a major player, being soaked up by EA first - then producing some of their best titles to date including several updates to the Battlefield franchise. We've fought in the steamy jungles of Vietnam, we've dug in deep in the deserts of modern theatre combat, and we've even seen a dystopian future where giant mechs trade pulse-rifle shots with jetpacking ground troops.
Now it's time to return to dubbleyew dubbleyew two again, but not as you might remember it. Battlefield Heroes - the latest, and most notably the first free-to-play Battlefield game has finally been released to the public after a long period of closed beta testing. The rough and ready game I took for a test drive nearly a year ago has become a well oiled well honed and slick experience that takes your browser, messes with it good and proper, and gives you a portal to a whole world of warfare.
Class wars
Taking the role of a soldier in the Royal Army (what ho!) or the National Army (Teufel!), you can select from three classes that echo previous games in the Battlefield franchise.
Soldiers are good all-rounders, and it's a good class to cut your Battlefield teeth with. Gunners are slightly heftier and are the class of choice for those of you who like charging around the battlefield with a heavy machine gun strapped to your chest. Lastly, Commandos are a little bit stealthier - expert in demolition and nipping up behind the enemy with a knife to slit their throats.
Whichever class you choose, you can use any weapons or more interestingly, any vehicles you find in each of the huge battle zones. Tanks, jeeps and planes are there for the taking - and there are fixed gun emplacements if you fancy chewing through the opposition.
Each of the classes ensures that your game is nicely balanced, and as with all other Battlefield games - the key is to pick and choose a good mix of player abilities and classes. No doubt you'll always find someone who just wants to grab the nearest sniper rifle and sit in a bush to pick people off from a distance but in Battlefield there's just as much glory in mucking in, going toe to toe with the enemy and capturing those spawn points.
Returning to the classic Battlefield 1942 style of gameplay, each spawn flag can be captured and this will grab you a slice of territory. Capture all the enemy's spawn points and they're left flailing around until they can recapture one. Kill their last man and it's game over for them and fortune and glory to you.
At its base level, this is the simplest and most pleasing game mode on offer in Battlefield Heroes - and one that will have diehard Battlefield fans hugging themselves with glee. This is classic Battlefield, pared down to its core components but still wildly satisfying for all that.
Fiddle while Robbie Burns
Setting up Battlefield Heroes is pretty simple and your starting point is to go and visit:
The Battlefield Heroes Landing Page to get things up and running. You will need to download quite a hefty activeX component for your browser (so far I've tested it on both Firefox and IE 7 / 8 and it seems to work fine on both). Early iterations of the game refused to install on certain operating systems and browser combinations but I've got this working on Windows 7 (on Parallels on the mac) and also on my Vista box at home, and it performed admirably on both.
Those of you with uber-powerful gaming rigs can ramp up the detail as much as you like with no performance issues at all. But even on low end rigs (and indeed even on a virtual machine running on my mac) the game is intense and playable so you should be able to run it across a wide variety of kit.
Battlefield Heroes Team-Fortress-2-like graphics are really nicely done. At first I was a little bit put off by the jolly jovial nature of the thing, but after a while you begin to like the various presentation quirks and the sheer amount of work that's gone into presenting a World War 2 game as a bit of a laugh really. I love some of the cultural references that have been worked into the game despite its setting.
At its core, Battlefield Heroes does exactly what all the other Battlefield games have been so successful at. It mixes together classic shooter action (third person in this case but don't let that put you off, you can opt for a first person view if you really must) with driveable vehicles, crazy over the top explosions and sheer all out action. Even in quiet games where you just fancy practicing on a virtually empty server, you'll still need to keep on your toes because death is just around the corner.
First you play, then you pay
EA's new "Free-to-play" model for Battlefield Heroes is an interesting one. The idea is that the game pays for itself through advertising (and yes, even at this early stage in the game, there are ads a plenty (though not in a game-breaking immersion-busting sense like with BF2142). EA will introduce micropayments for weapons and avatar equipment as time passes so it remains to be seen whether this will break the level playing field that exists with the game at the moment.
All told, you're getting a pared-down Battlefield experience that provides hour after hour of good clean fun for nothing, free, nada. If you've never played a Battlefield game before - what on earth is wrong with you? This would be a very good introduction to a series that refuses to lie down and quit. With a new Battlefield Bad Company game in the works for release this year on consoles, plus XBLA / PSN versions of Battlefield 1943, and a big and proper PC Battlefield game all being worked on, you've got some serious catching up to do so dip a toe in the water with how the game works with Battlefield Heroes, you might just become as obsessed as I am with it.
Bungie vows never to follow the Activision route and charge extra for online multiplayer
(1) (30/07) 
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#1 - HairyArse - on 29/06/2009 at 11:25 wrote:
I don't do PC gaming anymore.
:S
#2 - peej - on 29/06/2009 at 11:27 wrote:
As a free-to-play game though, this is very nicely done and if it works for this, it'll be interesting to see if EA try and do this with any of their other gaming franchises. F'r instance, if this becomes the model for the new Need for Speed online - it might just blimmin' well work :)
#3 - Anne Onymous - on 03/07/2009 at 12:31 wrote:
#4 - Night - on 09/07/2009 at 09:19 wrote:
#5 - peej - on 14/07/2009 at 15:01 wrote:
It's not perfect but it's certainly playable (you get some texture glitching and stuff, but in all other respects it worked just fine)
Mac OSX Leopard on a new(ish) iMac