Battlefield 1943 Review


The Battlefield franchise is often considered to be a PC franchise, with good reasoning, seeing as if you talk to almost any hardcore PC gamer, and mention Battlefield 1942 or Battlefield 2 you can watch their eyes glaze over and a glee filled expression invade their face as the memories of numerous crashed planes, suicide jeep runs and captured points come flooding back to them.

Of course, the series first attempted to make its way onto the consoles, with Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, the game was received well, but many fans felt that it didn’t quite live up to the standards the PC games had laid down. In 2007, the series, once again made its ways to the consoles with the critically acclaimed Battlefield: Bad Company built upon the Frostbite Engine, which allowed for destructive environments on a massive scale. The most recent version of the series to hit the consoles comes in the form of the downloadable ‘Battlefield 1943’. The game is also built on the Frostbite Engine, meaning that the environments are destructible this time around.

Battlefield 1943 is a multiplayer only ‘sequel’ to Battlefield 1942, set in the Pacific Theatre, with players fighting as either the US Marine Corp (USMC) or the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). The gameplay is classic Battlefield. You have infantry, vehicles (land, sea and air) and finally, there are points. These points have to be captured. Each map features five points, often made clear by a specific landmark (e.g. a lighthouse, or an airfield). After a team has captured the majority of the

It could be said that 1943 is a watered down version of the previous game, as the game only features three classes, instead of the five that were found in Battlefield 1942. However, this does not significantly cripple the game, the three classes are varied enough to keep the game interesting, and the variations allow for the game to remained balanced, with the Infantryman providing close range combat abilities, and anti vehicle weaponry in the form of a bazooka. The Rifleman offers a medium range option, along with an extremely powerful rifle grenade that can kill in one hit and take out the sides of buildings, creating new entrances for the team. The final class is the scout, who comes equipped with a long range sniper rifle, C4 that allows for the destruction of anything that can be blown up.

It seems that the development team has a thing for the number three, as the game was released with only 3 maps available. However, a fourth map: ‘Coral Sea’ was unlocked once the community achieved forty three million kills, although ‘Coral Sea’ is only for use in the ‘Air Superiority’ mode, which was unlocked alongside the map upon reaching forty three million kills.

The use of vehicles has always been a prominent part of the Battlefield series, with planes, jeeps, tanks and landing craft all being available for use in game. Of course, you will almost always find that the planes are unavailable, and that there is at least one more person waiting for them to respawn as well as you. It just wouldn’t be a Battlefield game without it. None of the vehicles are particularly over powered, all of them can be taken down by any of the classes, although the Infantryman and the Scout are best suited for this job (using their bazooka and C4 respectively) while the Rifleman’s rifle grenade isn’t quite damaging enough to take down a tank, it does significant damage to a jeep.

The game’s gameplay isn’t its only selling point, with some of, if not the best graphics for any download only game on either platform, 1943 looks stunning, the lighting effects look great, and the water effects are also up to scratch with many retail games. Unfortunately, there are some infrequent graphical glitches that may appear every now and then, but they last for a few seconds, and often aren’t seen again for hours, if not days.

Of course, the game isn’t perfect, it doesn’t really do anything new for the Battlefield series, but that isn’t a real determent to the game, as the core Battlefield gameplay is still fantastic. The game also lacks any true singleplayer modes, which means if the Playstation Network or Xbox Live is down or you can’t connect to the internet, you won’t be playing the game at all. Obviously, this problem isn’t game specific, and is present for all online only games.

When it comes down to it, Battlefield 1943 is a fun game, and will be for a long time. Despite the lack of maps (hopefully this problem can be addressed later by downloadable map packs), and the downgraded class system, the game still offers many of the thrills found in the other Battlefield games. Did I mention that it’s also cheap? ($15/1200 Microsoft points and £10 in the UK) You’re getting all of the thrills, for just under the third of the price of a standard Battlefield game. Definitely worth it.

Graphics : A -- Looks outstanding for a downloadable game.
Sound : B -- Guns sound good and there are some nice audio effects, e.g. explosion near by temporarily deafens you.
Gameplay : B-- Solid FPS gameplay, destructible enivronements and enjoyable vehicles all create a great game experience.
Replayability : B -- Only 3 maps and one game mode, but they don't get boring so you'll be coming back for more every time.

Overall : B


cirt on my writing would be nice, cause I may have a chance at an unpaid position at another website.
note: I may use too many commas, i've been told this and i'm currently trying to cut down on it.

I think you accidentally mashed the Insert key there, bro.

Other than that, it's fairly well written, aside from a typo I noticed.



Believe you meant "just under a third of the price."

Hope you don't mind me fixing a few paragraphs. Glad to see you acknowledged the comma problem. Commas are just meant as a slight pause in order to go from one point to the next, but you try to stack too much information in one sentence. Be sure to add a period every once in awhile. Too many commas will result in awkward pauses. A sentence should flow naturally and those commas make it a pain to get your point across, causing the reader to stop reading for a brief second when they could have just kept going.

Do what I was told in English class: read your material out loud. It actually helps because sometimes the writer thinks that what he wrote is good enough which isn't always the case. You will get better though, your writing better than when I first started

You have your basic premise down correctly, but be sure to add in some dates in order for the reader to know that you actually know about the material at hand. A quick wikipedia search will get this all down quick, I do this whenever I write a review for Anime 3000. It also helps to add the developer of the game so that you can show who needs credit where credit is due.