Edit: Since I just read the rules, here's the review, instead of a link.
No better way to start reviewing than to do something topical. Which is why I'm reviewing a game from 5 years ago.
...Wait...
Anywho, Battlefield: 2142. The fourth game in the Battlefield series, which is following the Resident Evil school of sequel numbering (so BF2 was the third game, and BF3 is the seventh, not counting the free to play games). As the title suggests, it is set in the future, where a new ice age has settled in nicely, wiping out pretty much everything. With most of the world now several dozen degrees below what could be described as a bit freezing, the two remaining superpowers, the EU and the Pan Asian Coalition (PAC) battling it out over the last few power plants, oil fields and farmable dirt in Africa, where everyone seems to have just up and left.
Now that we're past the info you can just check Wikipedia for, let's get onto the game itself. It has the classic Battlefield mix of infantry and vehicular combat, albeit in a much more sci-fi way. Hover tanks that can strafe, buggies with big arse machine guns on the back, 2 dozen foot tall mechs with the abilty to tea-bag, and standard futuristic flying gunships and transports are all here, along with guns with blue muzzle flash (that way you KNOW you're in the future) with built in rocket launchers and shotguns (which share the same ammo, somehow. If someone invents an underbarrel shotty that can morph into an RPG at the push of a button, tell me, that shit sounds AWESOME.)
The classes in 2142 are, as every other reviewer on Earth has put it already, streamlined. The assault doubles up as the medic, the engineer does the usual job of fixing your stuff and blowing up enemy stuff, the recon class is a mix of a sniper and a saboteur (and given the massive sway when aiming down sights, he's better at the latter), while the support class... well, supports. With a machine gun. They all work together nicely, and certainly need to in order to have any hope of winning.
"But Cracker!" I hear you not yell. "Talk about how the fucking game works already!"
I was just getting to that. Prick.
There are, in essence, two game modes in 2142. Conquest, and Titan. There are a few variants, but those are pretty self expanitory. Conquest, the typical Battlefield/Battlefront/any other such game gamemode, works the same as it always has. Your team has a number of respawn tickets. When you die, you lose a ticket. You capture points to get new spawn zones. Holding more than half of the points reduces the number of enemy tickets. First one to 0 loses. It works brilliantly, but is overshined by its younger, more attractive sister.
Titan mode features two bloody great motherships called, what else, titans, one per team. Each has 6 giant turrets, 4 anti-ground, 2 anti-air. The titan can be ordered to move by the team Commander (basically just a guy who sits around giving orders instead of shooting), just veeeeeeeeeery slooooooooooooowly. The objective is to blow the hell out of the enemy's titan, while protecting your own. To do this, you capture silos. Not points, silos. They work exactly like points,except for a slightly snazzy uplink bar when capturing, allowing you to respawn there.
Oh, and they shoot bloody great missiles at the enemy titan every few minutes.
These bloody great missiles are your primary means of attacking the titans. Only the missiles can deal damage to the shields, chipping away at the giant glowing lifebar at the top of the screen. So intially, it plays just like conquest, just with unlimited respawns. Until the shields go down.
Once the shields are down, you and your team have a choice. Do you take the safe approach of just locking down your captured silos and waiting for the missiles to destroy the hull? Or do you shoot yourself out of an ejector pod, fly through the air, board the titan and destroy it from the inside while fighting off the entrenched enemy team in some narrow corridors designed to be a total deathtrap?
Yeah. Roll out the APCs and air transports baby! (Or just use your own titan's escape pods, if the two have moved close enough together.)
Once inside, you have to destroy 4 control panels. Panel 1 unlocks panel 3, and panel 2 unlocks panel 4. Once all four are down (no easy task unless the opposing team is asleep), you blow open the door to the reactor. Once inside, you do what any sensible team of military professionals would do when faced with a volatile piece of machinery.
Shoot the shit out of it.
Every shot to the reactor takes off the titan's health, in addition to the bloody great missiles already hitting the hull. Eventually, an alarm will sound. This is your cue to run like hell out of there. You get 15 points if you can jump out the back and hit the ground (alive) before it detonates (protip: don't open your parachute until you're almost at the floor, if you're still sailing through the air, no points for you).
"But Cracker!" The non-existant readers whine. "Is this a review or a gush of some english teenager with too much time on his hands?"
Again, you are a prick.
The game has its problems, yes. The graphics (as to be expected by a 5 year old game) are dated, the recoil for some of the guns are rediculous (I'm looking at you, Baur H-AR), and the two sides are pretty similar at first glance (take a second glance and you're usually dead). Oh, and newcomers are thoroughly curb stomped.
And then there are the 2 main gripes held by my forebearers reviewing the game, the advertisement and unlocks.
The game used (I say used because I havn't seen it myself) large billboards to advertise real-life products and suchlike for some extra revenue. While I can only ever find placeholder signs (aka grey), I would not find this much of a problem myself even if I did see it. I'm here to shoot things, not go sightseeing. There was a bit of a privacy scare back when it was first released about EA inspecting your browsing history and suchlike through the game, but that turned out to be false.
The unlocks take a bit more looking at. In games like CoD, while new players are restricted in their armaments, they can still contribute well enough to the team. In 2142, some classes are almost pointless when you start playing. For example, remember how I said the recon was a mix of sniper and a saboteur? Well, when you start off, he's just a sniper. No explosives, no cloak, no close range weapon beside the useless pistol. And remember how the assault was part medic? Well, he is, but you can't revive (or even heal at a decent rate) until you get some unlocks in. Even grenades require an unlock. This may (oh, who am I kidding, does) put newcomers at a HUGE disadvantage, even forgetting the usual curb stomp by those who know what they're doing. It may be something to consider before getting this game, and if you do, try to stick to tanks and suchlike until you get a few ranks under your proverbial belt.
Finally, no BF game (minus the first two, but shut up) would be complete without the squad mechanic. At any time during a game you can join a squad, which not only gives you a few mates to watch your back, but a clearer purpose thanks to player-set objectives, more exp, and a spawn on your squad leader to get you right back into the fight after death, assuming the squad's assault guys can't get to you to revive you (or just lack the defib). It works great, even more so that the squad leader can deploy equipment if he/she has enough squad members, such as a placeable spawn point (which replaces the spawn point on themselves) or recon or even combat drones. In short, any player being a lone wolf, is a player who is not playing the game right. On some servers, such players can be kicked or even banned.
In summary then, I, some pale skinned british teen with crappy facial hair, recommend this game. Most computers and laptops would now be able to run it (mine is a 4 year old piece of crap, so I have to play on low to middle graphics settings, but it works fine), and its not all that much to buy. You can download it from http://battlefield.ea.com/battlefield/bf2142/Default.aspx?lang=us if you feel such inclined, or go hunting for a physical copy if that's more your thing. Hell, even if you're not all that big on shooters, you may still be able to enjoy this game if you can grab the Commander postion for your side, and direct squads about or call in support powers in some kind of chaotic RTS.
TL; DR: Great, but soul-crushingly tough on newbies. You lazy prick.
No better way to start reviewing than to do something topical. Which is why I'm reviewing a game from 5 years ago.
...Wait...
Anywho, Battlefield: 2142. The fourth game in the Battlefield series, which is following the Resident Evil school of sequel numbering (so BF2 was the third game, and BF3 is the seventh, not counting the free to play games). As the title suggests, it is set in the future, where a new ice age has settled in nicely, wiping out pretty much everything. With most of the world now several dozen degrees below what could be described as a bit freezing, the two remaining superpowers, the EU and the Pan Asian Coalition (PAC) battling it out over the last few power plants, oil fields and farmable dirt in Africa, where everyone seems to have just up and left.
Now that we're past the info you can just check Wikipedia for, let's get onto the game itself. It has the classic Battlefield mix of infantry and vehicular combat, albeit in a much more sci-fi way. Hover tanks that can strafe, buggies with big arse machine guns on the back, 2 dozen foot tall mechs with the abilty to tea-bag, and standard futuristic flying gunships and transports are all here, along with guns with blue muzzle flash (that way you KNOW you're in the future) with built in rocket launchers and shotguns (which share the same ammo, somehow. If someone invents an underbarrel shotty that can morph into an RPG at the push of a button, tell me, that shit sounds AWESOME.)
The classes in 2142 are, as every other reviewer on Earth has put it already, streamlined. The assault doubles up as the medic, the engineer does the usual job of fixing your stuff and blowing up enemy stuff, the recon class is a mix of a sniper and a saboteur (and given the massive sway when aiming down sights, he's better at the latter), while the support class... well, supports. With a machine gun. They all work together nicely, and certainly need to in order to have any hope of winning.
"But Cracker!" I hear you not yell. "Talk about how the fucking game works already!"
I was just getting to that. Prick.
There are, in essence, two game modes in 2142. Conquest, and Titan. There are a few variants, but those are pretty self expanitory. Conquest, the typical Battlefield/Battlefront/any other such game gamemode, works the same as it always has. Your team has a number of respawn tickets. When you die, you lose a ticket. You capture points to get new spawn zones. Holding more than half of the points reduces the number of enemy tickets. First one to 0 loses. It works brilliantly, but is overshined by its younger, more attractive sister.
Titan mode features two bloody great motherships called, what else, titans, one per team. Each has 6 giant turrets, 4 anti-ground, 2 anti-air. The titan can be ordered to move by the team Commander (basically just a guy who sits around giving orders instead of shooting), just veeeeeeeeeery slooooooooooooowly. The objective is to blow the hell out of the enemy's titan, while protecting your own. To do this, you capture silos. Not points, silos. They work exactly like points,except for a slightly snazzy uplink bar when capturing, allowing you to respawn there.
Oh, and they shoot bloody great missiles at the enemy titan every few minutes.
These bloody great missiles are your primary means of attacking the titans. Only the missiles can deal damage to the shields, chipping away at the giant glowing lifebar at the top of the screen. So intially, it plays just like conquest, just with unlimited respawns. Until the shields go down.
Once the shields are down, you and your team have a choice. Do you take the safe approach of just locking down your captured silos and waiting for the missiles to destroy the hull? Or do you shoot yourself out of an ejector pod, fly through the air, board the titan and destroy it from the inside while fighting off the entrenched enemy team in some narrow corridors designed to be a total deathtrap?
Yeah. Roll out the APCs and air transports baby! (Or just use your own titan's escape pods, if the two have moved close enough together.)
Once inside, you have to destroy 4 control panels. Panel 1 unlocks panel 3, and panel 2 unlocks panel 4. Once all four are down (no easy task unless the opposing team is asleep), you blow open the door to the reactor. Once inside, you do what any sensible team of military professionals would do when faced with a volatile piece of machinery.
Shoot the shit out of it.
Every shot to the reactor takes off the titan's health, in addition to the bloody great missiles already hitting the hull. Eventually, an alarm will sound. This is your cue to run like hell out of there. You get 15 points if you can jump out the back and hit the ground (alive) before it detonates (protip: don't open your parachute until you're almost at the floor, if you're still sailing through the air, no points for you).
"But Cracker!" The non-existant readers whine. "Is this a review or a gush of some english teenager with too much time on his hands?"
Again, you are a prick.
The game has its problems, yes. The graphics (as to be expected by a 5 year old game) are dated, the recoil for some of the guns are rediculous (I'm looking at you, Baur H-AR), and the two sides are pretty similar at first glance (take a second glance and you're usually dead). Oh, and newcomers are thoroughly curb stomped.
And then there are the 2 main gripes held by my forebearers reviewing the game, the advertisement and unlocks.
The game used (I say used because I havn't seen it myself) large billboards to advertise real-life products and suchlike for some extra revenue. While I can only ever find placeholder signs (aka grey), I would not find this much of a problem myself even if I did see it. I'm here to shoot things, not go sightseeing. There was a bit of a privacy scare back when it was first released about EA inspecting your browsing history and suchlike through the game, but that turned out to be false.
The unlocks take a bit more looking at. In games like CoD, while new players are restricted in their armaments, they can still contribute well enough to the team. In 2142, some classes are almost pointless when you start playing. For example, remember how I said the recon was a mix of sniper and a saboteur? Well, when you start off, he's just a sniper. No explosives, no cloak, no close range weapon beside the useless pistol. And remember how the assault was part medic? Well, he is, but you can't revive (or even heal at a decent rate) until you get some unlocks in. Even grenades require an unlock. This may (oh, who am I kidding, does) put newcomers at a HUGE disadvantage, even forgetting the usual curb stomp by those who know what they're doing. It may be something to consider before getting this game, and if you do, try to stick to tanks and suchlike until you get a few ranks under your proverbial belt.
Finally, no BF game (minus the first two, but shut up) would be complete without the squad mechanic. At any time during a game you can join a squad, which not only gives you a few mates to watch your back, but a clearer purpose thanks to player-set objectives, more exp, and a spawn on your squad leader to get you right back into the fight after death, assuming the squad's assault guys can't get to you to revive you (or just lack the defib). It works great, even more so that the squad leader can deploy equipment if he/she has enough squad members, such as a placeable spawn point (which replaces the spawn point on themselves) or recon or even combat drones. In short, any player being a lone wolf, is a player who is not playing the game right. On some servers, such players can be kicked or even banned.
In summary then, I, some pale skinned british teen with crappy facial hair, recommend this game. Most computers and laptops would now be able to run it (mine is a 4 year old piece of crap, so I have to play on low to middle graphics settings, but it works fine), and its not all that much to buy. You can download it from http://battlefield.ea.com/battlefield/bf2142/Default.aspx?lang=us if you feel such inclined, or go hunting for a physical copy if that's more your thing. Hell, even if you're not all that big on shooters, you may still be able to enjoy this game if you can grab the Commander postion for your side, and direct squads about or call in support powers in some kind of chaotic RTS.
TL; DR: Great, but soul-crushingly tough on newbies. You lazy prick.
