Review: Battlefield 1943

Prevented from being able to play their newly purchased game because of widespread server insufficiencies, it was no wonder the puling community behind Battlefield 1943 was quick to rename the download only shooter 'Battlefailed'. It was a much needed moment of amusement in an otherwise dreary scenario – one in which I was firmly grounded – but the superficiality of boys with inoperable toys soon became apparent as DICE worked day and night to erect the redeeming servers and bring the game to the state we had all dreamed of that fateful morning of the 8th.

As it turns out, 'Battlefailed' is really only a functional denigration for the past tense – something I'm sure a collective rage and gang mentality had prevented the community from seeing – so it's quite appropriate now that everything is coming along swimmingly. Yes, the game could've been considered a failure at launch, but it certainly isn't now.

Soldiering On

Finally free from connection errors and server search failures, we were able to sample the flavours of Battlefield 1943's 24 player wars. In comparison to its bigger brothers on the PC, 1943 is a scaled-down and simplified version of the acclaimed shooters, and so veterans of the originals may not find within it the depth to which they're accustom. However, the newly uncomplicated formula is what makes 1943 stand out amongst its peers: You're unlikely to reach the apogee of the scoreboard on your first attempt, but a compacted class set of just Infantry , Rifleman and Scout for either US or Japanese nations means choosing which way to fight is quick and easy.

Each of the classes has a primary and secondary weapon, grenades or remote charges and a melee weapon which, in case of the Infantry's spanner, can also be used to fix vehicles. There's no difference in power across either team's weapons and ammo is infinite, with only a brief delay to restock the more explosive weaponry, so success is really down to how you attack. Rambo-ing around is of little use to you or your team mates; capturing all bases and depleting enemy spawn tickets requires an organised and collective effort. This is easiest to orchestrate using the game's squad feature and a few friends, but even when you're only the lonely most servers still have open squads to join so you can be sure the right Anti-Aircraft guns are manned at the right time or you have a sniper to take out forward opposition, and everything in between. Naturally, since we are dealing with a Battlefield game here, some individuals abandon any sense of camaraderie in favour of becoming a renegade, but you can smile from behind your team mate knowing they have not long to live. And, if they turn hardcore renegade, there's no friendly fire whatsoever.

Plane-ing Around

If you don't fancy walking across any of the game's three capture maps to kill people, you can always hop in to a Jeep, tank or aeroplane for a faster and slightly more secure ride. Like the weapons, vehicles differ only in appearance from team to team, with identical movement and rotational speeds, manoeuvrability and firepower. Upon their destruction each vehicle respawns in a satisfactory amount of time, but, again, like older versions of Battlefield, it's not uncommon to discover a mass of players faffing about in a specific area awaiting the arrival of a plane. Teams can also call in air strikes, and though not technically a vehicle in the same way as the others, the player who activated the attack can lightly steer the set of three bombers to blanket their chosen area. Fortunately this mighty attack appears at less frequent intervals.

Half a team's loitering then 20 metre sprint to a new plane is an understandable act - I've done it myself many times – because, as difficult as they are to master, they're a particularly rewarding part of 1943. The machine gun bullets never seem to travel far enough and the two respawning bombs require a great deal of practise to drop accurately, but for that minute or two before you get shot down by AA guns or an enemy plane, or simply crash due to the unusual and only moderately varying control scheme, you come to experience the very heart of Battlefield as you soar above the warring teams, swooping down every 10 or 15 seconds to take a pot-shot at an enemy stronghold. It's marvellous.

DICE obviously knows the strength of 1943's aerial combat because, thanks to the community amassing 43 million kills, the new Air Superiority and exclusive Coral Sea map are now open to everyone. In this mode, plane camping isn't just recommended, it's utterly essential as the only way to win is by capturing areas with fly-overs and shooting down enemy planes. You still pick your class of soldier, but you spawn on to one of the two aircraft carriers on either side of the peaked, volcanic terrain-laden map and jump into one of the fighters that replenish with a speed plane campers usually only dream of. Much like the standard capture game, it's ill-advised to go on the offence without some team mates to back you up because you'll quickly end up the loser in a game of one mouse, four cats. If by some miracle you manage to get back to your carriers without exploding, however, you can repair your plane by simply flying slowly over the deck. By the time you've traversed the entire length you should be fully healed and ready to get back into the action.

Field of View

Delivering a new map that's only viable for dogfighting was a little disappointing at first, but the three already included in the standard game are more than enough to keep the action going: They're well-designed, each with distinctly different shapes and elevations; balanced with constantly changing choke points, and largely destructible - not to mention beautiful - thanks to Bad Company's Frostbite engine.

As a whole, 1943 pulls no punches in the visual department – far beyond what you expect from Live Arcade titles. The desert island style is beautiful in its simplicity, but the game piles on the splendour with great animations and lots of fiery, dust-erupting explosions. I encountered some large-scale graphical anomalies whereby odd black shapes would flicker in and out of existence as I move around, and soldiers bailing out of their planes into water in Air Superiority tended to result in a weird repeat texture emanating from the sky and cascading down atop said soldier.

Dead...Good

Death is to be expected in any mode, and though the aforementioned anomaly doesn't occur outside Air Superiority, you're likely to be less comfortable with the usual red fade-out - not for its abnormality, but its frequency. As easy as 1943 is to pick up, it's by no means an easy game to master: There's actual bullet travel, meaning sniper shots across the map require a lot more than point and click; there's no auto-aim, so close-up combat is frantic and quite often fumbled; and vehicles, though powerful in the right hands, have weaknesses that are easy to exploit - such as tanks being little resistance for a couple of infantry soldiers.

These are all easy forgotten shortcomings, unlikely to deter anyone from the game. The main gripe of Battlefield 1943, however, is its staying power, considering just how shelled-out it is in comparison to previous entries in the series. It's quite superb in small doses, but with only two game modes, one of which has only one map, and both of which are only minutely customisable, there's no chance of losing a day to it. For a stopgap it's an inexpensive and enjoyable shooter, but when the next inevitable Battlefield game rolls around, I can't imagine it enduring.