Battlefield 2142

It's the year 2142, and war rages across the globe. In 2106 the world was frozen in an ice age that toppled the superpowers and sparked conflicts between the remaining nations. Desperate nations eventually united to form new superpowers--the European-led EU forces and Russo-Asian PC army. This is the backdrop for EA's most recent addition to the Battlefield series, though the story doesn't really make much of a difference and few players will spend much time worrying about it. The destruction of the enemy is all that matters.

EA was one of the companies that pioneered the MMO meets tactical-shooter concept with Battlefield: Vietnam. The core gameplay was greatly enhanced with the release of Battlefield 2, which brought the series a new setting and a major facelift. Battlefield 2142 builds on Battlefield 2's success, while introducing a few new twists of its own. However, some may question whether Battlefield 2142 is truly a new game or just a glorified mod for Battlefield 2. It's probably fair to say that, essentially, Battlefield 2142 is Battlefield 2 in many ways. That said, there is a lot to like here, and not much to dislike.

Conquest mode is the standard combat mode in the series. This is a variant of capture the flag, where the opposing sides earn points for holding strategic locations on the map for a specified period of time. Unsurprisingly, this mode will feel very familiar to Battlefield 2 fans, since not much has changed. Battlefield 2142 also introduces a completely new gameplay mode: Titan mode. In Titan mode, heavily armed Titan warships hover high in the sky, acting as a flying fortress and providing a secure base to launch attacks from. These ships are complete with fairly elaborate interiors, each about as large as a small deathmatch level in some other first-person games. They also sport a number of powerful gun turrets, each of which can be controlled by a player in order to rain death and destruction down on the landscape below. As if that weren't enough, each Titan ships also comes equipped with a gunship and dropship transport.

The Titans are surrounded by powerful electronic shields, rendering them virtually invulnerable to conventional attack. In order to destroy a Titan, its shields must be brought down by a series of missile strikes. There are a number of missile silo stations scattered around key locations on the map. Each side must get to these stations, uplink with the control, and retarget the missiles on the enemy Titan. Once captured, these silos fire automatically at regular intervals, inflicting serious damage on the enemy Titan. Domination of these silos is essential, as bringing down the enemy Titan is the only way to win.

Although a Titan can eventually be pounded into oblivion with missile strikes, there is a quicker way to bring it down: direct assault. Once the ship's defensive shields are down, dropships can ferry assault teams of infantry to storm the enemy Titan and sabotage it from within. Assault teams will have to fight their way through enemy defenders and take out a series of computer consoles to gain entry to the ship's core. At first glance it would seem that whichever side dominates the skies would have a major advantage here, but that's not really true. As an alternate means of boarding the enemy Titan, APCs are capable of launching infantry pods. This allows infantry assault teams to avoid enemy air defenses altogether and land right on the deck of the enemy Titan, ready for action. By adding this fascinating element to the game, the designers virtually guarantee that at some point both ships will be boarded by hostile infantry. This turns out to be a good thing because some of the maps tend to be dominated by the heavier vehicles. Titan mode ensures most battles will end with a satisfying close quarters infantry battle.

All of this is a lot harder to pull off than it sounds, and it can be brutal to assault a well defended Titan. Once the shields are down on both Titans, the nature of the fighting changes and each side is forced to display a little teamwork or risk quick defeat. A force that sends everything to assault the enemy Titan will quickly lose control of all the missile silos and their own ship will get hammered. On the other hand, taking down a Titan with direct assault can be quicker than relying on missiles to do the job, so a force that elects to make a stand on the ground and defend the silos may simply run out of time. This adds a new layer of strategy to the force commander's role that was lacking in Battlefield 2. Playing against a force of disciplined players, organized into proper squads and following directions, is an altogether different experience from wild melees where everyone runs around shooting at the first target that presents itself. Overall, Titan mode is an excellent addition to the game and the first major change to the core gameplay of the series in some time.

The most obvious change to Battlefield 2142 is the setting. The dusty industrial complexes and Asian villages have been replaced by futuristic cities of high-rise buildings with monorail lines snaking through them. There are also a number of sprawling desert maps, but these tend to have a somewhat different character than those found in Battlefield 2. Most of the maps are bleak winter landscapes, shrouded in falling snow or fog. This is perhaps one of the game's only faults, as the maps can start to all look alike after a while and a few of them just look, well, bland. This isn't to say they don't look good--they do. But the muted colors and wintry landscapes can sometimes make the maps a challenge to navigate, as everything tends to blend together into a sea of white and pale blue. A little more variety and innovation might have gone a long way here.

Battlefield 2142 looks great if you have the hardware to run it with the options set on high, and even on lower settings it still looks very nice. Our test rig sported duel Geforce 7950 GX2s, which is essentially quad SLI. We were able to play the game with all options maxed out at a resolution of 1600 x 900. Frame rates were silky smooth throughout. Save one lockup while the system connected to the Battlefield 2142 server, no other technical problems reared up to spoil the fun. Explosions are generally impressive and the new vehicles are rendered with appropriate futuristic detail. Sound is equally well done, with beefy explosions and satisfying weapons effects.

Although Battlefield 2 awarded "unlocks" to players after achieving a certain amount of experience, Battlefield 2142 takes this concept one step further by reserving even relatively basic items like grenades as unlocks. The unlocks are organized around the soldier kits, basically amounting to a simplistic technology tree. This also means veteran players have access to a lot of specialized weaponry and gadgets that new players can't use, which could potentially amount to a frustrating experience for some new players on certain servers. On the flip side, it does give players a good reason to play longer and "fight harder."

Soldier kits have been reorganized and streamlined in Battlefield 2142. Battlefield 2 had a total of five soldier kits: special forces, sniper, assault, support, and engineer. In Battlefield 2142, these have been combined into just four: recon, assault, engineer, and support. Combined with the changes to the unlocks system, players may now be more inclined to pick a single class and stick with it.

Like its predecessor, Battlefield 2142 includes a bare bones single player mode. This is useful for new players to get the hang of the controls and experiment with the different weapons systems, but most people will want to quickly move on to multiplayer mode. The AI bots are still fairly predictable and seem to have difficulty navigating vehicles though close terrain. They also will occasionally run in circles or bunch up into groups. Titan mode is not available in single player.

There has been a lot of buzz on various online game forums over the last week about the in-game advertising. Battlefield 2142 comes with a slip of paper in the box which informs the user that the game incorporates technology to deliver in-game advertisements. According to EA, this isn't spyware and doesn't collect personal data from the user's computer to be be sent back to a central server. In fact, EA has not yet activated the in-game ads. All we saw in the game were a few empty placeholder billboards here and there, and these could hardly be considered intrusive. Some may object to the concept of in-game advertising in any form, but at this point the whole thing is really a non-issue.