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Battlefield 2142
- October 23, 2006 16:10 PM PST
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Post-apocalyptic online shooters are all the rage these days. 2007's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will pit scrappy humans against vicious cyborg invaders; Frontlines: Fuel of War, meanwhile, envisions a resource-starved planet struggling over the last remaining drops of oil.
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Those titles will have some catching up to do because Battlefield 2142 is first to the fight. The game is like a shot of adrenaline when compared to last year's sleepy Battlefield 2, but it doesn't leverage its futuristic setting to maximum effect. In short, it's a good game, but not a great one.
The Day After The Day After Tomorrow
PROTIP: Walkers take extra damage from knee shots. You'll know you got a clean hit if the Walker tilts to one side.
Though it might sound a little pretentious, the Battlefield series belongs in a separate class all by itself. The first game, Battlefield 1942, pioneered early online combat shooters by introducing massive 64-player warzones complete with drivable tanks, planes, and APCs, with appropriately explosive results. Later iterations changed the setting (Battlefield: Vietnam) and the presentation (Battlefield 2), but the FPS-meets-MMO spirit remained firmly intact.
This spirit remains true for Battlefield 2142, a game that takes only modest steps towards differentiating itself from its predecessors. It whisks gamers into a future world where war has put civilization on the brink of self-annihilation. Global warming has triggered a rapid-onset ice age that will quickly swallow the last few acres of farmable land.
PROTIP: Engineers can strike enemy vehicles with guided rockets and patch up friendly vehicles. His SMG is decent for close-range surprises, too.
Unsurprisingly, war breaks out over control of the precious temperate zones, though the major players have changed: the European Union, (Western countries like the US and much of Europe) clashes with the Pan Asian Coalition (most of Eurasia teamed with the Middle East). The scope of war has changed, too, with monstrous hovering Titan bases now darkening the skies of almost every battlefield.
It's an intriguing premise, but the developers were surprisingly timid when it came to inventing futuristic hardware. The game is set almost 150 years into the future but most of these weapons are just flashier variations of current-gen killing tech like machine guns and pistols. Sure, some guns fire cool dart-like flechettes or tungsten-core slugs, and muzzle flashes are now a brilliant blue (as opposed to a brilliant yellow), but on a fundamental level they work and feel just like modern-day conventional weapons. Where are the smart guns, the vehicle-mounted lasers, and the skull-exploding acoustic cannons? If this is the best weaponry the future can come up with, maybe they deserve to freeze.
PROTIP: When possible, try to respawn on vehicles. It's a shortcut to some serious action.
