Written by: Ian

 

 

 

My experiences with downloadable shooters haven’t been great yet… Will a remake of the first Battlefield title change my mind? Using the frostbite engine that powered 'Bad Company', but featuring only 3 maps and 3 classes, can this budget "Battlefield 1943" win me over to the principle of an ‘arcade’ sized shooter?

 

 

Obviously there’s no story to this BF game- it’s multiplayer only, without even any practice missions or a campaign with bots to be bothered with- and to be honest, this is a good thing. The game unashamedly shoots towards the more hardcore end of the market- and players like me don’t need to be patronised with a tutorial once you’ve seen the control layout.

 

 

Gameplay is exactly what you would expect from a Battlefield game, although a little stripped-down and pared back in some respects. You still get classes, although only three this time around, with medic and engineer functions merged into the remaining troop types.

 

 

You still play in teams of up to 12. You can still make your own small teams of 4 and work together and combine your points. You still aim to capture flags around a sprawling island map. You still have a selection of weaponry and vehicles, including the full roster of jeeps, tanks and planes. However, on top of this, you get a limited version of the destructible scenery found in Bad Company.

 

Whilst there are only three maps (Wake Island, Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal), and a bonus air combat only map, you still get pretty much all the functionality of the first BF title with some new bonuses only found in the most recent title, all for 1200 points and a 500-odd MB download.

 

 

Battlefield fans, or even casual players of the series will find themselves at home pretty much immediately, whereas even new players will pick up the idea after only a game or two, thanks to the ultimately simple, yet very much fun (still) premise of the classic gameplay premise of capturing all those flags around the map to unlock more spawn points and drain the enemy team’s capture points.