BattleField 1942 Preview August 01, 2002 Bob Colayco

Game Overview

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Developer: Digital Illusions
Publisher: EA
Estimated Release: Fall 2002

Squad combat on steroids

One of the big games we missed at E3 was BattleField 1942, a multiplayer squad based shooter set in World War II. There are a number of aspects that separate BF 1942 from the crowd – these include the huge emphasis on vehicles (land, sea, and air), the huge maps that support up to 64 players, and new twists in how the different classes work together. The graphics engine for the game is a proprietary one called Refractor 2. While it won’t be mistaken for anything that will give Doom 3 a run for its money, the engine is more than competent, capable of long draw distances and rendering so many players and vehicles at once. The long draw distance is useful for spotting troop movements far away on the huge, sprawling maps in BF 1942, or a fighter plane off in the distance coming at you for a strafing run. You also get excellent smoke effects and meticulous detail on the various vehicles you’ll be piloting in the game.

Saddle up

The developers in the game did a good job at carefully modeling the looks of the various vehicles after their real life counterparts. Russian T-34 tanks, American P-51 Mustangs, jeeps, halftracks, APCs, and more look exactly as though they were pulled from a WWII documentary. However, BF 1942 isn’t a hardcore simulation – vehicle performance will be balanced for gameplay purposes, not realism. So don’t expect to go rampaging through American Shermans if you’re driving a German King Tiger. Having said that though, the vehicles play a pivotal role in the gameplay, just as they did in the real war, the first one where vehicles played a key role from start to finish.

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Vehicle gameplay

The vehicles make for extremely exciting gameplay. The times I drove around in a tank, I got immense satisfaction out of blowing away halftracks and trucks making their way across the battlefield. Tank duels between two players are a ton of fun as well, with the two players circling each other, trying to juke the other into lobbing their shell to the wrong side for a glancing blow instead of a devastating direct hit. Charge in for a closer shot, or maintain your distance and try to outshoot the other guy? These are the tactical decisions you must make in a tank duel. Even driving around jeeps is fun as I’d go on Grand Theft Auto-esque killing sprees, running over lines of enemy foot soldiers.

I witnessed a few exciting air to air dogfights as well. The funniest one was when I looked up to find two planes mixing it up while I rode shotgun on a two man tank. While trying to decide which plane I should shoot with my mounted machine gun, I saw the two planes crash into each other in a head-on collision, creating a spectacular explosion overhead. Everyone who was playing couldn’t stop laughing at that botched game of aerial chicken!




SIDEBAR: Machine guns mounted on tanks will overheat if you fire them on automatic for too long. This keeps you from indiscriminately hosing down oncoming infantry. You have to fire the gun in short bursts to keep it working

Playing On Foot

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The lowly grunt

What about being on foot? In my brief time playing at Camp EA (only 6 machines were set up; the rest of the battlefield was populated with bots), it seemed as though being a lone-wolf foot soldier was an impossible and pointless task. If you weren’t lucky enough to hop into a vehicle at your spawn, then you are really forced into coordinating your movements with teammates who are driving the tanks, for protection. This doesn’t mean that foot soldiers are useless. Your mere presence and ability to stay alive in certain parts of the map can be a boon to the team as you'll see later in the preview. Indeed, the game objectives are set up around the idea of team play and coordinated attacks.

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Maps and Classes

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The maps

BattleField 1942’s maps are huge – possibly as large as anything in Tribes 2, only you don’t get jetpacks to zoom across them like you do in that game. Each map is based on a real World War II battle, ranging from the deserts of El Alamein, to the plains of Kursk, to the jungle island of Guadalcanal, to the beaches at Normandy. 16 maps in these four theaters (North Africa, Eastern Europe, the Pacific, and Europe) will be included. Each is populated with ample foliage, buildings, and in some cases, fixed emplacements like mortar holes, artillery guns, anti aircraft cannons, and more. Some large vehicles, like the battleships, may feature several stations that mimic these functions (anti aircraft, and 16 inch guns as artillery).

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Five classes

BF 1942 features five primary classes – assault, medic, anti-tank, engineer, and scout. The assault guy is your basic foot soldier, but he carries a slightly heavier default weapon than the others. The medic totes a submachine gun appropriate to his nationality (German – MP40, British – Sten, etc.), and has the ability to heal players on the battlefield. There is no mobile respawning though, as in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The anti-tank soldier carries a bazooka/panzershreck/RPG weapon but runs slower than his other mates. The engineer has the ability to repair damaged tanks and other vehicles on the field of battle, and the scout carries a sniper rifle.

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