The poster child for this practice is EA and its Battlefield games. Nearly every full installment in the series has seen a patch released within 24 hours of launch, and in fact it was the release of Battlefield 1942 in 2002 that led us here at GameSpy.com to make a habit of delaying reviews for multiplayer games. The sci-fi themed Battlefield 2142, which ships today, is no different; one patch has already been released and a second patch (which should be server-side only) should be released by night's end. As a result, we'll be testing over the next few days to get an accurate read on the online play before posting our final review, but with so many Battlefield fans here at GameSpy HQ, we've put together some initial impressions of what we've seen so far.
The year, as you've probably guessed, is 2142. Earth is slowly being covered in ice and two factions are now warring over what little habitable land remains. The setting is just an excuse to take Battlefield 2's gameplay and add some futuristic weapons and vehicles, from hovertanks to mech walkers. In many ways, BF2142 feels like an elaborate mod for BF2; the graphics haven't been significantly improved, there are still long load times and menu oddities, and if it weren't for some HUD tweaks and the new vehicles, you could forgive people for confusing some maps with BF2's.
The big addition for BF2142 is the "Titan" mode, which takes Battlefield's familiar capture-and-hold formula and adds a second phase to the end. Each team gets a flying fortress called a Titan, and as you control missile silos on the map, you weaken the Titan's defenses. When a Titan's shield is down, players can land on it to finish it off from the inside, and many of the games we played went down to the final seconds, with both teams simultaneously racing to destroy the other's reactor core.
While it's decent enough, the initial catch with Titan mode is that it's not quite as intuitive as basic capture-and-hold. Even if you latch on to the idea that it's just Conquest with a second phase at the end, there's the matter of actually getting on to the other team's Titan, which requires a semi-decent pilot or finding an APC with rocket pods to eject you onto the Titan. It's possible to destroy the Titan without invading it, but there's a lot about the second phase that won't be obvious to new players, such as which part of the Titan you can land on, how to navigate its hallways, or what weapons you should bring so you don't end up out of ammo after destroying a single terminal.
In fact, while BF2142 looks to have a fair bit of depth, that could end up being a double-edged sword. Like Battlefield 2, there's persistent stat tracking and weapon upgrades that reward you for playing more, which in turn encourages players to rack up as many points and kills as possible -- even if that means finding the best ways to spawn-camp and mercilessly pick off rookies. As a result, new players should be prepared to take a bit of a beating as they figure out the ins and outs of all the weapons, vehicles and maps.
Technically, BF2142 has performed pretty similarly to Battlefield 2, which is probably good news if you've upgraded anytime in the last year or so. However, it's hard not to wish that the game didn't have an extra coat of polish: there are occasional camera and clipping issues, our controls felt shaky at times, and the game still doesn't have support for widescreen resolutions. For the life of me, I don't quite understand why there's still a 5-second delay every time you hit the Esc key to go to the main menu; it's hard to think of any other games that have this kind of bloat.
With the game's launch, there's also been a bit of an online uproar over BF2142's inclusion of in-game advertising technology. EA probably didn't help its cause with the inclusion of an ominously-worded insert, but we've yet to actually see any ads on the many billboards sprinkled throughout the game, and when asked for comment, EA was unable to clarify whether paid ads should be in circulation or whether server operators would have the ability to disable them (we'll be following up on this story as we complete our final review).
This is all a long way of saying what most gamers probably guessed: Battlefield 2142 has some great mulitplayer action that no other series can touch, but for a full-priced game, it might feel too much like a reskinned Battlefield 2 for some players, and the initial technical problems are an unquestionable downer. We've still got plenty of testing left to do, so if you're on the fence, you might want to hold off a few days and check back later this week for our full review of Battlefield 2142.
