Why I'm Not Buying the Battlefield 2142 Mod

After all the problems with the Battlefield 2 (BF2) game (lovingly and affectionately renamed Buggyfield in certain circles) and all the bugs that still haven’t been fixed more than a year after release why would you want to spend more of your money on a souped up mod called Battlefield 2142 for the price of a full game? Not to mention that it runs on basicly the same graphics engine as Battlefield 2. EA and DICE are great at milking the cow.

My BF2 with the latest patch installed crashes on average once every 3-4 hours of play. It actually seemed to get worse with the latest patch. This is supposedly not the core development team at DICE’s fault since they’re busy working on the fancy new fun stuff, but a Canadian EA team of monkeyboys probably fresh out of college assigned with the task of fixing the BF2 mess. Poor suckers. Whoever’s fault it is it’s too damn lousy.

So anyway I thought I’d take the recently released Battlefield 2142 demo for a spin and see if it was worth shelling out for. I downloaded it through the EA Downloader which in itself is a program full of frustration. The demo happily installed. After saving the audio settings that first pops up the game starts… or it tried to:

“The application has failed to start because d3dx9_29.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.”

Here we go again. Well, after a quick Google search it seems like there are some optional files in the DirectX distribution and I just had to download them. Fairly quickly fixed but I find it odd that I as an end-user has to deal with such problems but on with the game.

After around ten hours of play here’s my impressions.

On the Plus Side

Login time is a hell of a lot shorter. A few seconds. BF2 login time easily takes 30 to 60 seconds. That’s countless hours I’ve sit and waited to be logged in. Goddammit. Maybe it’s due to less server load but so far definately a big plus. Why haven’t they bothered to fix this issue in BF2? I’ll tell you why. They wouldn’t make a single dime on assigning developers to fix the issue. Anyway, the shorter login time is great news for not the first login but all the subsequent crashes you endure during an evening of BF2142. Yay. Go DICE.

You now have the possibility to create more than one soldier if you so desire. Whether your stats are shared between the soldiers I’m not sure but it would certainly suck if they weren’t seeing as there are around 44 unlocks in the game. More than in BF2.

The server browser seems to be a hell of a lot snappier. The way it should have been in BF2. DICE? You’re one and a half year late, you cocksuckers!

The UI in general seems to respond faster.

The graphics seems to be a little bit nicer. The improvements are hardly noticable and it is certainly nothing compared to the BF1942 to BF2 jump. As I said BF2142 uses the same graphics engine (because reuse is a cheap way to screw your customers you see) as originally developed for BF2.

Downsides

They use the same graphics engine. Essentially this whole “new” game is just a professionally done mod. Do not be fooled! Not that I’m against mods but selling them at the price of a full new game is preposterous.

Now any dweep can fly without crashing. It no longer takes skill to keep an aircraft in the air without crashing it into the hillside. It almost takes skill to crash the damn thing. I can’t figure out whether this is a good thing or not for the general gameplay. More people will probably fly now and maybe that will keep the Red Barons a little more on the ground and thereby opening up for a more balanced game. It sucks getting owned by a skilled chopper team in BF2 but who cares. It’s fun when you try to get revenge and is best served with a few stinger missiles. BF2142 flying is boring now that you don’t have to improve your skills. This is part of what makes a game fun. You learn and improve, get better, get more frags. This is more washed out in BF2142.

The imaginary future weapons. I guess they’re saving all the good weapons for the unlocks in the full game. At least I hope so because those you try in the demo are just flat out boring. Not to mention the aim is completely wack. It’s my personal experience that it has become more difficult to see whether you’re actually hitting the person you’re aiming directly at.

When you zoom as infantry your aim constantly moves a little up and down to simulate that you can’t hold it still. Lame.

The countless of unlocks you have to go through again. After six months everyone will have all the best unlocks and we’re back at square one again. Just give us the selection.

The demo map Sidi Power Plant is downright ugly. Colorwise it looks like something from Quake 1. 65535 shades of brown and grey. Compare it to Gulf of Oman and then think about it. If they chose Sidi Power Plant it must be because they believe it has something to offer for everyone. A lot of CQB, some flying and some Mech Warrior battling just like Gulf of Oman had a little bit of everything. Problem is it’s all very boring.

1280×1024 resolution has vanished again. Somebody explain it, please.

The map overview is almost useless. There’s so much going on it’s difficult to see where you are, your team mates and enemies are even at full zoom. Also the HUD looks like it was made by a 10 year old in Deluxe Paint IV. Amateurish.

The new Titan mode should have been scrapped before it became an idea. Do I need to tell you it’s boring? In Titan mode your team has to be in control of as many missile silos (flags) in order to destroy the enemys MK-1 Titan shield. The MK-1 Titan is airborne and once the shield is down you can board it and destroy the core. This is fun the first time. The problem is it takes away players from the real battlefield on the ground. Some are trying to board the Titan, some are defending silos and others are attacking enemy silos. In a completely uncoordinated fashion. What’s wrong with the good old Capture the Flag mode? This was a very popular mode in Battlefield 1942 and as you’re well aware in many other games such as Quake III Arena. When you capture the enemys flag you have to bring it back to your own base to score a point. Gets a sweat going when every player on the other team is chasing your ass down a desert with superior firepower. Or how about perhaps a slightly different conquest mode where you need to take the flags in a certain order?

There’s no M1 Abrams to be found anywhere. Yeah, I know it’s in the future but the point is: They’re fun! I haven’t found the same experience in any of the vehicles in BF2142. The walker is clunky and just plain stupid when it comes to futuristic warfare.

Still a lot of lag or jerkyness (whatever you want to call it) experienced in the game and from reading various BF2142 forums many still experience this problem. Well done DICE. This is what you get when you build upon old code of dubious quality.

They want us to pay full price for this? No way.

Update

Battlefield 2142 comes with spyware. Screw EA and DICE.

Comic at Penny Arcade