The battle lines have been drawn. The enemy is approaching. Martin Korda wades into the fray
This morning I was killed by a man called Shultz. Rudolph Shultz to give him his full name, a porky butcher's shop owner from the south side of Berlin. Had this not been 1942, and had we not been fighting in one of the bloodiest conflicts in mankind's history, then perhaps things would have been different. A lot different. Maybe we would even have been friends - me a jolly backpacker looking for tales to tell the boys back home (Porky, Dorky, Spot, Capper, Mapper, Dick and Spud - great guys), him a rosy-faced local of a town I'd be passing through. Perhaps we'd sit in the late afternoon sun over a couple of Bavarian beers, him slapping his lederhosened leg in hilarity as I regaled him with a barrage of anecdotes about 'ze braykeeng of ze vind'. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. What might have been. Instead, my one meeting with Shultz ended in him performing a crude form of surgery on my intestines with a rusty standard-issue German army knife. War does that to people. Turns normal, civil, peace-loving people into rabid dogs of war. But I'm still alive, fighting the fight, taking it to the enemy. And I know I'll die a hundred times more before the day is out. But I'm not afraid. Why? Because this is a computer game, that's why. And because no game, no matter how much it tries will ever replicate the true horrors of war. And this one is no exception, though it does have a fair old go.
Split Loyalties
It's always hard reviewing games based on events as horrendous as WWII. Six-headed alien invaders from the planet Kthragrok I can handle, and fictitious battles against terrorist factions aren't a problem. But a team-based WWII sim laced with shots of smooth arcadeyness, one in which you respawn every time your body is separated from your limbs feels a little, well, wrong. Disrespectful almost. However, this is a game (obviously) and I'm a games reviewer (what do you mean debatable?), so regardless of the moral tug of war that walks solemnly hand in hand with something like this, I suppose we'd better see how it plays. There's been a huge fanfare over Battlefield 1942, and a massive amount of excitement has been generated during the past few months - much of it resonating off the girly-pink walls of the PC ZONE office. 'The best team-based war sim in history,' some have claimed with bolshy gusto. But is it really? For starters, let me venture a guess here. Those who make that claim haven't played the single-player campaign yet. A campaign riddled with more holes than a Kan-Kanning soldier in no-man's land. What they've played is the massively diverse, exciting and instantly playable multiplayer games. So before we all cream ourselves in happy unison, let's take each part separately (multiplayer and single-player), dissect them like lab animals and then sew them back up again before making a final judgment? Sound fair to you? Good.
Single-Player Hun
As you may well have guessed, Battlefield's single-player campaign 'Aint all thaayt'. For those of you still a bit hazy about what's involved, here's the bit where you need to pay attention. Yes you, the one with the glazed-over look. That's better. Fighting as either the Allies or the Axis through a series of key WWII battles (based in Africa, the Pacific and Europe), you and your team must prevail through any means at your disposal, first by selecting from one of five unique classes (Assault, Engineer, Anti-Tank, Medic and Scout), and then by utilising any number of vehicles (tanks, jeeps, APCs, ships, planes, bombers) to your advantage. A limited amount of Command Points means that you only have a finite amount of equipment. The first team to run out of Command Points are the losers. It's that simple. No actually, I lied. Had you going for a moment though, eh? Actually, it really isn't that simple at all in the single-player campaign, purely because your team-mates are the biggest collection of no-brained idiots you're ever likely to encounter this side of a vegetable patch. To give you an idea, here's just one example of what you might expect. The level starts. Everyone jumps into the nearest vehicle and drives off in random directions. You bring up your orders menu. "Stick together!" you scream. Everyone drives off in random directions. "Follow me!" Everyone drives off in random directions. "Back me up and I'll let you sleep with my sister!" Everyone drives off in random directions. Some vehicles have room for a driver and a gunner. Great you think, an AI driver will let me scatter bullets all over the battlefield and mow down the enemy without having to worry about steering. Right? No. An AI driver will usually make sure you drive off in the opposite direction to the enemy, allowing you to scatter bullets at badgers in the middle of a random field. But it gets better. Oh hold on, did I say better? I meant worse... and better. Confused? Read on...