Battlefield 1942

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My household is always filled with gunshots in the early morning, but most of them are coming from the nice assault rifles available in Battlefield 1942. This large, online multiplayer game is great for sheer fun of battle activity; including driving tanks, airplanes and subs.

Game Modes

There is not only multiplayer mode in this great game. There is also single player mode, which has two options: campaign and instant action. Instant action takes you straight into any battle of your choice. You than go right into choosing your spawning point and type of weapon pack. Campaign mode has you choose sides with either the Allied or Axis forces, than has you fight the battles that are available in instant action. The Campaign mode seems a little weak, especially since there are no other extra goals like in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The campaign mode is basically the same thing as instant action; except you get a little briefing before going off to war. You also have to play the battles in sequential pattern, and cannot skip from Wake Island to Omaha just because you feel like it.

Vehicle and Gun Pack Selection

There are so many different vehicle choices in Battlefield. You can become a tank, submarine, GP, battleship, bomber plane, fighter plane, destroyer ship, landing craft ship, and heavily armored APC's. There are different weapons packs that you can choose for your soldier. There is an anti-air, scout, medic, engineer, and assault pack. In an anti-air pack, you get a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher and some grenades. A scout kit has a scoped sniper rifle, grenades, and binoculars. An assault pack has a heavy machine gun and extra ammo. When you are a medic, you can heal your teammates. In a medic kit, you get a medikit, sub-machine gun, and grenades. Engineers can lay mines/disarm them, and can take care of demolitions and repair vehicles. Each soldier kit is vital to the success of a mission, and having a specialized soldier is interesting, yet will upset some because you can only have one kit at a time (you will never be able to carry a sniper and a sub machine gun like in Medal of Honor). The engineer carries a rifle, demolition kit, mines, and a repair kit. My favorite is the scout kit, because it if fun to snipe people from afar. The best map to do this is definitely Stalingrad, when you are on the Axis team. It is great to watch the Allied tanks come into your small village with your binoculars and than snipe the gunner on the top. Since you can only pick one kit, you can never have a sniper rifle and an anti-tank bazooka. This is a little disappointing, especially if you are one of those people who like to do everything. Whenever a soldier dies, you can pick up their dropped kit, but than you lose your original kit. However, it does make the game more realistic.

Online Gameplay

Playing online with up to 64 players is great fun. It is so fun to spot a battleship out in the sea from your plane and warn your teammates that it is coming. Or even when you are all charging the Japanese base in your tanks, and you see your gunners getting picked off one by one. It is great to feel like your on a team, especially when you are 'called to duty' to help defend your base or bring in some artillery.

The Annoyance of Spawn Points

Spawn points can get a little annoying. Whenever you die, you have to choose a point on the map to spawn back to life. You can only spawn back to control points that your team has captured. Your team captures the point by touching the flag in the control point's base. There is a count before you spawn, and it can take up to 30 seconds. If you do not choose a spawn point and a weapon pack before the spawn count reaches 0, it starts all over again at 30. This can get really annoying...

Bugs on the Battlefield!

There are a few bugs in Battlefield. Soldiers will hop in and out of vehicles in the single player mode, and will never stay on top as a gunner. When you fire a canon at a tank, the tank will sometimes explode before the bullet even hits it. Most of these problems are now fixed in the 1.2 patch, but there are still quite a few errors.

Overall

Besides a few glitches and annoying parts, Battlefield 1942 is a highly recommend.