The Cold War
I think I can accurately sum up most people's opinion of the computer game industry giant EA in the following way:
Battlefield 2 was (and still is) a fantastic multiplayer game. Though hampered by a cruelly unintuitive menu interface and a slight tendency (at least for me) towards bizarre graphical bugginess, it had what so few big EA games lack: charm and personality. It was very playable, very fun and actually didn't break my computer, a feat which is disturbingly rare these days.
When people play it correctly, when they sort into squads with a decent mixture of classes, when your squad leader is good and your commander has half a brain and everyone, most importantly, communicates, and when you aren't left in a screaming rage because you said, "I need a pick up" 80 times and then some utter sod drove right past you - it is one of the greatest, most enjoyable games I own.
Of course, that is a whole list of rarely satisfied variables. We'll return to that.
When I first saw the trailer for the next game in the series, 2142, I was left completely cold (heh, heh). Set in a dystopian wartorn future where a new Ice Age has led to everyone killing everyone else (as if the future will need an imminent Ice Age to cause that) the first trailer involved a lot of mechs and floating tanks driving around snowy environments and futuristic cities (where the billboard had become humanity's main communication tool) blowing each other up.
It looked like the most generic sci-fi game someone could possibly come up with, given buckets of money, a woeful imagination and the brief to devise a concept that could easily fit on the back of a fag packet.
"Bloody Ewoks!"In terms of gameplay, it appeared as if, in order to FUTURISE everything - EA had made all the vehicles float or walk and replaced all the so-19th-Century ballistics with pretty lights. The tanks, though handling just the same as their primitive wheeled counterparts (with perhaps a tad of inertia) now fired pink streams of death!
As I remember it, the trailer focussed on the mechs and so on. This was misjudged because the best thing about the Battlefield games is not the speedy jeeps, the clunky APCs and the thumpy tanks. It is the infantry combat.
Squatting somewhere between CounterStrike and a tactical shooter like SWAT or GRAW (such manly names) Battlefield captures, I think, better than any other, aside from Operation Flashpoint, the sense of being just one shard of infantry flotsam in a greater conflict.
You stalk around, following your squad commander, ducking into cover, generally crawling about, feeling very vulnerable and very scared of tanks/snipers. Every now and again you stop for a breather, to resupply. Helicopters swoop over. Men scream for medics. You respawn but, to my mind, it is not quite the same as the old CS restart - try again. The battle is more dynamic and you're like a replacement, thrown into the fray from the reserve battalions. The next wave.
Drive to victory in a flimsy, roofless go-kart!
It's brilliantly realised to the extent that, in some of BF2's Middle Eastern style levels, creeping through a deserted market square watching for landmines, I got an uncomfortable feeling in my gut that said, "People are actually doing exactly this, right now. For real." That troubled me, in the way the moral nature of war games sometimes does... but I locked it down and got on with capturing the next point. It wouldn't do to let disturbing thoughts like that get in the way of the fun, would it?
Anyway, I was utterly turned off by the prospect of this future conflict and all the generic trappings it entailed. However, my friend, who likes Battlefield even more than me, bought 2142 and loved it. This week, with some money to spare, I decided I'd get it and see what all his fuss was about.
Some words on the game then. Someone on that design team is a genius. They've somehow swayed it so that battles in the future are - by and large - even more dominated by the infantry than before. On certain maps, there is one walker per side and the rest of the team have to sprint about, hurling grenades and reviving each other with the sci-fi defibrillator.
In many ways, its a bit like C&C3 retconning all the units, deliberately shunning the "advances" made by Tiberian Sun. Even the names of certain battles are deliberately reminiscent of World War Two battles "The Bridge at Remagen," for example.
In C&C3 Kane goes to have a shower and realises all this was a dream.
This is all for the good. More infantry squabbles rather than combined arms Armageddons, these maps focus on what makes the Battlefield games good. The vehicles in BF have always been a bit irrelevant. The fact is, spawn as many helicopters as you want in a level, if no-one can fly them for love nor money and simply crashes them into the sea or flies right off the map with them they make absolutely no difference to the course of the battle.
And, yes, just as in the previous games, the general incompetence of the average BF player is still a wonder to behold. The walkers simply act as additional firepower. I'd say a skilled player with a good spot and a sniper rifle is probably four times more influential than a mech.
In all seriousness, though, the superpowers of the future ever develop a combat walker? No matter how cool games make them look, however much they bristle with massive machine guns and plasma cannons and the like, the fact is, generally, they're heavy, clumsy and slow. I mean, wheels are a pretty awesome invention aren't they? And aren't caterpillar tracks always going to be more effective at transversing tough terrain than big AT-ST style stilts?
I mean, in one of the ridiculously pretentious trailers for the next Metal Gear Solid game, one guy with a sword defeats about six walkers, simply by bunny hopping.
"Even LESS gameplay!"Its not just war where walkers seem a little impractical. I mean, commercially, will people get rid of their cars just so they can slowly lumber to work in a fifty ton robotic behemoth? It'd be novel to start off with but they'd be a right bugger to reverse.
So, yes. I love Battlefield 2142.
But I do not love EA.
You see, to get a bit ahead of the game, and seeing how ridiculous cheap it was, I got the expansion pack for 2142 called Northern Strike. The fact that EA churns out "Booster Packs" for Battlefield games at a disturbing rate (disturbing, that is, until you remember you're talking about EA) has always riled me.
What happened yesterday, though. Oooh, boy.
The box for Northern Strike (ordered off Amazon) did not contain a disk. It contained a sheet of paper with a code on it. Now, this is probably my fault. When I ordered the game, I don't distinctly remember reading anything that said, "No Disk Included, Numbnuts," but it probably did say that somewhere. In small print.
So, I gracefully accepted the lack of a disk and examined the sheet of paper more closely.
I had to download a client to get my booster pack. Fine. That didn't take long. Then, I entered my code and downloaded my expansion.
Sylvia Plath levels of stability.That took a couple of hours. The EA client broke down three times just in the process of logging on. For some reason, unbidden, it also started trying to update BF2. That was aggravating. I don't want anything to do with that old game now! No, no. I've moved onto the war of pretty sparkly lights.
After that, I still couldn't play my game. I assumed the Booster Pack download would contain all the relevant patches for BF2142 as a sort of inherent necessity in getting the Pack in the first place.
I was wrong.
I then had to patch 2142 so I could install my Booster Pack so I could actually play the game. The client crashed some more. Hours passed.
People think online distribution is the future of games. I'm not so sure. There is something ridiculously frustrating about buying a product and then having to wait to use it.
I mean, I find it irritating despite being a PC gamer who has always had to live with the wonderful process of Installation. I remember, once, having a game install to 99% before it realised there wasn't enough memory to complete the installation. It bitchslapped me with a "Free Up Some Memory" message and closed down. Nice one.
Memory checks before the installation starts. Another awesome idea.
Yet, even so, there is something significantly different about installing a game (and bear in mind that some games make the installation diverting. RA2 gave you the entire backstory of the game, for goodness' sake) and downloading a bunch of stuff for it - certainly if the time spent downloading immediately follows the installation.
I remember when I got HL2. Activation, they called that. I remember screaming at the computer as about a billion people simultaneously attempted to get the update I was getting, "I HAVE THE DISK IN MY HAND! I HAVE THE GAME IN MY ACTUAL HAND!"
"In my hand!"If you went to the theatre, paid for a seat and then had to sit there for three hours while someone got the actors ready, you wouldn't be happy about it. But, as gamers, we have to sit there and let companies like EA slap us in the face, just because its the future and its the aided by the Power of the Internet.
I'm not saying download services for games is bad. I'm not having a plug at Steam and all that. If you want and choose to download a game... that's up to you. Like me finding that coded paper in my empty Northern Strike DVD case, the wait is something you have to accept and tolerate.
But... that stupid EA client and the massive patches riled me. Why don't they bundle updates with games?
Still, take it from me. The game itself is immense. If you ever see play it and put a round into a slightly bemused looking EU private called "Misterblimphead" that's me. I hope to see you soon.
As for what I was saying earlier about all those horrible variables, it might be a fluke but, thus far, the servers I've been on people really seem to have taken the teamplay aspect of the infantry combat to heart and its been brilliant. Working together, getting ammo, being revived when I die, working in cohesion, its really great stuff.
You can almost forgive the long stretches of downloading you have to put up with before hand.
Almost.
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Jachap has seen the future and its full of pretty lights. And snow.
3 comments:
Like you, I was similarly turned off by BF2142's super-generic futuro-shenanigans. However, the group of people I usually played online games with were by and large intending to get this sequel, so I stumped up the cash and played it, despite not being at all impressed with the demo. I was very pleasantly surprised - it was very fun, as usual, and the gameplay advances were definitely welcome. The new teamplay aspects make it a joy when you're playing in a squad that's working well, and the customisable classes... well, 's all good.
But.
It lacks one crucial thing - soul. BF1942 had soul. It had hulking great aircraft carriers, and B-17 bombers, it had Omaha Beach, and all these recognisable elements that let you re-enact Saving Private Ryan or whatever. BF2 advanced the gameplay while keeping the recognisability factor - there's just something very right about manning the whirry death-whisk that is the Black Hawk's minigun, or wielding an AK-47 against American imperialist dogs in a misty swamp. Even the Middle Eastern maps were intensely relevant, of course, as you point out.
BF2142 loses all of that. There's little atmosphere. No soul. Even the artillery barrages, which in BF2 were scary as hell and made you run for cover madly, have been reduced to little more than a tickle depending on where you're standing. You can stand next to a medic pack in the midst of an 'orbital strike' (as DICE now style them) and survive, easily. It's lost a lot.
Which is why I've now gone back to BF2, albeit in the form of the Project Reality Mod which adds such wonders as insurgents with molotov cocktails and civilians who throw stones and penalise the opposition if killed.
And yes, EA Link is awful. Absolutely awful. However, I'm in favour of this digital distribution malarkey in general. This past week has been something of a love affair between me and Steam. First I bought X-Com: Terror From The Deep for less than my lunch usually costs me, then I bought the magnificent Dreamfall, which I'd been meaning to buy for a long, long time, and finally I got Vampire: Bloodlines, on the strength of it being cheap and everyone raving about it.
All in all I spent about £30 for three games and got them pretty much instantly instead of having to traipse down to Union Street or waiting a couple days for them to arrive from Play.com or similar. And I'd have a hard time finding one of them anywhere these days. Steam's catalogue of games just seems ever-expanding and the ease of use (and insane dollar/pound exchange rate right now) mean I can't recommend it highly enough.
When done right, this digital distribution thing definitely is the future.
Well, like I said, I thought BF2 had plenty of charm - soul, whatever you wish to call it, so I know exactly what you mean.
I've only had it for two days so far but, if I find it as soulless as you say, I'll definitely report back.
Today, I found myself tremendously irritated by it. What Battlefield will never get right is the constant instant deaths. Particularly when I spawn point is surrounded by snipers and support class players... you get riddled with bullets/blown up as soon as you reappear. It happens a lot. More than I remember.
And, again, I didn't want to overtly criticise internet distribution as a way to get old games/cult games... I mean, even Psychonauts is on Steam now. And that's a very good thing. Yet, I think there's something to the idea of packaging releases with the patches that are produced.
Yes battlefield 2142 is a great game. ALos with command and conquer i think ea has messed some of the game play in the game but thank godness there bringing back walkers. Also walkers have some advantages. Like getting up on hi ledges instead of driving into the cliff or walking over barricades.
Also there is a sicolodgical effect with a walker seeing a tall monsterious best in battlefield can be pretty intense especialy when it's firing at you.
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