Battlefield 2142: An insiders perspective by BF2S members
BF2S members were asked to be guinea pigs for the E3 floor demo of 2142 this week. We spent all Wednesday playing against wandering players on the show floor -- this gave us plenty of time to soak in what 2142 is all about. Here's out impressions (color guide for who's talking)
- Afrojap
- Chuy
- Voodoochild
- Marconius
- Shrtcww
Positive aspects of the game
Simplicity of kits: 2142 combined the the 7-kits together and leaves us with 4-core kits. In the build we played, the kit combos were:
- Sniper = Spec-Ops + Sniper
- Engineer = AT + Engineer
- Assault = Assault + Medic
- Support (New ability includes deploying sentry guns)
While this simplified kit choices, it opened up a lot of options for you to choose from in order to adapt to the battle, a good move in my opinion.
Pods: These are just too damn fun. Roll up in an APC, hit F3 and right click. Wheeeeeee. Expect to see a lot of nubs(including myself) ejecting themselves by mistake. Hiiiiilarious.
I'm a fan of the simplified kits too. I'm also going to be sucked in by the upgrades system the have planned. 42 ranks and a whole slew of unlocks -- it's going to be quite addictive. I'm also very excited that, aside from more stuff, the stats system is going to mostly compatible with the current version. Definately expect some kind of something from me ;)
I LOVED titan mode. It's super alpha quality right so the inside got really, REALLY laggy when there was too much going on, but once that is all worked out there are going to be some awesome indoor battles. I'm really looking forward to this aspect.
The Walkers: Sweet. They actually work. They are super gittery (go figure, two legged machine) but work a lot better than I had expected. These beasts also have a full compliment of weaponry -- anti-armor, anti-personal, and anti-air (second seat). It is also the most heavily armoured piece (as far as I could tell) in the line up.
voodoo
marconius
shrtcww
Negative aspects of the game
Too many weapons types: This may be due to me being new to the game. But I was a little overwhelmed by the different types of weapons. Every gun in every vehicle seemed to have a different sound/damage/feel. At least BF2 had some unity by having the only a few possible “classes” of weapons to be mounted on vehicles, so you have an idea what to expect. Example: Primary gun, 50cals, and maybe a SAW. This could be the case in 2142, but I could not tell from our game session.
Graphics: Meh. It was pretty, but it was “BF2 pretty”. Clearly not next-gen. Next mod plz.
Gamplay: Titan mode is fun. The devs did a great job with this. It successfully added more depth to the current conquer mode by shifting the stage of battle into the titan as the round went on. It also forced teams to play a lot more defensively, as flags can be captured back in a matter of seconds.
The titan’s dock was certainly an Essex camp fest at times. You were exposed to enemy gun fire, even when the shields were up. Unlike the Essex though, the titan is well equipped with defensive turrets for both ground and aerial threats.
I so wish I could play commander mode. I would have flown my titan over to the enemy and start titan humping the other one.
Helicopters suck. Ugh. Well, mostly because they aren't helicopters anymore, they are this weird hybrid of chopper/jet that is very difficult to pilot and extremely unmanuverable. The gunner seat has also been deprived of the TV guided missle which is a major hinderance considering that the gun can't even scratch anything but troops.
The walkers. Yeah, i said they were awesome -- but really, too awesome. They can kill everything, move quickly, and are damn near impossible to take out without a 2-3man coordinated assault. I imagine these will be toned down as testing gets done, but they're beasts as it stands.
I'm gonna have to agree with with Afro about the graphics too -- if you know BF2 graphics, you won't be surprised at these. The particle effects got some boosting, but other than a few clouds, sprites, and light bolts not much is going to wow you here.
The titans shields -- what's up with #1) being able to fall through them (lol) and #2) being able to SHOOT through them. Talk about base rape! That'll get fixed for sure though. (They better)
One of the final things that I'm not happy about is how much their in-game documentation they're filling in. There's some graphs -- oh yeah, they look veeeery familiar, an "encarta" (read: wiki) and other aspects that make me feel a little gipped. Oh well, I'll just have to do better, eh?
voodoo
marconius
shrtcww
Holy beta batman!
One thing that definitely bugged the hell out of us was the handling of vehicles. I was on a 3.4ghz Xeon with 3Gigs of RAM, and my game was still twitchy when in a walker or walker and chopper
Yeah, the game is SUPER unoptimized.
voodoo
marconius
shrtcww
Conclusion
GG Dice, but where’s the real BF3? I’m counting on you guys.. I don’t care how long it takes; just make sure BF3 gives us the classic DICE boner when it comes out. 8===D
-Afro
I went into this game session with two goals: have fun and decide if I want to support the game. I had fun, and I'm going to.
-Chuy
voodoo
marconius
shrtcww
