Battlefield 1943

    Wow, didn't see this one coming — I assumed DICE would be busy with Battlefield Heroes and Bad Company 2 for the majority of this year. See here for video:

    http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/05/battl ... is-summer/

    I'm guessing it won't have anywhere near the depth of Battlefield 2 and 2142, but this'll be a very nice stopgap while I continue desperately desiring Battlefield 3. Hopefully BF3 will come early 2010, which isn't unlikely as DICE has this habit of announcing games literally months before their release.

    Just to clarify, it is coming out on Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network, and the PC (presumably through EA Downloader and maybe Steam).

    Theme is largely irrelevant with Battlefield to be honest. All three games regardless of era feel quite similar — it's that special Battlefield magic that makes the games great.

    The pacing and balance in 1942 is still better than all others. Bad Company, oddly enough, is the closest thing to it.

    Though, when I heard this rumor yesterday I was really expecting 1943 to be a proper sequel. Kinda dissapointed it's just a sort of mini-remake for XBL and PSN. How many battlefield off shoots are we gonna have before a proper 'Battefield 3'?

    Quote from sarge mat

    Three Battlefield games this year! It’s going to be a good one. Really looking forward to all three of them. Hope to get in the heroes beta soon.

    I definitely wouldn't mind giving Heroes a whirl either! Bad Company 2? Not really

    all these battlefield games must be dividing the player base quite heavily ...

    there used to be a time when gamespy listed the most popular online pc multiplayer games i watched those stats go up and down with glee on an almost daily bases.

    half-life was always on top. but call of duty and call of duty united offensive counted as 2 separate games but if they had combined their player numbers they would have approached the levels of half-life. now i am sure it doesn't really matter what the gamespy front page says but the amount of servers you get when you hit refresh says a lot about the popularity of your mp game.

    and it is my holy believe that once you hit a certain critical mass with multiplayer titles the game sales will spread like wild fire through word of mouth among the players i am telling you its what happened with cs its what happened with halo and its what happened with cod4 and its whats still happening with wow. so what i am getting at is dice and ea shouldn't be releasing this many separate battlefield games but instead the multiplayer portion of all these games shoudl be one and the same game that gets continuously updated and all the old owners of these game should get automatically upgraded to the newest maps / weapons / graphics. so that it appears as if you don't have 10 "so,so" popular multiplayer games but 1 SUPER POPULAR one ! ... and than sales will go crazy.

    /EDIT also the shots i just saw on kotaku .. TOTAL BULLSHOTS

    wait BF1943 is a graphical updated 1942 (using it's gameplay but Heroes Engine?) or is it Heroes with "serious" graphics (using the BF42 graphics?).

    Whatever: Game looks great in respect to what BF42 did, not sure about the 24 players limitation though. I'm with warby though: What's the matter with EA/DICE releasing every patch/update/graphic mod as an own game dividing player bases? They would at least sell the same number of copies if they give free updates to theyr games, because the player base numbers would explode... (Steam support would be nice too!!!)

    Bad Company looks cool but I never got around to play the first one and always just enjoyed the trailers...

    It's based on the Bad Company engine actually. I've no idea what Heroes uses, though.

    I'm really unsure what to think until we know more about this. One thing I've always loved about Battlefield is the depth and detail to the gameplay, ranging from the weapons and kit (which were tremendously varied in Battlefield 2142) to the maps, to the squad systems, etc. No other game has really given me the same experience, with even the greats like Call of Duty and Team Fortress 2 having tiny maps and scale in comparison.

    If it's significantly dumbed down like Heroes seems to be then that's not really going to appeal to me much I don't think; I also won't be impressed if it has the kind of dumbing down you'd expect from a game targetted at the tactile inferiority of gamepads. Battlefield has always been quite hardcore with regards to difficulty, so it's hard to imagine regular PC Battlefield being appealing to Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network users, which worries me as obviously a lot of sales will come from those avenues — by not being PC exclusive like previous Battlefields, I suspect it may suffer.

    We'll see!

    I was impressed with how faithful Bad Company was to the series. The scale may have been brought down slightly, but I think short of UI changes, what makes Battlefield great was well maintained in the transition.

    If you can still swim across a lake for 2 minutes hoping you don't get shot up, you know it's still Battlefield at heart.

    http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57127

    Quote

    Priced somewhere between $15 and $20, the game will pack three classes: Infantry, Riflemen, and Scout. DICE wanted to make sure that players could fight in any situation regardless of the chosen class, so each has weapons that can take down a tank.The 24-player game will also grant players unlimited ammunition, as well as automatically regenerating health. While these steps are being taken to ensure that the game has wide appeal, they also remove the team-centric strategy of past titles.

    Suddenly I'm not that interested anymore...

    I don't think those changes are terrible, but it definitely won't be Battlefield. I'm expecting something that'll play more like Call of Duty (which also has regenerating health), but with some of the Battlefield hallmarks such as vehicles and large, open maps. These things do take away from the teamplay though, as medics will no longer be needed to keep people healthy, support personnel won't be needed to restock your ammo, etc. But working as a team to secure the checkpoints will be as necessary as ever I imagine, and the Frostbite engine's destructable world will be quite cool (ability to blow apart buildings, trees, etc).

    I think my original prediction of this being nothing more than a fun diversion will hold true. At this point I'm looking more forward to Bad Company 2 though, even if it is console-only, because it has a more traditional Battlefield multiplayer.

    Whoa wait, shit. I was just reading about Bad Company 2 and it turns out it's actually getting a PC version.

    Seeing as Bad Company was meant to have terrific multiplayer (even in the opinion of PC Battlefield veterans) — much more faithful to traditional Battlefield than Heroes and 1943 seem to be — and that DICE is generally very good when it comes to PC versions, that excites me.

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