Hardware Geeks

With the next iteration of the Battlefield franchise, EA and DICE have decided to take on a completely different approach.  Unlike previous games in the Battlefield series, Battlefield Heroes is a cartoon-styled third person online shooter.  Set to be released for the PC, the biggest change of all is that this game will be free to download and free to play.  I got a chance to try it out at EA’s 2008 Studio Showcase, and it looks to be a promising game!

Being so different from the previous games, I was curious to see how it would live up to the Battlefield name.  New players to the Battlefield series should find it easy enough to pick up, while veterans will find that core aspects of the Battlefield games that make them so popular are still there, such as the conquest game mode with the ticket system, vehicular combat, and player classes.

It was hard for me to judge the game since I was playing in a relatively small server, and in my opinion, Battlefield games thrive in large battles with players working as a team.  Teamwork is definitely a focus in this game though.  I found it hard to capture and defend a flag on my own; it certainly would have been easier if there were people there to help me.  For another example of teamwork, I saw an airplane that was being flown by one person, while two other people sat on top of the plane’s wings and fired rocket launchers; all this made possible by the game’s cartoon theme.  With a lot of players working together, the game should be a lot of fun.

The character customization features looked awesome!  The game lets you customize your character however you wish based on numerous different aspects.  People will truly be able to show off their personalities with the different combinations you can come up with, using unique items such as bunny ears, eye patches, and peg legs.  New clothing items can be bought with points you receive for completing missions.  If you wish to do so, you can even purchase clothing through microtransactions with your personal hard-earned cash.  With so many ways to customize your character, we’re sure to see some creative costumes out on the battlefield.

Being a free to play game, Battlefield Heroes features in-game advertisements.  From what I saw, no advertisements were visible during actual gameplay.  The only ads I saw were in the menus of the game, which is very reasonable.  I’m glad they’re not plastering the game with ads everywhere.

Graphically, the game looked great!  Granted, the demo appeared to be running on an HP Blackbird PC with full graphical settings enabled.  It has been said however, that one main focus of this game is to make it fully playable on older hardware.  They’re aiming for minimum requirements for PCs with as low as 1.0 GHz CPUs and 64 MB video cards.  Let’s hope that they’ll be able to keep the system requirements low, since it will widen their install base.

Unfortunately, Battlefield Heroes was unable to meet their initial release date, which was planned for this summer.  Battlefield Heroes is currently in a closed beta phase.  By fall, they hope to expand the beta and incorporate new community-oriented features such as friends lists, groups, and messaging.  By winter, they hope to have the game officially released to the public.  After that, they plan to add new content such as maps, vehicles, and factions.  That sounds reasonable, so let’s hope that they can stick to their schedule.  I know there are tons of people waiting to play this game!

Post Tags: gaming  battlefield heroes  ea  dice  impressions 

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