BF1942 -> BF3 – Blast From The Past

Now as I said in my first post explaining why I bothered to make BF4 Blogger, I am a huge Battlefield fan. Without a doubt it is my favourite and most played game series ever made. I’ve owned BF 1942, BF Vietnam, BF2, BF:BC2 and BF3 (including all of their expansions) and trust me.. I’ve played them a hell of a lot. Maybe a bit too much but ah well. And no, I didn’t own BF2142 or the original BC.. played them both but didn’t really appeal to me. I guess not all game can be perfect. So I personally believe that I know quite a bit about the series.

BF 1942

Anyway I started playing the Battlefield series in 2002.. seems quite a long time ago now, nearly 11 years. That was when BF 1942 came out, which to most people (including myself) was the best Battlefield game ever made. It was such a huge breakthrough at the same. The first game to successfully pull off large scale battles with infantry, ground vehicles and fighter planes.

BF 1942 was very different to today’s BF3. It was nowhere near as balanced, which in some ways wasn’t always a bad thing. A good pilot good literally win the game, if you had the air dominated there wasn’t much the other team could do, especially on the North African maps like El Alamein (probably my favourite ever Battlefield map).

The great pilots could take out tanks in no time, clearing the way for their team mates to capture all of the flags. Some people might see this as a bad thing. But the rest of us saw this as great. Teamwork couldn’t have been anymore important. The infantry would have to rely on the air guys to help out and the tank drivers would need to prevent the enemy infantry from stealing the flags. Though it was never good when you saw an RPGer in a jeep rushing to the back of your tank. Hit in the wrong place and it was all over. But that was all part of the fun and the hectic action.

Oh and then there’s the maps like Tobruk, pure tank warfare. It was all about being first to get the Tiger. Now that tank was stupidly overpowered, but then that’s how it was in WW2. I don’t think there was anything better than stealing the Tiger from the enemy team and dominating them with it. They wouldn’t stand a chance.

Sorry to the ex 1942 guys, who I’ve now got reminiscing about the “good old days”.

 

BF Vietnam

Ah BFV, the game I played more than any of the others (mainly due to me liking it so much more than 2142). Vietnam took off where 1942 finished. It carried on with everything we loved but added in, the game changer.. helicopters.

It might not seem like that would make much of a difference but it really did. You now had an air vehicle which could take flags by itself. Infantry wouldn’t stand a chance against a decent pilot but you could actually also capture the flag without landing.

Needless to say.. this appealed to me quite a lot. Whenever I had the chance you would see me in a helicopter, preferably a huey, where even though it didn’t have heatseekers like the Cobra or double rockets like the MI8 (the Russian Chopper), it just flew incredibly. Nothing I’ve ever liked more than flying round the map taking out unsuspecting infantry with the huey. Though you did have quite a few enemy players raging at you (which honestly made it even better).

The other massive difference was the addition of the Phantom. The iconic symbol of the Vietnam war – Napalm. Drop this on the choke points or main flags and you’d rack up kills in no time. This did make the whole enemy team want to take you out though so you had to fly quite high if you wanted to get your kills up without dying. If you did die, have fun trying to get into a Phantom again, there would always be a lot of people waiting to try and get one. Low supply high demand.

 

BF2

Oh, where everything completely changed. Now don’t get me wrong.. I loved BF2. But when I look back at it now, I just don’t have those memories I had from 1942 and Vietnam. Yes, it was built a lot better. Much more balanced. Great ranking system. Much better graphics. But it just wasn’t the same.

Battlefield 2 changed everything. They added in the new teamwork which you see in today’s Battlefield games. Things like getting points from healing, reviving, giving ammo. It brought a whole new dimension to the game. Gone are the days where you have to be good at killing to get the top scores. With BF2 you could come first just from teamwork points which, in my opinion, is a good thing. Rewarding teamwork can never be a bad thing, right?

Wrong.

Bring in boosters. Of course which the new unlock system and ranking (you have to level up to use certain guns), people obviously wanted to get high scores as quickly as possible. This resulted in a LOT of people teaming up with their friends to just get teamwork poins – not helping the team in any way. Find a good server and you’re fine, a bad server and it can be quite annoying.

Anyway, back to the good points. Another new feature with BF2 was the commander. Another massive change to encourage teamwork. There would be one player on each team who could be a commander which would let them see an overview of the whole map and be able to order his or her squads (oh yes.. another new feature, where you can squad up with 3 other players and be able to spawn on your squad leader) on what to do. You’d also have UAV, supply drops and artillery at your disposal to try and give your team that extra advantage.

Overall, BF2 was a extraordinary game. The new features and graphics it brought were new to the PC world and it was simply brilliant. It definitely had it’s faults but I can’t let them shadow the game’s awesomeness.

 

Bad Company 2

I skipped the original Bad Company.. thought it was terrible. But Bad Company 2, I thought looked alright so I gave it a chance.

The major difference with BC2 was it seemed to favour Rush – the new game mode where each map was split into stages of a kind. One team defended a bomb site whilst the other team had to blow it up. Blow up the bomb in each stage and you’d win but the attacking team has a limited amount of tickets. This encouraged high tempo action with both teams concentrated in a much smaller area compared to Conquest.

Some people prefer this.. some don’t. I was stuck in the middle. I can see how it improved the game in ways, but it doesn’t have the same tactics involved with Conquest mode. The problem was that Conquest was terrible on BC2. Not enough flags so it just felt like Rush anyway with the whole team going after the same flags. If this wasn’t Battlefield then it still would’ve been a very good game. But to me.. Rush is not Battlefield. Saying that, I still played it a lot and had a lot of fun with it, so it’s not all bad.

Don’t really have much else to say about BC2. It didn’t give me any memories like the older games did. It was a good game for sure, but just didn’t have that extra little bit which makes a game ‘legendary’? Yeah sorry, that sounds a bit cheesy.

 

BF3

And here are at present time. Don’t think I need to talk right now about Battlefield 3 as, well, it’s now. So I don’t think any of you need reminding. But damn, how the game has changed since the beginning. Gaming really has changed hasn’t it.

I’ll be writing a post soon about BF3 – what they’ve done well and what really needs to be changed from my perspective.

And just to finish.. a comparison – 2002 -> now.