Battlefield 2142

You can almost imagine the meeting: the bigwigs from EA and the guys at DICE getting together to discuss how to follow up Battlefield 2. “Hey”, says one of the money men, “Let’s make this the most controversial Battlefield ever.” “How?” replies a DICE dude, “Do you want us to get edgy? Have the troops shooting up with performance-enhancing drugs, or blowing up civilians willy-nilly? Shall we up the overt political content? Set it in North Korea? Have the US troops sticking it to Kim Jong-Il?” “Nope” the suit replies, “That’s not the sort of controversy we have in mind. We were thinking spyware, in-game advertising, poor security practice, patches and a game that has the hardcore fans practically screaming ‘glorified mod’.” “Great!”, says a DICE designer “we’ve got plenty of ideas in that direction.”

Overall Battlefield 2142, even with the look and feel of a well polished mod, is a pretty worthy addition to the franchise, even with the price tag. There's something missing that's hard to really figure out. Some of the Battlefield magic just isn't quite there. That's not to say there isn't fun to be had, it's just almost like the game is taking itself too seriously. That said, the addition of Titan mode is certainly welcome to those of us that were clamoring for objective-based play. The changes to unlocks are definitely interesting and come out looking better after a longer time playing the game thanks to quicker progression through the ranks. Now they just need to get the stat reporting to work correctly and players can have more fun playing with their new gadgets. Most importantly, team play has been preserved and even made more advantageous. Hopefully it will inspire players to join squads, get mic'd up, and work together as a team. Battlefield 2142 might not be extraordinary, but it still got excitement and fun.