If you saw the early post on Battlefield 1942, you are aware of the release of the multiplayer demo. In this demo, you can play either the Japanese or Americans at the battle of Wake Island. G.Racer and I downloaded it Friday night and had it installed around Midnight. The first test of any great game, is how long do you play the first time you load it. When we finally looked up, it was after 6am Saturday morning. We always play games on Friday night (much to the angst of our wives), but we usually wrap up sometime between 1am and 3am. Not this time. We would have kept playing, but G.Racer had to get a few hours sleep before work on Saturday, so we called it a night. If you read on, I will tell you more details about what we thought about Battlefield 1942. We had the most fun we could remember since our marathon days of playing Team Fortress on Quake. Most of the time, I would jump on to play a few hours of TF with G.Racer and the next thing I knew, my wife was getting up for work. Not a single game has lived up to those standards, until now. The amazing thing is this is a demo. There is only 1 map and you do not have access to all of the motorized vehicles or countries. When we started playing, there were over 4000 other players. By the time we finished, it was still around 3500. On Sunday, I jumped in a for a bit and it was approaching 7000. I looked on Gamespy’s server stats and it had more players than Quake or Unreal. And, I reiterate, this was just a demo.

Some of the highlights of our playing:

– Driving an Aircraft carrier. Yep, I was actually driving the darn thing. Of course, I drove too close to shore and the current swept us over, but hey, what’s a first time Captain suppose to do.

– Trying to learn how to drive a plane. OK, this is not as easy as it sounds. Using a keyboard mouse combination to fly a plane is not easy. I remapped the mouse controls to the keyboard and it was not as hard, but I still think I need to map my joystick instead.

– Storming the beach in a landing craft as the water splashes in my face and the howitzer shells explode all around us. This was great and I can’t wait to play Normandy or other island scenarios.

– Watching two soldiers move their feet ala the Flinstones as they drove by in a jeep. OK, so this is an obvious flaw, but it was freaking hilarious. I tried to get a screenshot, but I was not quick enough and it only happened one time.

Some of the things we didn’t like

– Having such a hard time flying the plane. This will just take some practice and maybe a different keyboard/mouse/joystick configuration. It was obvious that planes could be flown very well as several people were very menacing in a plane. One guy even managed to pick me off several times with machine guns from a plane. Another guy was doing barrel rolls in the sky and there were some incredible dogfights during a few games. I’d say this was more our problem than the game developers.

– Jeeps killing Tank Drivers This was actually very annoying. Jeeps going full blast could ram a tank and kill the driver. It would not take out the tank or the machine gunner, but it was just like being run over if you were walking on the road. I hope the developer does something about this before the game is released.

– Morons who waited for a plane to spawn. The game only allows so many planes for each side. This caused a problem with people from both sides waiting around for a plane to spawn.

– The same Morons shooting at their own teammates and planes when they did not get the plane. This was very frustrating. I think the planes are awesome, but it adds a level of frustration when you play on a server where friendly fire is allowed. The only good part to this was when you die, so did they. Of course, they went right back to waiting for a plane.

– A clunky interface for joining games. In fairness, this is not entirely the Game Developers fault. The interface is a direct take off of Gamespy Arcade. It even carries the Gamespy logo. It is easier to use the full Gamespy Arcade rather than the ingame interface.

Overall, our biggest complaint involves things that are out of the Game Developers control (i.e. Morons) or they are items that should be fixed once the actual game is released. This game is very, very fun and in the end, fun is all that matters. Will I buy this game when it comes out? You better believe it. Considering the number of players online for this one demo map has been second to only Half Life’s online statistics, I believe I will not be the only one purchasing this game the day it hits the shelf. Should you try Battlefield 1942? Hell Yea! Especially if you are a fan of FPS, WWII or both.


So what are you waiting for? Grab the demo HERE!