Battlefield 1943 Comments by Dan Whitehead

"The review read's sounds like a 6 to me. No reverse gear on the vehicles, 1 game mode, 3 classes, flimsy plane controls, lag and to top up a terrible launch day with players unable to download or connect.

What a joke."

1. There is reverse gear on land vehicles as has been stated many times in this thread.

2. The one game mode is a classic and proven one. It was enough for BF2, it's enough for 1943.

3. The three classes work very well together. There really wasn't a need for any more.

4. Rubbish plane controls? Far from it, just people who don't understand how to go into settings and change the control scheme. In fact, the planes are far and away the best part of 1943. So fun to fly or watch, and their sound is incredible! Beefy roars as they strafe your position, ominous whines as they set themselves up for a divebomb, etc. Just perfect.

5. Lag is dependent on individual connections. I have to say that I haven't really experienced any lag beyond what I would usually expect in any MP FPS.

6. Clearly they underestimated demand, but connecting has become much easier over the course of the last day or so.

And to top it all off, it is bloody fun.

This seems to me like it was partly built as a less intimidating way for new players to discover how to get into multiplayer, as the idea of it can be quite daunting.

So the reviews repeated mention of 'noobs' is not helpful in the slightest, and is not something I would expect from EG.

Everyone has to start somewhere

Hello EG! Gonna get negative karma for my 1st post but how can a reviewer miss the reverse gear when the controls pop up when you enter a vehicle? Anyway lo to all, and well done for sorting the trolling and insults, the site is much better now. :) psn is Bazfrag. Add me!!

"Haha. Comment getting voted down for telling the truth FLT.

@Dizzy "Versions are equal.

Pulling stuff out of your ass gets negative karma."

All that link shows is a similar level of aliasing and a slight difference in gamma. nickthegun was pointing out that the 360 version tears and the PS3 one doesn't. Playing both versions for few hours last night bears this out. I was only able to play on the 360 version by joining through a friends profile, since the quick play function didn't work.

(Both my consoles are set to 720p and are run through a receiver into the same HDMI port on my TV).

The original was a 10/10 and so is this, £10, what a no-brainer

As I say, it's good when its works, but by this stage it's still not completely sorted - ranks disappearing or remaining unchanged or whatever.

''to the subtle auto-aiming that makes most console shooters playable online will be flummoxed by the unforgiving accuracy demanded here''

Ooohhh.. why is this a bad thing?

4 Days on and still the servers are complete shite - WTF EA? Putting on a bit of jerky (can't believe the engine can't manage to scroll a bit of text across the screen smoothly - playing on 360 1360x768 VGA) text across the bottom of the screen can hardly make up for this pile of shit connectivity.

LAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggggggg is terrible - and guess what? There's fuck all way of checking the speed/latency of your connection - not even the primitive (but usable) 4 bar connector indicator in the COD games.

So here is the DIY test - load up the game - go to the tutorial - get in the plane and fly about releasing bombs on the external view.

Now you will notice in third person you can see them drop from your plane - every time.

NOT ONCE in ANY game have I ever seen the bombs I have launched in this game drop from under wing. This is because the lag is so bad that the bombs are seemingly dropped from out of nowhere making bombing (which I can do with well over 90% accuracy in the tutorial) nigh on impossible in game. Not to mention trying to shoot a plane down in a dog fight where the plane is "teleporting" all over the place due to latency - planes even lag on the map screen lol.

Jeeps that run you over have gone through you and out the other side (you perhaps thinking close one) only to die about half a second latter - without your character being moved at all.

The sound is so out of sync and lagging that half the time in the plane you can not even hear a single bullet noise or anti-aircraft fire - and end up simply exploding in a ball of fire thinking WTF.

Randomly your own gun firing noise completely goes silent for no apparent reason.

I can remember stating how the network code prioritisation in COD:WAW didn't feel as sharp as as COD4 - it still doesn't (ping is king in COD4 with COD:WAW seemingly has some sort of compensation system implemented).

BUT WAW compared to BF 1943 is like a thing of beauty.

In the COD games skill will win many more times than not - in this game it feels very much like a game of chance in most of the 1-1 gun fights - there's a real "fuzziness" to the feel of it - no doubt from the lag.

I get a 26 millisecond reported ( ping bbc.co.uk and ping Jolt.co.uk) - so not the fastest ever - but when I play Battelfield Heroes on the PC - the difference is night and day. BFH feels almost like local play where as BF1943 feels like playing it in the days of dial up. How can the same connection running on the same engine - produce such wildly differing results?

Sure the PC is munching through BFH at about 200 frames per second - and the 360 is just about managing 30fps in BFH - but the difference is far too stark for that to be anything other than a mild contributor to the problem.

Currently the online latency sucks a lot of the fun out of this game to the point of frustration after a while (once you get in that it is). I have racked up about 12 hours play on it - and only been on one server where lag was reasonable - which suddenly propelled me to to the top of the leader board in no time.

I like everything about the game - except for it's online performance.

Which for an online only game is something of a problem - with the network code running as efficiently as COD4 - I'd preffer to play this game (so many more options) - as it is - I spend half my time playing through gritted teeth - and uttering blasphemous comments roughly every 10-20 seconds.

The novelty of it is wearing away - core gameplay seems great - the latency is draining it's life force.

Starting to feel like a battle of wills with other gamers - who'll get pissed off enough to piss off and improve network performance first - but seems we are all entrenched and addicted at the moment - all praying for an improvement!

@ BadBoy
Is that on the 360 or Ps3? From my experience with the PS3 version, its still working wonderful. Had no problems at all.

360 Chubster

Most comments on here are saying the PS3 is handling it a lot better online.
Is that because there is less people playing on PS3 than xbox online? What other reaons could it be?

Dice have reached server capacity yet again, 4 days after the launch. This is for 360, at least, I don't know about PS3.

How many more people could be playing it on the 360 than on the PS3? It may be part of the problem but not the entire problem.

Glad I got it on PS3, only lost connection once so far.

doesn't work...spent my 1200 points to nothin :-/ I was able to connect twice in last two days. Go to hell, EA

Loving this title immensely. In fact I can't stop playing it. Playing on PS3, I've had one disconnect today and 1 refusal to find a game but hours of without problems. This game is fun, simple as. Loving the colour scheme rather than the dreary environments of KZ2.

Demo disconnected once and had 2 freezes (needed to turn off) during full game (typically when I was doing well) on PS3 so far in about 9hrs total playtime.Absolutely no lag and got into a game every single time without fail so far.Well worth a tenner :D

i mostly agree with the review & with the score.. Although I havn't had a any trouble whatsoever getting a game & havn't experinced any lag either come to think of it.. A bonus for having less active players on the playstation3 maybe?

Oh & to reverse a car or tank its L2 or, at a guess, Left trigger on the xbox ;)

i can't connect to this game. why are EA allowed to deploy inadequate servers structure on an xbox live game?

surely other people must be having same problems?

Pretty much everyone seems to be. Perhaps it will sort itself out soon though - they've just launched UK servers apparently.

think ill put up with the awful ps3 pad in favour of the free online and, well, a game that works!

Bought it yesterday. Very nice game at a decent price but ffs EA, fix your crap. So far encountered in 1 day: Multple hardlocks of the console, Not being able to connect (fixed by linking profile on EA.com), Being kicked out of games when other people join, not being able to join games even though there is enough space, massive lag, etc. etc.

Also, teams of 4? What where you thinking? Good thing that there is a global party system but please fix that! 8 players is a bare minimum, 12 a wanted.

MAX99: Have you tried making an EA account on EA.com and then linking your XBL profile to it? I couldn't connect until I did that.

re. 'Most comments on here are saying the PS3 is handling it a lot better online.
Is that because there is less people playing on PS3 than xbox online? What other reaons could it be?'

Could it be that....PSN is as good/better than Live for online gaming?! No?! Surely not....

Seriously though, it is odd that PSN seems to be performing better.

In case nobody thought about it* maybe the author was given access to a non-so-final build in order to review the game (it happens all the time, they have to review games before games are out). Maybe on that version ground vehicles didn't have reverse. Maybe reverse was disabled due to a late bug discovered 10' before submitting the code... Maybe Dan just missed it and is now hiding in shame :-D

* If someone said that already, sorry, haven't read the whole thread...

Fair enough but they should probably edit it out now, it's criticism of a missing feature that exists. Looks bad on both parties.

Sucks for all the people having issues, I've played for eight hours in the passed few days, only issue I've had is infrequent freezing. Had one laggy game out of nearly thirty-five. Haven't noticed many of the issues BadBoy brought up either. Love the lack of auto-aim, vehicle controls are beautiful, and the skeletal structure only enhances what's already great cheap gaming.

The 360 comunity is outpacing the PS3 guys in kills by almost 2 to 1 at this stage, which most likely explains why PS3 users have been having far fewer connection issues.

360 is over half way to unlocking Coral Sea, last I heard Live had over 23,000,000 kills but I'm not sure what PSN is up to yet, I would guess around 13-14,000,000 kills. PSN was at about 5.5mil when Live hit 10mil a couple of days ago iirc.

Anyway, I have the 360 version and haven't experienced any significant issues since saturday morning, which is great because I'm in Australia and the Aus 360 servers are not online yet afaik (PSN has had Aus servers since launch).

P.S. The game is fucking brilliant.... probably my favorite game of the year so far.

This game is a tad overrated in my opinion, it's just Bad Company with WW2 guns...

@ Acornhead!
Wasn't Battlefield: Bad Company just Battlefield 2 with a single player story mode?

This review is weird. Reads like a 5/10

Great Fun ..... Have had some issues getting into a party but after a few mins have got in and stayed in. No freezing and no lag - Not sure why some people are having such grief. Hope they get it fixed. :)

Im playing 360 vers BTW.

cant really be overrated if its a tenner...

All Dice games are betas when released. No suprise about the lag.

Coral Sea Air Superiority game is a blast! Great dogfighting and adds what feels like a completely new game to the already great land-based maps. A good WW2 shooter covering both land and air warfare.

Was interested in getting this, but frankly difficulty getting games + lag + over-powerful sniping = more frustration than enjoyment. I'll pass for now.

No reverse gear, emmm yeah its LB on the Xbox. I cant believe how many idiots havent figured this out, even you Eurogamer for shame

Also the sniping isnt that bad, in fact most snipers suffer planes attacking them and being rushed by riflemen or tanks. The lag has been sorted. This is a good game so don't let this poorly timed review ruin it.

For the past 4 or 5 days I've not seen any lag or had difficulties in getting a quickmatch game (may take a couple of tries though) - also spent some time using the ad-hoc squads yeasterday and that was seemless.

Loving this!

Been playing BF:1943 for the last couple of days (360 version) and no issues with connecting to games or lag. It's fucking great craic! The maps are perfect, the wepaons balance is fair and it's nice killing people while the sun shines ;)

Sometimes I just want to strip off and run into the sea. The water looks beautiful....

/Reminder to self. I will die and loose limbs for going swimming.

The scenery is fantastic. Especially the water. Maybe they should have a "party" map. No weapons. Just sunbathing, swimming, messing about in boats & planes and some bikini clad (or not ;) women!

Very good game but has crashed my ps3 at least 4 times!

Still no fix on an article saying there is no reverse gear on vehicles. Dan you are the n00b this time!!

Also, whats that shite about getting loads of kills in planes. I can fly the bastards really well. I just can't kill anyone. One of my bombs scratched a tank yesterday and I almost cried with joy!!

Still, love this game. Complete bargain.