Battlefield 2142 demo

By Tom Bramwell Published 9 October, 2006

Conquest and Titan modes.

Electronic Arts and Digital Illusions have released a playable demo for Battlefield 2142, which is due out on PC on 20th October.

The demo (a hefty 1106MB) features the Sidi Power Plant map playable with the European Union and Pan Asian Coalition armies.

As well as being playable in up-to-64-player Conquest mode, which will be instantly familiar to Battlefield fans, the map's also available to try in new Titan mode.

Titan, which supports up to 48 players, sees both teams trying to destroy each other's MK-1 Titan while protecting their own.

And if you're not interested in actually playing it, but have some processor cycles to spare on a hefty Internet connection, you might fancy hosting the dedicated server.

Look out for our BF2142 review, like the game itself, in the near future.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (23) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Kafeen #1 6 years ago

    First! =)

    I played this a couple of times over the weekend. The game plays well, but its a shame there's no LAN support at the moment, only internet play available in the demo. =(

  • jack_klugman #2 6 years ago

    Seconded!

  • asphaltcowboy #3 6 years ago

    Yeah, doesnt help that I have "ethically challenged" internet at the moment - makes play impossible! Will just have to wait :(

  • skillian #4 6 years ago

    I'm not sure why, but the demo doesn't really grab me. Played a couple of games but couldn't be bothered to keep going. Destroying the Titan and sprinting for the exit in Titan mode was fun though, and a bit different from the normal BF series.

    Oh, and I don't really think you can describe a 1GB PC demo as "hefty" anymore - I can't remember the last one I got that was much smaller than that.

  • Kelduum #5 6 years ago

    Skillian: DEFCON, at 58MB? ;)

    I played it a bit over the weekend too, and came away with the impression that its like Battlefield 2, with lots more bugs.

    Its just not... fun. And its remarkably like some random BF2 mod, in the future. I dunno... right now, I cant be bothered with it any more - maybe the final game will be more interesting with the unlock stuff?

    Oh, and, *still* no proper widescreen support?!?

  • Darren #6 6 years ago

    BF2142 is OK I suppose although it feels more like a BF2 mod than a true sequel and still has appallingly long loading times with the initial one lasting nearly five minutes, even on my dual-core, SATA II HDD, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB graphics card equipped PC, which is clearly rubbish. I won't be buying this for sure.

  • coojam #7 6 years ago

    :: Insert generic Battlefield 2 was rubbish and full of bugs and this is only going to be a crappy mod game comment here ::
    Edited by coojam at 09/10/06 @ 11:12

  • Tricky #8 6 years ago

    Bah, killjoys, the lot of you. I played this for nearly six hours yesterday - it's the first PC game to make me do that in months. I've only experienced one bug (crash to desktop) in all that time and I've not got the best PC out there (P4 3.0GHz, 1GB RAM and 128MB 9800 Pro). Yes, the "mod for BF2" argument may have some ring of truth to it, but when it's this much fun, who cares?

  • bauhaus #9 6 years ago

    Has anybody played Planetside??!

    Trruly fantastic online game, upto 500 bod shooting it out in massive online battles, all the big stomping robots, fighters, tanks you could handle!

    I loved that game, this I`m afraid appears to be a pale shadow of Planetside

    Quake Wars is coming anyway, so its all moot really

  • coojam #10 6 years ago

    Well, not if Quake Wars turns out to be crap. Battlefield is reliably (no pun intendy) enjoyable.

  • PearOfAnguish #11 6 years ago

    Planetside is okay, but it's incredibly frustrating to play and there's barely anyone on the servers now.

    There's a new HL2 mod which has a similar blow-up-ships mechanic, except you get to fly little fighters as well: [link url=http://www.eternal-silence.net/
    ]http://www.eternal-silence.net/
    [/link]

    It's a rough work in progress at the moment but is good fun nonetheless.

  • twelveways #12 6 years ago

    I liked it, it looks good and ran very well but its not as good as bf2.
    Does anyone else forget which way the walkers legs are pointing? the tilt and wobble effect doesnt help much either...

  • Errol #13 6 years ago

    Excellent demo and excellent game !

  • dudefella #14 6 years ago

    It's okay, but does absolutely nothing new. The fact that it's basically a BF2 mod/add-on you're paying full price for is appaling. I'd rather play my FREE Bf2 Point of Existence mod, thanksverymuch.

    Don't get me wrong, nice game, but 50 euros for BF2 with a new coat of paint? no thanks.

  • yaroze #15 6 years ago

    Could anyone point me in the direction of a non-capped download for this demo? Gamespot's free download service is capped at 25kb/s it would seem, and that made my soul sick up a little.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #16 6 years ago

    Well I managed to play it for all of a minute this lunchtime before it crashed (after waiting a quarter of an hour for that shader optimisation bollocks).

    Still, I did better than my two colleagues who couldn't get it to so much as run the intro video. I never had this much trouble with even the BF2 demo. It really does look like the Battlefield games are getting worse and worse for stability as the franchise progresses.

    Maybe I should switch to the console ones...

  • gallow #17 6 years ago

    Make sure your Directx installation is upto date. I thought mine was but there are some monthly updates from MS that did not get installed via the MS WIndows Update. The demo does not come with a DirectX installer because of file size limitations.

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx...
    Edited by gallow at 09/10/06 @ 18:05

  • wiintendo #18 6 years ago

    @yaroze

    I always give filefront.com first try for all new demos. It's usually very reliable and has pretty fast download speeds.

  • skillian #19 6 years ago

    @yaroze:

    Try a torrent. if you've got the capability. That's usually the first place I turn to on stupidly popular demo releases.

  • PearOfAnguish #20 6 years ago

    It's been uploaded to usenet, you can get 600k+ download speeds on an 8MB connection

  • hjarg666 #21 6 years ago

    http://www.gamershell.com has usually quite fine download rates as well.

  • spiny #22 6 years ago

    I'ts OK but suffers from the usual BF shortcomings:

    -- No Widescreen support
    -- Glacial menus (Please wait, I'll load the menu in a mo, honest!)
    -- Logging into EA game service (just let me play OK?)

    Didn't crash for me though, that's a start I suppose. I may buy it *if* they've managed a solution to being spawn camped by a heilo equivalent. Otherwise I'll save my earth pounds for ET:QW

    And in the full game there will be ads (oh joy).

  • Nillsens #23 6 years ago

    What a rush this demo can be!

    Nothing quite like launching yourself in a drop-pod from the Titan to head straight into battle. I've noticed that aiming yourself for infantry and air-vehicles will destroy whatever you land on, turning the drop-pods into guided artillery :p

    I also can't wait to start a collection of dog tags!
    Edited by Nillsens at 09/10/06 @ 22:41

  • ave #24 6 years ago

    Cant believe it still has the shitty slow "connecting to logon servers" and menu's with more graphics than most games.