Battlefield 1942 Comments by Martin Taylor

Good review and I completely agree with you.

The bots are awful. They are worst on the Omaha Beach level where the flag is nestled in a corner of a maze of tunnels the bots simply won't stumble on it.

Online is a better experience, but you can be pulled apart by a team's devious strategy. And the queuing for planes is ridiculous. How much fun can you have waiting around, when you could be dodging bullets and driving tanks?

Well exactly. As I said in the review, why don't they just start their own server offline and fly about to their heart's content? Some people are beyond explanation.

Oh, you did fail to mention that the usless and badly planned communications system is ignored by bots and online players alike.

You're right, I did. And I had it on my notes as well. Grr.

My PC game of the year with out a doubt, a superb game. The bots really are shocking but anyone buying this game to play off line should really go elsewhere.

I'm playing it on an XP1800 with a GF3 Ti-500, 512Mb on high detail at 1024x768x32 without any speed problems, how much RAM has your test PC got?

Play on a good team playing server (I've found the Barrysworld ones to be good) and the teamwork and radio system works extremely well.

One thing Mouse, if someone is waiting on the airfield for a B52 to spawn they'll have an extremely long wait, it didn't enter service until the fifties. A B17 turning up on some of the BF1942 maps is a little more likely... ;-)

Oh... PAH! Damn fact-Nazi's ;) I'll get it changed.

The PC I was playing has got 512mb RAM as well. I read somewhere that speed problems could be caused by the sound card though, so I'm currently trying out different configs for that.

that still would`nt stop a great many from waiting...I just like playin the (i think its)gazala map with the hidden b17 in the top left hand corner of the map on the disused air base...thats a laugh...but all in all this game keeps me amused for hours...only real irritating thing for me is when you trying to take over a enemies flag...your standing there...and as its still under their flag you might get someone spawn there ...you shoot them...take over the flag and then get moaned at for spawn shooting...bloody sad cases.....doesnt stop me though...and you would be surprised how many people ask me if i`m from the uk...surprising as my name on there is Tyronne(uk)..makes me wonder what else the uk bit would mean for them!

Ignore the score.

I read somewhere that speed problems could be caused by the sound card though
Ahh good point, one of friends was using an SBLive and commenting that he had to tinker a bit with the sound settings or the framerate went South.

On my Nforce motherboard the sounds fine and the game plays nice and quick. I don't get any 3D sound though which is rather disappointing, perhaps this will be patched.

Just love playing an engineer who drives a tank, engage the enemy, if you get hit badly retreat to a safe place and fix the thing yourself! I've kept a Sherman alive for ages on some maps! :-)

...your standing there...and as its still under their flag you might get someone spawn there
Once a flag becomes disputed i.e. it turns white, no-one can spawn there. The only ones that can't be captured are the ones with the slash through them and they're not on every map.

Well whatever sound settings he's using, let me know, because I'm using an SBLive! as well.

I think he mentioned something about switching the hardware sound setting to off as it appears to have been actually off when it was turned on and on when it was turned off...

Of course I could be writing rubbish, I had been drinking! I'm seeing him this evening I'll ask him what he did.

Considering he actually has the same Nforce m/b as me I think if he has anymore problems he'll start using the onboard sound again, the newest Nforce drivers work fine and the new audio control panel is excellent! :-)

Yeah, I did all that hardware acceleration gubbins, even turned it off in dxdiag, and seems to have helped a little. The problem isn't so much in that my FPS sinks, but the graphics become really laggy sometimes, like having a shocking ping even though I've got a 45 or if I'm playing offline.

I have to disagree with what you said about playing online on a 56k connection. While it is humanly impossible to play on it after 8pm, I can play fine with pings of around 200 for most of the day. Can't wait till I can get broadband though, because if I want to actually kill someone they have to be standing still otherwise I'm shooting at where they were a few seconds ago.

And yes, single-player is terrible. You can hop out behind an AI tank and they'll just turn round and blow your head off with their all-seeing vision.

...your standing there...and as its still under their flag you might get someone spawn there
Once a flag becomes disputed i.e. it turns white, no-one can spawn there. The only ones that can't be captured are the ones with the slash through them and they're not on every map.

...I know but I have had it where you get to someone`s flag..its still there colour...someone spawns...it then changes and I get moaned at for spawn killing...which is unavoidable in this game....except for those flags with which are unattainable.

Athlon XP 1.5GHz, GeForce 4 Ti4200-powered test system had a bit of a hard time with the game on only medium detail settings.


Really? My P3 866 512 PC133 RAM 1st Generation Radeon 64DDR handles it perfectly. I am laying at 800x600x32, with medium details, but I've upped some of the other features and the only slow down I've had was on a 40 player game of Stalingrad (so I just switche doff some of the extra graphic details).

My biggest gripe regarding the AI is not so much that it is stupid. Since this is a multiplayer game, that I handle, but what I am disappointed about is that they left out destructible buildings because the AI couldn't figure its way around it (apparently performance wise it was still running very well). If it is so stupid, why even bother catering for it?

Single player sucks, multiplayer is a lot of fun, but they do need to fix a few game balance problems and bugs (particularly the netcode).

I get moaned at for spawn killing...which is unavoidable in this game....except for those flags with which are unattainable.

That doesn't bother me, it is part of the game. What does are the wankers who refuse to take the flag but instead stand just out of reach of the area mowing down everyone who spawns. Kind of low.

Ohh and is there any chance of a Eurogamer server for this?

Ah I see what you mean Tyronne, well as FWB says that's part of the game. People really should put more effort into keeping spawn points secure, then it wouldn't happen anyway! :-)

I heard the server code for this is crap (uses 100% CPU and stuff) so we won't run one. Sorry!

Yeah, you really do need to dedicate a machine to the game for a server unfortunately.

if someone is waiting on the airfield for a B52 to spawn they'll have an extremely long wait, it didn't enter service until the fifties

Lol. Good one !

Ah, gimme a break.

is waiting on the airfield for a B52 to spawn

Mouse is obviously referring players waiting for the pop beat combo - so they can watch the group notorious for their strategic prowess and unbeatable flight control; or possibly just to be taken off to the love shack.

I would rate BF1942 as the most interesting multiplayer game ever -- for the first time there is emergent gameplay, caused by the infinite number of possibilities the battle can go. So many vehicles, so many tricks, so many tactics...

I was surprised it was that good. But this truly is my favourite pc game of the autumn.

this game is too good. i've had it just over a week now and i can't stop playing it

There is a serious problem with '42 though - the spec required of a server is ridiculous. While many games are happy running on a ghz box with 2 or 3 iterations running, 1942 is ridiculously demanding and the poor online experience of most people is due to the sheer inability of most server configs to put out enough performance. You'll get one single server out of a ghz box if you're looking for decent performance and that is of course not acceptable.

I think this is a fab game, particulary in concept, but in the sound and network coding a really rather poorly implemented one. Concept 9. Execution 6 - score 7.5 perhaps?

I bought this game as soon as it came out and haven't regretted it. It's the most fun I've had online yet.

That said, although the demo ran fine on my machine the full game performed horribly. I doubled my memory to 512MB and now it runs fine.

Windows XP seems to hog to much memory for it to work with 256MB (high detail). I'm running it on a Athlon XP 1800, Geforce2 thingy and a SB audigy - no problems.

The loading times are quite nasty though. The server browser is too limited - undocumented filters (well not in the manual anyway), no easy way to filter passworded(?) servers.

Most people will recognize this: you select a server with one free spot left, the game starts loading for 30 seconds before trying to connect, then discovers the server is now full and returns to the server browser. Why doesn't it just keep trying to connect until a spot becomes available or the user decides to find another server?

Still, a great game and I haven't met anyone who didn't like it.

Try All Seeing Eye which is a better games browser than Gamespy could dream of.

Have you really had that much of a bad time with the server/sound code that you'd mark it down that significantly, Am? Personally, I didn't.

Basically this is not a war game - it's a huge circus, but what a fun circus too!

For those with performance problems, try disabling HW accel. sound. This has probably been said a thousand times, but let's hope this helps someone.

Basically this is not a war game - it's a huge circus, but what a fun circus too.

I disagree. I think this game represents the closest that any of us will get to understanding the sheer terror of World War II. I will give a few examples from my time playing BF1942 (on random servers) :

1.)OMAHA Beach level : I start on 'allies' side and get into a landing craft with about 4 other people. We set out for the beach. Planes fly overhead, and the destroyer shells the Germans beach defenses. As we get nearer the beach, the bunker machine guns start firing at our boat. I crouch down, anxious to avoid getting my head blown off. The driver lowers the landing ramp as we arrive on the sands of Omaha Beach. Heavy machine gun fire strafes the entrance to the landing craft as me and my fellow troopers attempt to take the flag on the beach: 3 of my allies die in this gun-fire (almost the moment they attempt to exit the boat). I crouch behind a beached boat and wait ... a tank rolls up, spots me, and them blows me away (my body flying 100ft into the air).

2.)Berlin - A desparate street battle takes place. with the allies having the upper hand. I hide in a building overlooking a flag and take pot shots at allied troopers. A few try to take my position by entering the building - I chuck a grenade down the stairs and kill them. I turn back to the window (that I was shooting out of) only to see a tank lining me up. It fires a shell at me through the window. I die.

3.)Desert level (can't remember which) - I race for an enemy flag. I hear the noise of an approaching plane. Its starts to strafe the ground around me with its cannons. I dive into a nearby bunker and wait. The plane comes back for another pass, and I take pot shots at it with my Machine gun. A freindly fighter attacks the enemy plane, and they dogfight right over my position. The enemy plane is shot down, and the pilot ejects - I run over to him, and knife him before he has a chance to recover from his brief parachute flight. The freindly fighter aircraft, does a celebratory barrel-roll.

I could go on and on. This game is almost endlessly fascinating, and all too real. It depicts the futility of war (with horrendous casualites, and seemingly random deaths from unseen assasins) all too well ...

Not that anyone is probably that interested but I've solved my 3D sound issue, it appears my Nforce board forgot it has 4 speakers and kept reverting to 2! I've now got the lovelyness of full speed gaming and fantastic 3D sound too, excellent!

On the realism front, it's not very realistic but realism in games can sometimes hurt gameplaying not add to it, I think BF1942 has the right balance.

I will have to ask my Grandad how long spawn times were in North Africa for him and see if has any comments.... ;-)

I disagree. I think this game represents the closest that any of us will get to understanding the sheer terror of World War II. I will give a few examples from my time playing BF1942 (on random servers) :

I would like to see some a realism mod (I'm that weird guy who likes to die from 3-4 shots :) ), but I do agree. I haven't had the experience you have on Omaha yet, but that's because I a) haven't played it with enough players and b) hardly any of the servers run it (a shame because I really like the map). I have experienced something close to what I can only deem my subjective-concept-of-war-formed-through-the-film-industry on Stalingrad, the Bulge and Berlin. The city maps are really close and I played one game on Berlin where we, as the Russians, just couldn't break out. The Germans had us really closed down (until I decided at the start of one game to just grab a tank and drive as fast as I could through their lines... it worked, but quite suicidal). The Bulge is a great map where you are constantly switching between offense and defense. I also manged to experience one of the scenes from Saving Private Ryan when the tank fires into the church spire (I was in the tank). It was amusing to see how the shell hit and these two bodies went flying out.

As far as I'm concerned the maps like Stalingrad and Berlin are far more fun than the maps out in the open, perhaps because it's easier for me to kill someone in close confines.

I had one great game on Berlin where I got into the 2nd storey of a house just down the main road from the Russian tank spawn, and then proceeded to get 7 kills within a minute, including a tank and 3 people who tried to come up the stairs. And then I have terrible games when I get 0 kills 8 deaths and so on. Still, good fun.

Yep, I think we can all agree it is good. Now if only they'd sort out that netcode. It seems to be getting worse everytime I log on.

Rawr, I nearly bought this yesterday (and in one of the battlefields, too, visiting my brother in Berlin ;), but I didn't have enough money with me. And just now the Asheron's Call beta went open, so I'm gonna be busy. (w0000t) :)

But I guess all is well, sounds like the game will still be played in a month or two, and by then the netcode and other buggy parts will hopefully be fixed. I liked the demo a lot, although I did feel like the game wasn't polished enough, somehow - it all was a little bit rough. Maybe the UT demo spoiled me.

Asheron's Call beta went open

I thought that one was released 4 million years ago?

"I thought that one was released 4 million years ago?"

Eh?!?

Eh?!?

I think Khab is pointing out that Asheron's Call has been out for ages, whereas the open beta for Asheron's Call 2 has just opened...

And vewy pwetty it is too. Good graphics, a proper skill-based character development system and the return of the allegiance system from the original. Just two problems with it at the moment -

1) For some reason I can't get the chat window to open or see the radar. I can talk but I can't "hear" anything - if I hit enter and type in /laugh my character does the appropriate emote, but I can't see any of the text I'm typing, and if anyone else is saying anything I can't hear it. Anyone else getting that?

2) They had to reset the game last time they patched it, and to compensate they made it so that everyone gets bumped straight up to 20th level as soon as they complete the tutorial quest. Unfortunately this means that none of the monsters near the starting area offer much of a challenge and provide you with virtually no experience. :-/

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It's getting late... I mean early. How do you edit posts? Sorry, I screwed up.

I forgive you.

"I think this game represents the closest that any of us will get to understanding the sheer terror of World War II."

Indeed - all too often our history books fail to mention the queues for airplanes at the airbases, the team-killing losers, the idiots who drove your carrier off the map and the muppets who parked tanks on the runways during World War 2. Were it not for these people, we'd have won the war in just under twenty seven seconds flat. Oh well... that's what you get for sending 14 year olds into the field of battle, armed only with l33tsp34k insults to hurl at their commander and "OMG STFU NATSI!!!!" to shout at anyone who suggests that perhaps firing the AA guns at the /other/ sides planes might be an idea...

"the team-killing losers"

Well, it depends if you're fighting alongside Americans or not. ;)

I LOVE the plane campers. Choose scout class, sit on a hill for a while and rack up your kill count! Never in a game have I been treated to so many stationary targets. Seriously though, this game is gonna get me into real trouble. just. one. more. go. 'Yes dear, be with you in a moment' The dogfighting is fantastic, chasing down a stuka on a bombing run with a rear gunner spitting at you, knowing he's trying to pummel your guys on the ground is just second to none. BUY IT. look out for me, I'm GizmoPower..

This is truly a game which gamers will make or break.

And Errol, yes, it also manages to be quite warlike. I felt both pride and sadness, when a fellow Soviet soldier died while taking out a Tiger which had us pinned down. That was drama.

And back to the circus: but no fear! Vasili was back in a action in no time, cruising in his jeep towards the enemy lines.

And no, that does not make this a bad game. I think that by having IL-2, Combat Mission 2 and BF1942 installed on my computer I have now covered all aspects of WW2 that this medium is able to.

Reading your comments is making my pain worse. I bought BF1942 from GAME on Friday. Because I wanted to finished Mafia first, I didn't bother installing it till Sunday. I popped the disk in, autoplay fired up, clicked OK, clicked next, entered serial, , tried again... . I tried x amount of different combinations for 2 HOURS!!! Pissed...
I'll try to bring it back to GAME today, but Im scared that they might not change it for another one. I mean it is a bit suspicious. "Please give me another precious serial number for BF1942" ???
Please help!!!

Anyone who needs help etc with BF1942, could try this site -

www.bfnation.net

- The forums in particular are very useful.

Cheers

Indeed - all too often our history books fail to mention the queues for airplanes at the airbases, the team-killing losers, the idiots who drove your carrier off the map and the muppets who parked tanks on the runways during World War 2. Were it not for these people, we'd have won the war in just under twenty seven seconds flat.

lol.

I felt both pride and sadness, when a fellow Soviet soldier died while taking out a Tiger which had us pinned down. That was drama.

If you actually play with with decent guys it can feel like that alot. Particularly if you have an airforce that answers your calls. A few times (but only a few times) I've been pinned down, asked for air support and got it. It really is cool to see your team mates in the sky come charging out of the clouds and make mince meat of the enemy armour.