"Battlefield 1943"

This is so good it should be made illegal!

Apologies to people I sent invites out to / sent invites to me, it was really hard to get a game going or to get into a game but once you do - you're loathe to move!

Brilliant stuff though, once I'd stopped wrestling with the controls this really felt like classic battlefield but improved immensely. New Wake Island has some ace improvements to alleviate some of the pinch points and problems with the old map.

I think I'll end up losing myself to this game for quite some time to come. See you on the battlefield later on :)

GuiltySpark wrote:
Hmm, this won't let me download the demo, or even access it on the marketplace at all.

Does anyone mind checking this for me? As in, just click on it in Marketplace and see if it loads to the screen where you can download the game/demo, thanks.

GuiltySpark wrote:

GuiltySpark wrote:
Hmm, this won't let me download the demo, or even access it on the marketplace at all.

Does anyone mind checking this for me? As in, just click on it in Marketplace and see if it loads to the screen where you can download the game/demo, thanks.

Here you go - http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/games/media/66acd000-77...

Erm, they've bumped the price up to 90000 points. Bargain!

Weird that I still can't get games this morning, I mean come on who else is playing at half nine in the morning? There should be plenty of space on the servers.

Maybe they've shut them down for maintenance at a time when they figured very few people would be on.

Sorry to anyone on my team last night, I can't shoot for shit with a 360 pad.

/practices.

I had a few games at about quarter to seven this morning, worked fine then.

a comment from one tester was that they had to take down servers last night at one point and only 5000 could play at any one time!
Not official

Ah found one now, the servers are still up!

I think I need to get a few more of you on my friends list. At one point I was in a party of 10 of us, but could only actually hear LB.

Whilst I quite enjoyed his gin-powered commentary of the game, the one way direction of any conversation was a little confusing :)

Edited by StarchildHypocrethes at 09:46:16 09-07-2009

rutter wrote:
So, in terms of playing with friends you can either; start a lobby and invite everyone, hoping that you can fill all 24 slots required to start the game, or, do a squad match, invite 3 friends and the 4 of you go into a random match as a team?

Did anyone manage to sucessfully just join a game one of their friends were in?

I did once. Joined through Uglygamer, there were some familiar EG faces there.

I can confirm that you did shoot me in the face.

Tried to join in last night. I got a little confused trying to join StarchildHypocrethes party/games and then got stuck waiting for a game of my own to come free. Eventually go online with very little lag (although not til 10ish last night) looks good although the maps are going to get dull quickly - how many get relaesed when we hi tthe kill total?

/promises to keep the chatternig drivel to a minimum tonight

Nah, I quite enjoyed the drivel. It was atmospheric, like having a druken squad mate stood just beside me :)

There should be more people talking. Every game i got in was almost silent.

Venatio wrote:
Erm, they've bumped the price up to 90000 points. Bargain!

I saw this earlier this morning. I guess they really don't want anymore people buying it at the moment!

LFMartins wrote:
There should be more people talking. Every game i got in was almost silent.

This was the same for me too :(

odd - i have just purchased this for 1200 :S

can't wait to have a game - unfortunately that may not be for a few days :(

I connected after about seven or eight attempts, then I played for around 45 seconds, then it disconnected. YAY!

Join my game for the ultimate in ear-splitting racket! Sample below.

Woo I'm in finally right CHARGE let's go how do I get the boat off the big boat thing the aircraft carrier hang on are there any planes left no OK left trigger hello gunner man are you coming with me RRRAAARRRR let's park in that boat house shallwe whoops fucked that up a bit never mind right kill kill kill DIE YOU BASTARD eat katana oh dead come on come on come on come on right let's get him where I am oh dead come on COME ON whoo a jeep I'm comgin guys wait where are you is that plane ours it's awfully close aargh tank oh dead bugger

I got to play 2 matches before it randomly kicked me twice and then I couldn't get any more matches :(

It's not even connecting to EA Online now. :/

HoriZon wrote:
Top game, just played for a couple of hours with 3 other EG members. For £10 cant fault it.

Though my hand does hurt a bit from useing the left trigger to run alot.

Well my experience of the admittedly patchy first night of BF1943 was pretty good, all told.

Firstly: Got in a party with asphalt, and Ignatius Cheese, and we all just chatted while we individually did the tutorials, found out how to change spawn points, flip the plane controls to the left stick and so on.

Then I got a couple of invites which didn't work, and fairly shortly managed to join a game with Larry, Keebab, and Harry-summet, and did manage to drop invites to Mr Cheese and asphalt, who seemingly got brought into a random squad or team depending on where there were spaces. Feeling that we were probably lucky to be in a game at all, we all stuck at it despite being on different squads, or in asphalts' case, fighting for the enemy.

However, it was bloody good fun. In the same way that I have been discovering with BF:Bad Company, teamwork is utterly key if you want to hope to win any of the matches. Even one dedicated squad of four, acting in unison, can have a huge impact in the bases that you have captured. There is still a home here for snipers, certainly, but once they are revealed, a little red arrow points them out to team-mates to sort out (or in some cases to also be sniped, but hey-ho).

There is quite a lot of real estate covered in the three islands, which certainly take a good while to traipse over on foot on any of the three classes - rifleman (anti infantry fit), soldier (anti-vehicle and repair fit) or scout (sniper or dynamite-laying fit). Each class has strengths and weaknesses, and you can pick up the supplies of downed friends or enemies if you fancy changing class mid game.

Vehicles are a boon, given the distances to cover, and there are four classes here, too - boats, cars, tanks and planes. The cars fit three people I think - a driver, gunner and passenger, and tanks fit two... the driver controlling the main and coax guns, and the passenger a cupola-mounted MG. I didn't get too much plane time, but did manage a kill with one when dramatically crashing head-on into another plane. There are also fixed emplacements dotted around the map, featuring machineguns and anti-air guns. I didn't notice any anti-vehicle emplacements. If your team hold the airfield, a bombing run becomes available which allows you to steer three incoming planes towards your enemies and bomb them to pieces, although this raid can be defeated with AA Guns.

Unlike Bad Company, the islands give a chance to funnel the foot and land vehicle traffic, so ordinarily, to get to capture points you have to pass or engage the enemy. This inconvenience can be avoided if you take a boat or a plane, so it is always worth keeping an eye out for enemies arriving behind your lines in this manner.

Had some cracking warmup games with Larry et al, although it was all a bit disjointed for me as I settled into the spawn mechanics and invariably ran off in the wrong direction, usually then getting stabbed, sniped or shot by Captain Slog.

Later though, I managed to join HoriZon's game, and invite paperghost, Mr Cheese and asphalt in, and we formed a squad through the ingame start menu, when paper dropped out the four of us were finally in a game, on the same team, in the same squad, and the teamwork element really started to kick in. Given that you can spawn either on a spawn point that your team has captured, or straight into your squad, the importance of staying alive when your squadmates have been downed is pretty high, so that after the pleasingly short respawn time they can drop back in on you.

In this squad, we went on to do great and heroic things, capturing and defending points, offering covering fire to each other and sometimes even getting aerial support. Even having extra sets of eyes to look in different directions is great if, like me, your sense of spatial awareness goes to rat-droppings and you become task-focused once you hear the sound of shooting in the distance.

There is something eminently satisfying about using the 8-shot rifle to kill a couple of people in a medium range engagement, or sniping somebody through a window from half a mile away, or leaping out behind a tank with a bazooka and ending their armoured reign of terror. This sense of satisfaction is magnified when in support of your squadmates, who then move in to capture a point or break a nest of enemies to pieces.

Plus there's just something amusing about a jeep and a tank rolling down the road towards an enemy outpost, spraying machinegun fire, crashing through trees and fences, firing up at incoming planes and trying to avoid being bombed or shelled by a tank.

At times you almost have to remind yourself it is a Live Arcade game.

That's not to say it isn't without issues, but most of these aren't related to the game itself, they are to do with the massive demands on the network, it would seem, although the problems with private games, or being able to join a game as a squad, are pretty jarring when you hit upon them. There was one guy we got to play against who was almost invincible owing to lag (leading to an annoyingly high killcount for him!) but other than this, the lag issues in our games were fairly muted.

My favourite moment: covering a flag at medium-long range as a rifleman, while a team mate parked a tank in it to capture it. Every time the enemy rushed in to save it, I ducked out from cover in my concrete bunker and picked a couple off, the defensive team was fighting a losing battle and eventually after I'd racked up six or seven kills, more infantry support arrived at the tank and our team won the flag.

Other than the 360 in-game achievements, there is a rather detailed and excellent set of 'stamps' to collect for doing various things like killing lots of people, killing people in varied ways, capturing or defending flags, being on the best squad and other kinds of in-game successes. Plus there are stats for friends or global leaderboards to salivate over if that is your kind of thing.

Perhaps flawed in its implementation, when it is up and running, the product is very polished in its execution. Much Fun.

I just love how the maps look by the end of the round. Almost every building is destroyed.

LFMartins wrote:
I just love how the maps look by the end of the round. Almost every building is destroyed.

Is it just me or has the frostbite engine been improved a little? Damage seems to properly happen where you've directed fire. Beats the hell out of me how they manage to keep this up and running so smoothly despite the place being littered in so much debris and stuff by the end of each game.

Thoroughly impressed.

EA fail. I couldn't get in at all last night.

reading agparrots game experinces has made me want to skive off work and go home to play it!!! - pity they'd notice me gone :(

BTW, how do you form squads? Is it done through the XBL party system or is it within the game itself? If no friends are online can you form a squad with willing randoms?

really enjoyed the games I played last night once I finally got in. Like the way they've arcadeified the experience and the maps are great (never got chance to play 1942 so they are all new to me). Shame the planes don't allow a passenger as this would be great for dropping paratroopers on flags without having to sacrifice a plane.

Hopefully the net/server issues will be resolved shortly and we can get some EG squads going or maybe even some private games.