BATTLEFIELD 2142

Battlefield 2142 takes place in the year you would expect after the new ice age brought on a bitter war between the Pan Asian Coalition and the European Union. The game manages to introduce some new concepts and a great new mode to the series, although it isn’t quite as fresh of an experience as Battlefield 2 was. The Battlefield series’ critically acclaimed Conquest mode makes an appearance in 2142. As usual, the goal is to reduce the opposing team’s ticket counter to zero by gaining control of the majority of control points scattered across the maps. Titan mode, on the other hand, is completely new to the franchise. The objective is to destroy the enemy titan (a large hovering warship) by gaining control of the majority of missile silos located throughout the map. The game still includes supports for two teams of up to 32 players each for a total of 64 players per game (making for some huge epic battles).This does all sound great – and once you are in the game, 2142 makes for a thrilling experience. However this isn’t as easy as you might imagine. It would be an understatement to claim how long this game takes to load. Even with a high-end gaming PC with 1GB of RAM the game honestly took 3-4 minutes to even get to the intro cinematics! At first, we thought perhaps this was a “first-time” load time but even on repeat plays with no changes to our settings you could still bake a cake in the loading time. Thankfully – once you are at the Menu screen the game is stable and loading times are reasonable for maps. As to be expected Battlefield 2142 lets the player take control of a host of high-tech weaponry including state-of-the-art assault rifles, machine guns, and sniper rifles, as well as hover aircraft and mammoth walkers. Despite this, it’s questionable why DICE wasn’t more creative with some of the guns. Why do many of the rifles still rely on primitive ballistics, and why are half the tanks in the game still dependent on conventional tread technology? Battlefield 2142, on its own merits, is a great game. However, it isn’t as big of an improvement as Battlefield 2 was over Battlefield 1942. The new ranking system and unlocks will definitely keep fans of the series coming back for more but those looking for a completely new experience will have to wait to see what DICE cooks up for Battlefield 3.