by Scott - July 1, 2003 I started playing online games back in early '97. That's when I used AOL and had a 14.4 dialup modem, which was darn good enough back in my day! Anyways, the game was Airwarrior, a WWII flight combat sim. It featured planes such as the Me-109, P-51, and even the Yak-9. You could fly bombers; strafe airfields for the sake of points, and bomb factories. It offered a small number of vehicles to assist in airfield capture, but it wasn't concentrated on as much as the flight sim was. Basically what that meant in laymen's was that it wasn't a tank sim, or an infantry sim, it was mainly flying planes and shooting guns.
Fast forward a few years. After Tribes, Quake, and buggy World War II online, Battlefield 1942 comes out. This was a much hyped game that I've heard in magazines and online about it being "the best WWII online game ever". After much saving from making money at a local restaurant for minimum wage, I got my greasy Italian hands on a copy of this monster. And lets just say I wished it slipped through and landed on the ground and forgot about it.

The Meat and Potatoes

The Basics
This is game about World War II. You can fight online or offline against real people, or AI (I think of them as the people in my head that got into my computer.) You can fight as the Allies as British, Americans, or Russians; or as the Axis as Germans or Japanese. In order to win a map, you capture points on the map and hold them to win. You can find stations to restock your ammo, or heal to help you continue your assault. You can use troop cars, tanks, planes, and naval ships to help gain control of the map. Be prepared for a dirty fight!
After setting myself up with a name at the main screen, I was presented with a quite nicely done interface. Dramatic music plays in the background, and for a moment, I just sat and listened because it was just great. Anyways, so here are my options, Single Player, Multiplayer, Options, Profile, and of course what every game should AT LEAST have, an Exit button. At the time I didn't have an Internet connection, so I gave Single Player a try. They had an option to do Campaign or Instant Battle. Since both are basically the same, I decided to try the long haul with the campaign. I then had options to pick the difficulty of the campaign, such as how smart the AI is, the percentage of enemies to your team's number, and if I wanted to be Axis or Allied. Feeling quite evil, I selected Axis and prepared myself for the excitement of fighting the war.
I was disappointed.
Some may rat me out for this, but try it for yourself. When I started the first map (Operation Battleaxe), I had to wait nearly 30 seconds to spawn, while the computer AI on my team had already spawned and gobbled up the available planes, tanks, and jeeps in the spawn area. When I spawned, I had selected being Infantry, armed with the '98 Kar and the Luger pistol. Following the map, which ONLY showed my team members, I basically trotted towards what I think where the enemy would be. If theres one thing I hate, is that the run is too slow. I quickly learned that getting around on foot is one step below waiting for a cheerleader to spell a word with more than 2 syllables. It is absolutely necessary to find transportation if you start from far behind the lines (more on this later) if you don't want to spawn at the front lines (quite a saver this one was).
Once being able to find a mode of transportation, which was thankfully, the German Tiger I tank, I hopped in and headed towards the frontline. The scope and detail was awe-inspiring and totally took me off my feet. I saw troops running towards bunkers, machine gun tracers, and explosions rocking the ground and planes swooping overhead. I aimed the tank's main gun towards a British tank and fired, hoping my round would cause damage. I was greeted in return with a brisk counterstrike by bazooka teams and a plane strafing the ground around me. To put it bluntly, I was the target of EVERYONE. After quickly being put six feet under, I had to wait the long spawn time to get back to the fight. This time I concentrated on getting flags to win the map. As I started moving towards a bunker with the British flag on top, I noticed some other men following me to help me out (or so I think) and we captured the bunker, then came another counter strike.
Immediately all the men went prone and started to crawl around like children pretending to be stupid snakes. They weren't going for cover, they weren't returning fire, hell, they weren't even really doing anything! They were clumped together being rather stupid while a tank hurled rounds at them, and they basically all died. I was very disappointed in this, as I was now on my own. As soon as "Stupid Squad" was wiped out, the entire British Army immediately targeted me. Rockets, tank rounds, machine guns, and sniper fire was hitting the ground around me. And that's the truth, the ground around me, NOT me though. After about a minute, the AI realized their horrible marksmanship and finally hit me.
After playing through several of the maps, which featured the battle of Kursk, El Alamein, and Market Garden, I had finally finished the campaign to realize that the Germans STILL lose the war. I gave the Allied side a try for the campaign, but after doing just a few maps, I felt like I was doing the same campaign over again with no change.
See, to win the campaign you have to win the map, by "capturing" "strategic" "points". I'll translate in English, it's essentially capture the flag. When you have the majority of flags, a ticker for the opposite side will count down. This also goes down when a number of people of die, depending on difficulty. A sound idea, but when the AI on single player has the IQ and the teamwork of the Chicago Bears, you basically become Rambo and have to win the war youself. Typical, we did that in Medal of Honor, but at least Medal of Honor was great!

So whats in the game?
What is in this game do you wonder? Well, you have a couple of maps, ranging from Africa, to Stalingrad, to Berlin itself. You have tanks from Shermans, Wespes, Tigers, and jeeps. From P-51s, to a B-17 ( I say this literally), Spitfire, ME-109, to an Aircraft Carrier and Cruisers. From Higgins boats to your own arms, BF1942 offers quite a bit of vehicles to use. However, that's the problem. It isn't a flight sim, or a tank sim, or a fleet sim. It's a mix, and therefore suffers from generalization. Its VERY hard to do a loop in a plane, and has a limited ceiling of maybe 500 ft? You're basically limited to ground support with planes. And basically every heavy gun in the game is a mortar weapon, even to the tanks. Theres no selection of anti-personel rounds or anti-tank, and theres no commander's chair to take a look outside the tank if the need arisen. This generalization however makes it rather easy to jump into, with no heavy learning curve or large description of controls and tactics. But for a game like this, this is the downside.

Eye Candy

This is a beautiful looking game. Rolling hills, small towns, water, sandbags, trees, all that natural stuff is there. Graphics are top notch, but can be pain if ran on even the recommended system. Unless you got a finely tuned and hot rodded computer like mine, I say keep it at Medium graphics or tune it to your likes. The game runs quite smooth too when tuned right. Rocket trails flying across the screen, the detail of tanks blitzkreiging across the terrain. This is all lovely on the eyes and definitely a high point of this game.

The sound will shake ya

A bazooka rocket flies across my screen. The whoosh travels from my right speaker to the left and pounds against the rear side of a tank. I can hear the rending of metal as it heavily damages the Tiger. The Tiger returns fire, and the round flies over my head and hits something in the rear of me with a thudding explosion. Artillery pounds a bunker a distance away, due to the flashes of explosion, then the distant sound of a rolling thunder. A machine gun rattles off rounds as some men scream for a medic. A Spitfire roars overhead and fires its machine guns against infantry, which scream their last deaths.
The sound in this game is pretty decent. Rifles, machine guns, and bombs sound like the real thing or as close as possible to its counterpart. Everything has its own unique sound and you can tell what is shooting at you. There is also quite a bit of voice acting, each in its own language, from Russian, German, and Japanese. You can call for a ride, report in movements of armor, or give orders. All of this is in an easy to use interface that uses your F1-F12 commands. A plus in this department.

The Downsides

Ah, this is my favorite part, I LOVE pointing out the little things and this is what can make or break a game. I'll try to keep it gentle here, kiddies.
First of all, with the classes from Medic to Engineer, having different classes of soldiers is a good way of providing a mix of tactics. This time, it's the bane of the game. The Allied medic can heal other players, but is armed with a Thompson submachine gun. What? Since when do they arm medics with an officer's weapon? And the Allied AT man has just a Bazooka with 6 rather mortarific and inaccurate rockets and a pistol. Um�.no carbine? No rifle? What happens when he runs out of rounds in a heated battle? And my biggest chop of all, the Infantryman has a BOLT ACTION RIFLE. Not once, not even a sly mention, do I see the semi-automatic Garand. Nope, lets not put the world's greatest rifle of WWII in this WWII game, heaven forbid! And for each weapon save for grenades, theres a zoom function. Why? Is there a magic scope on every weapon? I remember in the demo you could even zoom with the knife! Cletus Tap Dancing Yokel, with zoom you can practically kill a man from a distance with a Colt pistol! Stop me if this intended to ease game play, but when you're trying to do your job, and you get killed in the game by a sniper pistol, wouldn't you be mad?
As I mention above, the AI grabs all of the vehicles in the beginning of the map. They pick up their buddies and team up to go fight the enemy. Do they wait for you, when you call out for them for help? Nope. Do they help you out when you call for it? Nope. Do they�.just forget it, the only thing the AI is good for is being human shields and watching action unfold between two retarded AI sides. I've seen tank drivers drive around in circles, gotten stuck against a tree, and sometimes just sit there. When you're actually able to get aboard an AI controlled vehicle, pray to your god and kiss your ass goodbye that they'll do anything smart. I was a passenger in a jeep controlled by an AI, and it drove right into a Sherman, at full speed. I'm sorry, I didn't know I volunteered for the Kamikaze Squadron.
Oh, and the AI and planes, couldn't get anymore deadlier. They really know how to drop bombs right down the crotch of your pants to blow away your reproductive scrotum sack. I recommend running constantly or driving AWAY from the enemy planes. DO NOT fight back,it will make them mad.
Ok, I may be ripping on this game pretty bad, that's because it has a horrible AI system. But that's not what it was TRULY meant for. That's like saying spandex is a horrible piece of material to deflect lasers. You don't use it for that, but you wear it to work out in or for other scary reasons.

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Online Play

I have to admit, once you play this online, you might still like this game. Just replace the AI with real people, and have fun. Yes, this is actually quite fun online. People will listen to you; they'll talk, organized assaults, and kill you too. However you still have those historically inaccuracies (why do the Japanese have German weapons? Seriously.) To deal with. But after a while, games like Day of Defeat, Medal of Honor, and other online games will lure you away to something with better graphics, accurately reproduced weapons, and better gameplay. Sure, you can play WWII online, but long loads, bugs, and a rather empty clientele, but it's the only thing that's like BF1942 that's online.

Controls

Ok, heres the basics, standard WASD control, with your mouse to look and aim. You can jump, crouch, enter vehicles and go prone with the controls we all know. Controls stay the same for the vehicles, even planes. The mouse acts as the joystick or you can use the real deal, while A and D operate as rudder and W and S act as throttle.
The control with the joystick is too loose for my liking, as it is hard to do loops and barrel rolls without crashing.

Final Comments

Overall, I was somewhat pleased with this game. It's a good WWII action game to play online, but offline it was torture. This game has some minor defects (Which I hope can be fixed with updates�..no Garand, bugs,��.c'mon people!).
If you want a game where you just want to blow stuff up, with a WWII theme to it and not concerned with minor issues, then have at it. For people like me, and you guys know I love my strategy games and having correct accuracies, stay away. You'll get frustrated. I grew up on Close Combat, Day of Defeat, and Medal of Honor, when it was on Playstation! I know my games people, if you want something good offline, get Medal of Honor, and for something online, try Day of Defeat, the half-life mod, or MOHAA online.