Battlefield 1943 Updated Hands-On

For most historians, Guadalcanal was a key battle for the Allied forces fighting against the Empire of Japan, not just because of its strategic significance, but also because of its designation as a major turning point in the Pacific Theater of World War II. For those who may not be familiar with the franchise, our brief hands-on time with the Guadalcanal map (one of three different maps) in the upcoming download-only release of Battlefield 1943 is like a Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer portrayal of what happened during the pivotal battle. Countless bullets whizz by, massive explosions erupt, and debris constantly flies in your face. You might just say that it's all-around sustained chaos with 23 other players.

The development team wants the action to be filled with constant intensity and very few lulls, and it appears that they've taken the lessons learned from previous Battlefield games and combined them with a desire to make the Battlefield series even more accessible than before. In fact, during the first online session, our base was immediately overwhelmed with Japanese troops taking up positions on ridges located just outside of the spawn point. Naturally, this made for a pretty good sniper alley, so our teammates were getting picked off left and right, until one of them managed to jump into a nearby tank and started blasting their position. Unfortunately, that bought us only a few minutes of time to organize and move forward to an enemy camp. We were able to pick off some additional snipers using the rifleman class (there are also scout and infantry classes) just before an enemy tank came strolling down the main road. Whoever was in control of our tank either didn't see the enemy tank in time or was focused on gunning down enemy troops nearby, because the enemy tank blew it to pieces within a few moments.

As previously mentioned, Battlefield 1943 is designed to keep you fighting at all times, so right after we died, we jumped back into the thick of it by choosing the control point closest to an enemy base. We also decided to stick with the rifleman, who is especially useful on this map because you can scale any of the nearby ridges and take up a pretty good sniping position--that is, if you can gain control of it. Shortly after respawning, a faint hum could be heard from up above; a few members of our team had managed to get control of some bombers, which let them fly in formation and drop some heavy-duty bombs right onto the main path. This opened up a nice bit of road for our tank, so we jumped in and took to the machine gun on the back. After mowing down some enemy infantry, we finally made our way to the enemy base, where, to our surprise, the opposing team seemed to be waiting for us. Needless to say, this scenario did not end well at all for us.

The straightforward jump-in approach of Battlefield 1943 should be immediately appealing to those looking for some quick bouts of action, but it also seems like a good jumping-off point if you're not entirely familiar with the concept of a first-person shooter that integrates different types of vehicles, ranging from planes to tanks. Although the support for up to 24 players is great, it seems as if the maps have been designed in such a way that you might not necessarily notice if the maximum amount of players isn't flooding a map, given that the battles seem to be confined to very specific points. And the fact that it's using the same engine that powered Battlefield: Bad Company certainly doesn't hurt. Battlefield 1943 will be available for download for $15 in June.