BF1943 is a mockery of BF1942. Everyone involved in releasing this game should be ashamed of themselves.
The bad? Oh boy.. where to begin.
The weapons in this game are absolutely horrendous. Yes, there is at least some variety to the weapons, but each one is so tremendously situational that you will not succeed at all unless you play exactly how the game was designed for you to play. As a sniper, you are completely worthless at anything but the farthest of distances. As an engineer you are completely worthless unless you are standing right on top of your target. Sure, infantry has a good advantage at all distances in between, but you will probably get killed with a grenade before you can line up your sites on someone. The only advantage that infantry ever has is the noob-tube grande launcher. Good luck against anything not human.
The sniper rifle could not possible be worse. Not only does it take several shots to kill someone, unless it's a head shot, but the darn thing fails to register hits ALL the time. I've had countless shots go off when the enemy is not moving, and clearly lined up perfectly, only to get nothing. I've had numerous times where I have shot the same enemy 5-6 times, and not got the kill for whatever reason. Reloading also takes an eternity. To top it off? You can't go prone. Nope. You can crouch, and you can stand. No prone for you.
The sniper's pistol is a complete throw away weapon. Not only does the clip have way too few shots in it, but they do virtually no damage at all. And, to top it all off, the aiming reticle has a tendency to disappear for no known reason. You get it maybe 25% of the time. Meaning the rest of the time you are shooting and praying that you have lined up the middle of the screen as best you can. Most of the time this just pisses off whomever you are trying to kill and they pop you before you can arm anything that will be helpful against them.
Try throwing a bomb satchel at them? That's a bad idea since you seem to be able to throw them only about 1 foot. Awesome. Unfortunately this is the best thing about the sniper class. A class that is supposed to fight at extreme distances is the most fun when standing right up on top of a tank. Here's a great little story to demonstrate everything wrong with these bomb satchels. I'm guarding a base, and I have 3 of these little baddies down around our flag pole hoping a tank will roll right up and I can blow him up. Well I get my wish and a tank comes rolling right up on the flag. This happens to be when I am a bit too close, so I pull out the switch and start backing up, hoping he doesn't see me. Right as I get to what i think is far enough away, I see the driver appear next to the tank, right on top of a satchel. Perfect! Or so I thought. I blow the suckers up, the tank goes with them, but what does Mr. Driver do? Well he doesn't die. Instead he turns to me and kills me with one shot because the damage my own bomb satchels did to me softened me up quite a bit. Keep in mind I was pretty damn far away from them, and he was standing right on top of them. Magically, they either do more damage to me, or equal damage to both of us but not enough to kill a soft target on top of them. Fantastic! That completely makes so much sense.
The light machine gun that the engineers use is probably the most useless weapon ever put into an FPS. The range on it is disgustingly short, and when you do hit you might as well be shooting a BB gun at them. The amount of damage it does is so small that you can often unload your entire clip into a guy, and have all register hits I might add, and still not get the kill. Apparently everyone upgraded to bullet proof pants/shirts from 1942 to 1943. Short range and short damage? Yup, completely useless.
The rocket launcher is probably the second most useless weapon in the game. Not only does it not do any damage to infantry, but it barely does any damage to tanks. "Anti-tank" class? If you mean "not good against tanks" then yes, that makes sense. It takes anywhere from 3-4 rockets to destroy a tank. Thankfully you can carry up to 3! Which means you get to wait a full 8 seconds or so for that 4th one to show up and be usable. Yes, you can one shot a tank with the rocket launcher, but only from behind. And, only if you hit it in just the right spot at the lowest point possible on the rear. Too low and you hit the ground below it and do no damage at all because apparently rockets are like lasers. They have no splash damage at all. They only hurt the exact point that they connected at.
The infantry rifle is easily the best standard weapon in the game, and it still completely sucks. The accuracy is abysmal and the kickback on it is ridiculously overdone. You will be lucky to get 2 shots into the same target without the second one sailing a full body length over their head. This leads to the problem of needing to take time between each shot to realign your aim, only to have your target get up and run away. Thankfully, you revealed your position, so every enemy and their mother is now gunning for you. Enjoy your respawn.
Noob-tube? Present and overpowered... still. Probably the only gun/weapon/vehicle in the entire game that is even remotely fun to use. But, this is only because it is so insanely overpowered against infantry. At least it has a splash damage range. Most of the time you can just park your shot at your enemies feet and they are toast. The best part about this is that it serves as a very affective weapon at the same range as your regular rifle. Why ever bother using the rifle when you have a noob-tube with endless ammo ready to go all the time? Also, totally useless against anything but soft targets. Don't even bother trying to take down a tank with this class, because it ain't gonna happen.
The vehicles are even worse. Not only are they softer than a flying burrito, but they control horribly. The airplanes are easy enough to control, but they pop at even the slightest damage and the bombs are all but useless since they overshoot by a mile unless you are in a 45 degree nose dive at your target. Why it takes a full second for the bombs to drop after hitting the release button is truly a mystery.
The cars are worthless. They handle terribly, and they can barely drive up even the slightest hills without sputtering and starting to roll backwards. That and they bounce all over the place on perfectly flat surfaces.
Tanks... oh god the horrible tanks. Could they have possibly screwed this up any more than they did? I don't think so. Not only are the controls horrible, but the weapons on them are all but useless against everything but buildings. The machine gun takes a good 5-6 seconds of constant fire to kill a target. You can unload this thing on infantry and register multiple hits, only to have the gun overheat and your target runs away. Then, when you try to finish them off with the big gun, they just shrug it off like a snowflake. I've shot the ground around infantry, in fact right AT their feet, many many times only to have them walk away. I can watch it hit there fit, right on my screen, and no kill. What... the... hell? To top that off, the useless guns on the tanks can't even point below perfectly level. You can point up all you want, which is totally useless, but you can't point down even slightly. So if you are driving up even the tiniest of hills, have fun shooting at the sky while those infantry enemies run right past you. I just got done playing the game and I had a particularly aggravating encounter where two infantry just hid behind a rock, a small rock I might add. I shot the ground right next to them about 6 times and they survived. One of them made a run for and I shot him in the back with the machine gun for a full 4 seconds, registering hits the entire time, and he simply jumped off a ledge and survived. I turned back to the other guy only to have to chase him down a beach pelting him with tank shots multiple times, and machine gun fire. He died when a teammate strolled up behind him and killed him for me. There must be some invincibility hack/glitch that I don't know about or something because this was easily the most ridiculously absurd moment I have had in a multi-player game in a very VERY long time.
The maps! Oh what crap these maps be. Wake Island is ok, but the other two are junk. Several of the flags are bunched up really close together, and some are so far away from the others that your only option is to wait for a vehicle spawn or you are going to spend the next 30 seconds sprinting. Too top it off the maps are buried in glitches. Your feet will get hung up on the the smallest of objects for no discernible reason. This is particularly frustrating when you are trying to run away from a threat. Only to be stopped dead in your tracks and finished off before rounding that corner to safety. This will happen constantly throughout the game, and right when you think you know all the places to avoid, nope.. there is another. Basically, you should avoid anything with a flag near it or you will get hung. To top it off, you only get three maps to play on. Four if you count the planes only map, which is a pointless mode. I am sure they will be charging $10 for 3-map packs in the near future. Gotta milk this sucker for all it's worth right? I'm looking forward to not buying them.
The sounds? The familiar BF1942 theme song is present, and it was nice to hear it again after all these years, however it's the only song in the game. It gets old and grating really fast. The explosion effects are pretty standard, nothing to complain about. The voices get old after awhile but can be turned off. All and all, probably the most consistent part of the entire game is the audio. Consistently average.
The graphics? Somehow, they took a huge leap back in time and managed to make this game look just a smidge better than the original 1942. Just barely. The weapons look crummy. The vehicles look ok. The character models are pretty dull and you don't get any quick indicator about what the class you are up against is unless it's a sniper with their generic leaf covered shoulders. To say the graphics are fitting of a $15 game would be a bit polite.
Balance? Absolutely not. The magnitude of paper/scissors/rock in this game is off the charts. Certain weapons/vehicles are designed for certain tasks, and ONLY for certain tasks. Trying to use them for anything else is a complete wash. Grenades will not kill tanks, and rockets will not kill infantry. Bomb satchels do not kill infantry, unless they are your own and you blow yourself up. Sniper rifles barely kill infantry, and noob-tubes kill in one shot more often than not.
Responsive controls? Maybe coming in a patch. Maybe not. I love having to hit the weapon swap button 5 times before it actually swaps the weapon. I realize there is a period after reloading the alternate weapons were you can't swap to it until your reload timer is done, but this happens all the time when I should be able to swap. The controls in the game are a disaster. They are glitchy, twitchy, jerky and too often delayed. I tried 3 different controllers, all of witch perform flawlessly in other games, and still had a mountain of problems trying to get the game to do what I want it to. Yes, I do want to sprint right now. Ok, now I want to stop. No really. Stop. Please stop? Ok, now I stopped but I am falling down a ledge I didn't want to fall down. Great.
After putting in well over 10 hours and having countless death after death when I should have easily been the victor, I can easily say this game is a complete mess from top to bottom. I can play FPS games perfectly fine on all platforms, including the 360, and this game tops the cake for fail.
Thanks EA. Thanks for taking one of my favorite multi-player games of all time and dropping a big deuce on it. I knew there was a reason this was a DD game only. I can't get my money back. No refunds. To bad so sad go cry in a corner.
I should have known better after the crap that was Battlefield 2 hit retail.