A great game that would be perfect if it weren't for technical issues, bugs and other slight issues.
I'm quite new to the online first person shooter but Battlefield Heroes is quite good for a first timer to jump into. That is, to say, that this game has a quick learning curve due to the game being simplistic yet sometimes complicated. While it's a third person shooter, the game has an experience system that is quite like World of Warcraft. Certain actions or completing a mission earns you experience and then you level up. Every few levels give you an ability point which you can spend on talents like new explosive talents and sharpshooting capabilities. This is great in theory, but when you look at it from a gaming perspective, the leveling speed greatly decreases around level 6. It can take 10 rounds of skilled playing to get from 6 to 7 and goes up from there. Though there are ways around the grind.
The leveling grind seems to be a catch for EA to use their new microtransaction system on you. This means that you give real cash to EA in exchange for Battle Points to purchase leveling multipliers and special outfits. While EA assures you that this has no way to affect gameplay for people that don't want to pay to play, there really is no way to stop something from a level 30 blowing away a level 1 since there doesn't seem to be level specific servers when it comes to match making. This brings us to our next issue: technical mishaps and EA.
It's no surprise that when you play a game for free that you can't expect the sort of technical service that a Pay-to-play game gets. This is painfully evident when playing Battlefield Heroes because you often get random disconnects, punkbuster thinks you are cheating and kicks you, or the worst, you can't even access servers. Also known as the awful Disconnect (15). This limits you to either waiting for the problem to be fixed or play in the limited vehicle map, Victory Village.
EA has given Battlefield Heroes four maps, two that favor vehicles like tanks and planes to be used, and two that favor the player that likes to get down and dirty without the vehicles. While this is nice, the two maps that don't have vehicles make one of the three offered soldier classes useless, the commando. This is because it is a class that depends on you being away from the battlefield because you have a sniper rifle. Finding the perfect spot to play your class efficiently is hard and often a game of situational combat due to various buildings and trees getting in the way of your perfect shot.
The other two classes, soldier and gunner, seem like they have been more fine tuned than the commando but so much so that the two classes blend together and make one generic class. So seemingly if you pick Commando, you are out of the field, and if you are the generic run and gun classes, you are blowing stuff up and getting more kills.
Overall the gameplay is addictive and competitive thanks to missions like getting 10 kills in one battle or blowing up 10 vehicles. This adds a bit more depth to a fun game and probably the main reason why people play this game.
Other than that, vehicles are a bit clunky but manageable if you change your controls. The plane is really fun but sensitive to controlling since the game maps it's controls to the mouse and even when changing the controls to the keyboard, the plane tends to still be sensitive to the point where it's slightly out of control.
Battlefield Heroes is a good game overall for something that is free if you don't mind having the patience to wait for the technical crew to get back from the water cooler or some clunky controls.