Battlefield 1942: The Road to Rome Preview
We take a close look at the new maps, vehicles, and weapons in the upcoming expansion pack to EA's popular WWII online action game.
Battlefield 1942 was one of the most pleasant surprises in PC gaming last year. Developed by a little-known Swedish studio, Digital Illusions, the game started to get some buzz a couple of months before it came out, but until it was final, there were some doubts that the developer could pull off such an ambitious design. Making such a wide variety of vehicles available in a team-based action game presented some definite technical and design challenges, but with EA's help, Digital Illusions got the game right, and there are concrete plans to expand the world of Battlefield 1942 and make it even better.
As surprising as it may be, the next Battlefield 1942 product is almost ready to ship. The upcoming expansion pack, The Road to Rome, has been in development since before the original game's release, and it's due out in early February. The expansion pack is focused on giving fans more content--new vehicles, weapons, and maps--to play with rather than making any fundamental changes to the game. EA has a separate team working on improving the core game, and future patches like the major version 1.2 patch we saw last month will work with both the main game and The Road to Rome.
The expansion pack's setting is revealed in the name, The Road to Rome. While the original game's maps featured battles from four WWII theaters, any hint of the major campaign that took place in Italy has had to wait for the expansion. Launching from bases in North Africa in 1943, the Allied forces made paradrops and amphibious landings into Italy to open a new front. The campaign in which British, free French, and US forces invaded Sicily and then mainland Italy involved some of the fiercest protracted fighting of the war, particularly due to the rough, hilly terrain. The expansion pack adds two new fighting forces to the game, the Italians and the free French, who had left France after the country's surrender to fight in exile under De Gaulle. There are new models and native-language voices for both of the new playable sides.
The Road to Rome has six new maps, or "battlefields," that cover the opening assault on Sicilian beaches through the difficult battles in late 1943 and early 1944 that were fought over the hills leading up to Rome. This setting lays the groundwork for some maps that are rather different in style than what the maps included in the original game. Only one map features a naval craft--there's a battleship the allies can use to bombard the beach in Operation Husky--and most battlefields have rocky or rolling terrain that reduces visibility and can provide ample cover to infantry lying in ambush. But that's not to say that there's any less emphasis on vehicles in The Road to Rome--in fact, the maps show off the new vehicles to good effect.
A total of nine vehicles are introduced in The Road to Rome. There are four new armored vehicles, and we're happy to point out that all the new vehicles with top guns protect the gunner. This design addresses the common complaint that the machine gunners on the Battlefield 1942 tanks are too exposed and simply make for easy kills. The Axis side has two new tanks. There's the German Sturmgeschutz, a medium-armor tankbuster that carries a big main gun with a limited turret that can't turn much beyond center and also has an enclosed machine gun position. The Italian M11-39 tank is quick medium tank with an enclosed top machine gun.
While the wide, low-slung Sturmgeschutz looks the most different of the new tanks, it's the Allied M3 Grant that is functionally the most unique. In addition to its main 75mm cannon, the Grant has a 37mm top cannon that fires about as quickly as the game's antiair guns and is effective at taking out infantry, planes, or even other ground vehicles. The other new Allied armor unit is the M3 GMC halftrack, which drives like an APC but has an antitank cannon on top that's manned from the second position. Since it's not the nimblest of vehicles, there's also a third position in the rear: an anti-infantry machine gun.
Those who have become proficient at flying Battlefield 1942's planes will find their skills rewarded by the powerful new attack bombers that The Road to Rome will put at their disposal. The Allied and Axis bombers are both twin-engine planes with large payloads. The British Mosquito is a single-seat bomber, while the German BF-110 has a rear machine gunner. The attack bombers are much more agile than the four-engine B-17, but they're likely a little more sluggish than the torpedo planes found in the original game. There's ample reason to try them out, as there's at least one of these medium bombers on every map except Monte Cassino and the Battle for Salerno.
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- GameSpot Score8.9great
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