Publisher: EA
Developer: DICE
Released: 9th July 2009
Platforms: PS3 (reviewed), Xbox360 and PC (TBC)

You know when you go back to the TV shows you loved as a child, and seeing them with grown-up eyes, they're not quite as good as you remember them? That's Battlefield 1943 all over.

This is not too say BF43 is a bad game. It's not. It's a very good game. It's got planes and boats and machine guns and bombers and sniper rifles and pineapple grenades and Sherman tanks and samurai swords and... well there is a lot on offer here for the meagre asking price.

The maps are well balanced giving 'get stuck in' and 'camping' players (and all in between) plenty of options and lots of fun.

The graphics are impressive, whether dive-bombing a carrier at 100 mph or stalking through the undergrowth with your heart in your mouth, your eyes will not be disappointed. Where you will be disappointed is if, like me, you are a veteran of BF1942 and we're hoping for a 2009 re-tooling of easily the best WW2 multiplayer game out there.

A Bridge Too Far for DICE

They say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", and BF1942 was far from broke. BF1943 could have got away with giving '42 a graphical lick of paint here, a physics engine overhaul there and it would have still got my vote. Instead you get a bit of a George Lucas Special edition approach to things - it may look and sound astonishing, but Greedo shoots first.

In BF1943 the visuals, sound and physics are brought up to date; detailed character and vehicle models, ear-splitting explosions and atmospheric echo delays, and destructible terrain. And while this certainly brings the game up to scratch for a 'next generation' audience, what this veneer is hiding is that much of what made BF1942 truly epic has been removed.

While a certain amount of 'fat' has been rightly trimmed (such as the submarines) more tasty treats have also ended up in the pig swill. One notable example, is that you can no longer pilot the aircraft carriers or damage them (something that also worked well in BF2142), meaning the tactical battle to keep yours out of harms way has gone.

There's also nowhere to explore on the carriers (the battleships are also scuttled for BF1943) and no cargo net to climb up as a saboteur. This makes them little more than quickly abandoned spawn points; floating snooker tables which look pretty but are of little benefit to the action of the game. Gone are the days of hunting the enemy engineer hiding in the bowels of the ship with dynamite stuffed in his socks.

The air combat won't blow your socks off either. The single seat fighters are here, but gone are the torpedo planes, the twin-seaters, the transport (spawn) planes or my favourite, the B-52 Bombers. This behemoth of the skies is replaced instead, by the ability to call in 'on rails' bombing runs from certain buildings. Le Yawn.

Respawning Private Ryan

The soldier classes have also been thinned, amalgamating many of the abilities from BF1942 into three classes. The support skills are for the most part still here - such as vehicle repair and healing, but with rapidly respawning vehicles and regenerating health and ammo, the tactical necessity of these classes and gameplay choices for the player have vanished by 1943.

As well as limiting your options as a player, it also means that everyone becomes a lone wolf, rarely working together as you would have seen in BF1942 with an Engineer trailing a tank to keep it in tip top condition, or a Medic keeping his head down as he struggles to keep defenders alive. You may be part of a fighting force, but it feels like an army of one.

For players new to the BF franchise or fresh from the console friendly world of Battlefield Bad Company, they can expect BF1943 to be a brilliant slice of WW2 action at a black market price.

For those craggy BF1942 veterans like me, compared to my rose-tinted memories of its older brother the action here is severely rationed and it struggles to fill the hole left byits forerunner.

Richard Fentiman
10th November 2009
(originally published elsewhere July 2009)

[Editor's comment - Also, it might be worth reminding people, that unlike the 'World Series', World War Two involved more than just the Americans]