Battlefield 1943 Requires Reinforcements
This article was written by: Mike Hudec (dolenraug)
It seems that the recent release of EA’s Battlefield 1943 has caused more of a frenzy than was originally anticipated. The new game, which can be downloaded for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, is quickly gaining popularity, rendering the amount of available servers insufficient. Gordon Van Dyke, producer of Battlefield 1943, recently posted in the official EA forums, informing the gaming community that they “…have full support of EA to add as many servers as takes and then some so that everyone can play. This work has already started and servers will be added around the clock with teams working to cover this 24 hours a day so not a moment is wasted. You will be able to play this game and play it lag free!”
Although this is great news, lag wasn’t the only problem players experienced yesterday: it seems many were having a hard time just joining games (I read quite a few Tweets confirming this).
I hope everything gets worked out quickly. Battlefield 1943 looks like an outstanding achievement on DICE’s part, and I think its success will do great things for downloadable gaming.
Battlefiend 1943 is now available on Xbox LIVE Arcade (1200 MS Points) and the PlayStation Store ($14.99).
The original article comes via Joystiq.
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I can’t think of a single Battlefield game that launched smoothly.
I does seem the Battlefield games work on their issues after release. I remember Bad Company having similar problems. You’d think they learn from past issues.
The logon issue that plagued the game on release, seems to have been resolved as of late. The first day or so starting a game was an exercise in frustration. On the second day, I think I counted 30 attempts to start a game. But as of today, I can enter a game without issue. So progress is being made.
I haven’t encountered any issues with lag, but I have encountered lock ups and the occasional display anomaly. The former apparently is an issue while they add servers, according to the news crawl. Again, frustrating. The latter occurs with Bad Company as well.
As far as the game, it’s definately a Battlefield series game. So if you’ve played the series, you’ll know what to expect. It plays like a PC game from years ago. Which is both good and bad. You won’t mistake gameplay for Call of Duty, which is a much superior game. But Battlefield has it’s moments. The environments are semi destructible. And you have options available for transportation which make the game fun to play.
The controls and gameplay can be frustrating. At times it seems as if it’s not responsive or you feel a bit sluggish. But like anything, you learn to adapt to their way of thinking. And that’s what you’ll need to fly, because the first couple of times, believe me, you’ll have a hard time. I wonder why they couldn’t make flying a little easier and well, enjoyable. But after enough tries, you will get the hang of it.
All in all, it can be fun if you hang in there and learn all the little idiosyncrasies of the game.
I know Arthur Gies and Nick Suttner and a few others gaming journalists tried to play with some of their listeners/readers last night, had a full list of players, and the game wouldn’t work. Sounds like it’s still hit and miss for some people.
Is this forgivable? Granted, we were given a cool looking downloadable game, but is it really so hard to try and get a working copy out on the first go? Maybe they should have had a Beta first.
I’m preplexed why they would have issues, because it seems like 1943 is a stripped down version of Bad Company. These sames issues occured with Bad Company. And Bad Company had an open beta test prior to release.
I suspect they’re doing something different on the back end.
Unlike Bad Company, 1943 requires you to log into EA’s server with an account and password. So something is different.
While I couldn’t in good conscience recommend a game that has issues, and even advised elsewhere staying away from 1943 until they’re fixed, it does seem like some of the issues are being addressed. At least it’s becoming playable.
What disappoints me most is that I expect more from EA. It’s problems like these they make me seriously reconsider furture purchases of such products.
I’m in the same boat. I haven’t played 1943 yet, but, even though it looks awesome, I would have to steer people clear of the game until it is in a functional form.
$15 is getting pricey for a download (although this game, when it works, looks like it would definitely be worth that price tag–despite the minimal number of maps), especially for a game that, half of the time, isn’t playable due to bugs.
My recommendation is to keep watching the web, wait until it appears that 1943 is fully functional.