The various planes do perform differently as some are more agile than others while some are bombers and others are gunners. A problem is that the bombing physics are off. By this I mean that depending on how your plane is traveling when you drop a bomb, it can fly up and hit you. What should happen is once you drop the bomb, it should fall away from your plane no matter how your plane is moving. It is fun flying around having dogfights in the air and strafing the ground though. You get some really good satisfaction mowing down a few troops or taking out the aircraft carrier with bombers. To really fly planes, you should probably attach a flight stick or gamepad to your computer instead of trying to use the mouse and keyboard. A nice touch is that the actions you can map to the keyboard are separated into land, sea, and air categories. You can easily map your keys depending on the mode of transportation you are using.
Maps range from enormous fields of engagement to close combat situations. The variety of maps is great and some of them are really done well. The architecture in some of the city levels is amazing with a nice attention to detail. There are times however where a team can take over the only spawn point of the other relatively easily and control the level until the enemies’ tickets run out. It can be a really frustration experience to spawn only to be gunned down before you have a chance. Needless to say once it gets to that point, you just hope the level ends quick.
On certain maps, there are various weapons that you can use to take out the enemies. For instance, the Omaha Beach map has some machine gun nests to fend off ground troops, flak cannons to take out planes, and heavy mortar guns to sink boats. In the demo, the machine gun nests were deadly weapons that mowed down troops. If you opened fire too long, the gun would overheat and you would have to wait for it to cool down. It seems in the final version you can’t take out anybody before the gun overheats. Before they were deadly and useful. Now you’ll be luck to take out one or two people before they charge into you. The same seems to be said for the machine guns on tanks. I’ve had many instances where I unloaded on a soldier only to have them survive the onslaught of bullets. I don’t know why DICE changed the way machine guns work but it really does take away from their usefulness.
The single player experience is somewhat lacking with horrible AI. The fun of Medal of Honor single player was having competent computer companions albeit some were scripted really well. In Battlefield 1942, the AI’s ability to play as a team is sorely lacking. Frustration sets in when your teammates don’t help out or just wander around on their own agenda. I’ve had a few instances where I was sitting in the machine gun turret of a tank controlled by one of the AI soldiers who felt it was fun to just run into the side of the building over and over again.
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