#PEOPLE STILL PLAY BATTLEFIELD 1942 FREE#
Use of the squad and commander structure is not required you are free to act on your own, as if you're a special forces loner. In BF42, manning the machine gunner position on top of a tank is a swift death sentence.įinally, soldiers in BF2 are now grouped into squads, with a squad leader for each squad and an overall commander.
This even works with choppers if they have just lifted off.Īny one of those changes is enough to put a smile on a co-op gamer's face, but taken as a whole they are nothing short of miraculous. If you ask for a ride and there's a bot in a vehicle nearby, he will come and pick you up. If you ask for ammo, a bot with ammo will bring you some. If you ask for a medic, nearby medics will light up on your map, and if there's one nearby, he will come to you and heal you. Bots also switch seats with you if you give the command to switch seats. They get out of vehicles when you tell them to or when you get in a vehicle if there are no empty seats. In BF2, on the other hand, bots are generally more intelligent. Medics don't heal injured soldiers, Engineers don't fix tanks or emplacements, and so on. They don't use their available skills.Occasionally they will follow an order to bail out of a vehicle or move forward, but this is rare. They may decide to sit there, doing nothing and wasting a perfectly good tank. Once they get in a vehicle, getting them out is often impossible.No, the real problems with bot behaviour in BF42 are things like: But the movement and driving problems are funny as often as they are annoying, which tends to even things out somewhat. BF42 bot vehicle driving skills are notoriously terrible. Specifically, their use of most weapons is both fast and accurate, while their movement is often haphazard. Bots in BF42 are very very good at some things, but just awful at others. If they're too stupid, it's not much fun to kill them. In co-op gaming, it's all about the bots. I get into a lot more detail in What's co-op gaming? What do I mean by co-operative? A co-op game is one in which human players team up against computer-controlled players. In other words, it's the radial menu default.īF2 includes many improvements of interest to co-operative players. You can spot, identify and broadcast the location of an enemy unit by aiming at it and pressing Q and clicking without moving the mouse. This keeps your eyes centered and involves very little movement of your hands and fingers from where they would normally be during play. Using BF2's radial menu involves moving the finger already poised over the A key (for stepping sideways to the left) slightly upwards to the Q key, and holding that key down while you move the mouse slightly in a specific direction and left-click, aided by the circular menu that pops up in the center of your view. In BF42, all commands require two function key presses, which means you have to move one of your hands to the function key row, then hunt for the first key and press it, then hunt for the second key and press it. I don't know why more games don't use this technique - especially first person shooters. One of the key improvements to the user interface in BF2 is the radial menu. It's not fair to compare these things with BF1942. Communications and intelligence are improved, through the use of radar, satellite views and UAVs.
That means tank guns are stabilized, missiles are heat-seeking and choppers are everywhere. Keep reading to find out how.įirst, let's dispense with the obvious: BF2 uses modern weapons. But as good as BF42 is, BF2 is better in almost every way. I even run a Battlefield 1942 co-op server called Tanks 'n' Planes Unlimited. I've played more hours of Battlefield 1942 than any other game on any platform.