Probably as close as you can come to the perfect First-Person Shooter game, at least until they invent holo-decks.
"Battlefield:1942" isn't your jump and run twitch-game like Unreal Tournament. In BF:1942 your in the thick of World War II, and if you act crazy, you're gonna get crazy killed all too often. While there's ample opportunity to perform acts of heroism, teamplay and cooperation are vital in this game. Taking fore than a few maps right out of actual WWII battlegrounds, like Iwo Jima, Berlin, Stalingrad, Midway, Kursk, from the Pacific to Europe to the African desert, you have every theater of battle here. And with the unique qualities of each one. For example, I just watched a History Channel show on Iwo Jima last week, and it's amazing how they simulated the somewhat condensed version of the environment and challenges the real Iwo Jima presented.
As for armament, no, there's no nail guns or plasma launchers. You have to use Thompson SMG's, German MP-40's, Colt .45's, M-1 rifles, whatever weapon was used by whatever side in whatever theater, that's what you have. You can also use various environment placed weapons. Like flak cannon, AA guns, mounted heavy machine guns. And let's not forget the vehicles! Tanks, APC's, planes even. You can select to drive, man a gun, or just be a passenger. Mount a Sherman as the thank commander or zip along in a jeep. If you have a steady hand, grab a plane and strafe the land, drop bombs, engage in dogfights. You can even man the heavy cannons on battleships before hopping into a PT-boat to storm the beach head. The physics of firefights are very realistic. A single well placed headshot kills you, but you can circle an opponent in a frenzied handgun fight trying to empty your clip into his gut before he does the same to you. You have to have a steady hand while sniping, and figure on "shooting ahead" for those real long shots. Bazooka's to the treads and at 90-degree angles to the rear have more of a chance of disabling a tank than oblique or front-end hits.
You choose "kits" when you join a game, (with the option of changing kits if you die and have to respawn, or get this, you can pick up different dropped kits from dead soldiers in game,) and that determines what weapons and alternate abilities your character has. Scouts get a scoped rifle, light handgun, grenades, and binoculars that give you the ability to become the forward observer for artillery who can then fire on targets you can see but they can't. Anti-tank kits include a heavy pistol, bazooka, and grenades, medics get the ability to heal comrades, etc etc.
Of course you can message in-game to your side, send pre-set messages like "Enemy artillery spotted!" "I need a medic!" "I need air support!" "Roger!" and a dozen and a half others. But connect to a "Teamspeak" server with headset and mic, and talk in real-time to your team and organize attacks and defenses Rommel would have been proud of.
The multi-player online side of BF:1942 is the game's bread-and-butter, but it does also feature single-player solo campaigns and single-battles with and against A.I. bots. At medium to hard level, they don't do too bad. Make yourself known and they start shooting at you, they run away or hide of too wounded, they assist each other in artillery. It's not near the same as playing against human beings, but it's not bad.
The gameplay is great. Reaction time is natural and smooth, the movement doesn't feel sluggish and slow like other online shooters. The keyboard layout by default is natural as well, with logical key placement and support for multi-buttoned mice and joysticks. The interface for multi-player games is easy to understand and use, and allows for finding a server to play on quick and easy.
Now, if all this wasn't enough, a 3rd-party group has created a mod that's taken BF:1942 players by storm: "Desert Combat". It's a 130MB downloadable free add-on (the latest version called "Alpha .3 due to the fact it's being made to eventually be a retail add-on, but it works perfectly as an alpha add-on,) that upgrades the game to modern combat. You have the ability to switch back and forth between 1942 and modern-day both in multi-player and single-player modes, so you don't give up anything to add "Desert Combat." But with the add-on, it's like a whole new game. Adding modern weapons like the M-16A3, shoulder mounter anti-tank rockets, Abrams M1 super tanks, Apache, Black Hawk, and HinD helicopters (yes, helicopters!), MiG and F-16 fighter jets, bombers, a couple dozen new personal weapons I don't even know the names of (AK-47s and M60s aside.) Plus new kits, such as Support, which gives you a combat shotgun, the ability to lay mortars for other to use, Special Ops which gives you a semi-scoped high precision rifle and explosive charges, Assault will allow you to lay walls of sandbags, etc etc. Add to that new maps, and for free you turn your game into two.
I can't say enough good things about this game. It's full of features too numerous to mention, and is destined to have a long life of player support. Rated the number 1 game (both in general and in FPS categories) by numerous gaming magazines and Web sites, BF:1942 is going to stay a long time.
Category: Computer Game
Genre: FPS
Date Reviewed: 2003-04-23
Pros: Excellent...everything. Gameplay, physics, realism, graphics, sounds, weapons, maps, vehicles, everything.
Cons: Not enough time in the day to play it.
Rating: 9