Battlefield 2142 – Game Review (PC)
The crowning glory of this game though has to be the new Titan mode, which sits alongside the regular Conquest mode. A Titan is a gigantic hovering fortress high in the sky that is armed to the teeth and can be used as both fire support and an aircraft carrier. Each team has one and the object of the mode is to seize control of 5 missile silos on the ground, each of which will fire a missile at the enemy Titan every 2 minutes whilst it is under your team’s control.
Once a Titan’s energy shields are down, the opposing team must assault the enemy Titan, get inside, destroy four reactor consoles and then the reactor itself to make it go critical and explode. All the while, they have to defend their captured silos on the ground and defend their own Titan.
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Oops- that was my Titan
Titan mode is where the APC comes into its own. Stuck on the ground whilst everyone is up in the sky enjoying themselves? No problem – players can find an APC and fire themselves into the air in a pod that will home in on the enemy Titan and allow them to board. If Squad Leaders have deployed their handy Squad Beacons, players can even respawn on board, saving the hassle of hitching a ride.
Running around the ruins of a once great city is an eerie experience, and with the graphics turned up to maximum, the game looks amazing. Smoke effects are well achieved, and in the snowy maps, warm breath mist emerging from players’ mouths – now that’s excellent attention to detail! One of the many items a player can unlock is an enhanced heads-up display within the helmet which allows a player to see enemy units that can be seen by squad-mates. Indeed, the in-game displays are spot on, never being intrusive, always giving you exactly the information you need. Desert sands and snowy glaciers never look anything less than impressive, and explosions are usually large, very loud, and full of debris.
In game sounds are uniformly excellent, from the echoing retort of a sniper rifle to the twin machine guns of an enraged Battle Walker, everything sounds and feels right.
An intriguing futuristic setting appeals to sci-fi junkies while the use of many conventional weapons will help retain a lot of the Battlefield series’ current market. The new Titan mode has also injected a little more life into the online component and gives players a refreshing option. Players who enjoyed the previous installments should find more than enough to love with Battlefield 2142.
