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Genre: First-person shooter

Format: DVD

Developer: Digital Illusions CE

Mac Publisher: Aspyr Media

Minimum System Requirements: 867MHz G4, Mac OS X v10.3, 256MB RAM, 32MB 3D graphics acceleration (ATI Radeon 7500/NVidia GeForce 2 or better), 56K modem or Local Area Network (LAN) for multiplayer

Review Computer: 1GHz Powerbook G4 12" 768MB RAM, 32MB GeForce FX Go 5200, and Mac OS X v10.3.3

Network Feature: Yes

3D Support: Required

Price: $49.88

ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, violence)

Availability: Now

Official Website: [url=http://www.battlefield1942.com]http://www.battlefield1942.com[/url]

I'm no stranger to first-person shooter games. I cut my teeth on Wolfenstein 3D and Doom and Quake and Marathon, I've logged my hours in QuakeWorld Team Fortress and played Quake III: Arena and its various mods to death and still managed to dabble in each of the Unreal games. Frankly, after years and years of shooting apart computer renditions of people/aliens/undead/what have you, I'm not really as thrilled by the prospect as I once was. My days of staying up until 3AM blowing apart my fellow man ended after Quake III: Urban Terror.

Enter Battlefield 1942, also known as the game borne from every little boy's desire to play soldier once in a while.

Battlefield 1942 reminds me of playing with my little green army men as a little kid, and I love it. I remember with disturbing clarity the hours I used to spend waging wars between the Tan Army and the Green Army on cheap plastic maps that would get wrinkled after a pitched battle since I set it down on a carpet floor. Replace the Battle of the Living Room Couch with some realistic settings drawn straight from World War II battlegrounds, and put yourself in the position of a regular foot soldier, and you've got Battlefield 1942. Honestly, my first few online games were crippled by butterflies in my stomach. I haven't gotten that in a really, really long time.

Perhaps the best achievement in Battlefield 1942's game design is actually in what the designers didn't do. Digital Illusions did a phenomenal job deciding what they wanted the final product to look like and worked toward that; the game is all about multiplayer, so they included an instant action option and a single-player campaign that plays like a botmatch. Rather than waste time trying to fabricate some kind of hokey plot, they fine-tuned the game engine to deliver respectable, functional graphics with an eye towards performance in large multiplayer games, and focused on delivering some exceptional game play with an immersive game experience. The down side to all this is, of course, that Battlefield 1942 is not a game which will forever captivate you with its beautiful graphics or fascinating plot, and if you aren't interested in the multiplayer game or any of its fine mods, there's really nothing here you'll want.

Like many war shooters, Battlefield 1942 is class-based; every time a player spawns, he or she has a choice between playing as a Medic, Scout, Assault, Engineer or Anti-Tank infantryman. Each of the classes are balanced against each other so well, it's almost frustrating; I frequently find myself changing classes after every death to counter whatever it was that killed me, and end up getting killed by whatever counters mine. Each class carries a knife, a pistol, and three grenades (except the engineer, who doesn't carry the grenades), ensuring that every class has at least minor firepower against infantrymen and enough explosives to put a dent in a tank or other such vehicle. After that, each class has its own respective specialty; the Scout carries a sniper rifle for long-range anti-infantry damage and a pair of binoculars for artillery spotting in case you've got a teammate manning the big guns, the Assault packs an automatic assault rifle that is respectable at longer ranges and lethal in close, the Medic wields a submachine gun (weaker than an assault rifle, and more inaccurate) and a medical kit to heal himself or his teammates, the Anti-Tank eschews rifles in favor of a Bazooka for serious armor damage (unfortunately, you can only hurt infantry with this if you score a direct hit, which is damned hard, and it takes forever to reload), and the Engineer carries a high-powered rifle similar to the Scout's sniper rifle but with a weaker scope, a wrench that can repair vehicles and gun emplacements, a few anti-armor land mines, and some TNT that can be remotely detonated. For any given class choice, you'll have to figure out which enemies you'll be good against, the range at which you'll be most effective, and how that fits into the game's big picture so you won't just have the highest score of the losing team.

The main game type, Conquest, plays like Territories from Myth: The Fallen Lords with a little bit of Starsiege Tribes thrown in. Each team spawns in one main base diametrically opposed to the other; from here they roll out in planes, jeeps, various artillery trucks, and, of course, tanks. The general goal in Conquest is to win by forcing the other team to run out of 'tickets' by controlling as many of the outposts and smaller bases on the map as possible; whenever one team controls more territory than another, the losing team gradually starts losing tickets until either they seize control back and drain tickets from the opposing team, or run out and lose the game. Respawning players also costs your team tickets, so don't get your ass capped too often or you'll be a burden to the team. There are a few other game types, like Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, as well as variations of Conquest; one map, for example, pits the Germans against the British and starts the British with control of every outpost on the map. In this particular level, the Germans have to win by bombing certain strategic targets rather than controlling territory; should they do so before their ticket count hits zero, they win. Make no mistake, Digital Illusions has managed to make levels that aren't perfectly symmetrical, reflect actual WWII battles, and are adequately balanced for multiplayer play. It's truly an impressive feat.

Besides serving as an objective for Conquest, the outposts also serve to allow the controlling team to spawn at an outpost instead of way back at the home base. This is a nice perk indeed; Battlefield 1942 maps are generally really, really big, and walking around all day as a lowly infantryman gets old fast. However, if you control the right outposts, you'll be able to reach the enemy that much quicker. Certain outposts can also spawn vehicles to help you get around and wreak havoc, as well—an airfield can support a few planes, some vehicle depots can supply Jeeps, various tanks, and—if you're playing Road to Rome, the expansion pack—even some intense artillery trucks. Most outposts can allow you to heal and rearm yourself, too, which is a wonderful force multiplier for the controlling team; a few troops hanging around the ammo box can, if played correctly, stall a much larger incoming force.

The primary appeal in Battlefield 1942's game design comes from the fine line it walks between a pure action game (e.g. Medal of Honor, Return to Castle Wolfenstein) and a simple World War II simulator. Digital Illusions managed to pick enough from column A and enough from column B to produce an action game in a realistic environment; that is to say, while any given BF1942 battle could look like something straight out of a complex simulation, the designers were smart enough to make it easy to pick up and play. The end result is something similar to the way vehicles were implemented in Halo, except much more so; nearly any vehicle can be effectively deployed by a single soldier. This is, of course, somewhat ridiculous compared to real life; in BF1942, any class of soldier can pilot multiple kinds of planes, drive multiple vehicles, even command an entire aircraft carrier perfectly competently by him or herself. As a result, some simulator buffs may be disappointed; flight sim fans, be forewarned, the planes of BF1942 don't require months to master. However, I never had the patience for tank sims, much less flight sims, and BF1942 manages to adequately make all facets of the game open to the entry-level player.

The consequence of designing a game that plays like an action game is that BF1942 cannot reward individual skills alone; while learning the nuances of different planes, tanks, AA guns, etc. is certainly a labor of love, it's nowhere as deep as most competitive gamers get in games like Counter-Strike or Quake III: Arena; it will not take months to learn how to master driving a Jeep because there's really not all that much to it. Because of this, BF1942 doesn't require hours and hours of solo practice to become proficient. Instead, it rewards teamwork. One lone infantryman, however much fun it might be to play Rambo, will get owned with quickness against a well-coordinated team. Nowhere is this nearly as apparent as it is with the vehicles: a plane is good, a plane with a paratrooper is better. A tank is good, a tank with someone manning the turret is better. An aircraft carrier is good, an aircraft carrier with a few engineers running around manning and repairing anti-aircraft guns is better - you get the picture.

Which means that playing on public servers will often reveal about 1/20th of the actual game's depth. For those of you unfamiliar with the norms of online gaming, the average public server—even if it's an explicitly team-based game like Battlefield 1942—has about as much teamwork as the Democratic Party; tales of players camping out by the airfield waiting for planes to spawn and shooting fellow teammates in the head to ensure they get those planes are not uncommon. Given this, it's not hard to believe that coordinating a well-crafted series of attacks on an enemy outpost is darn near futile on most public servers. Once you start getting used to the maps and frequenting a few certain servers rather than just randomly picking out of a list, you might start to get the picture that most of the players are working toward some vague conception of the common good; individuals might take time out of their fraggin' schedule to capture an outpost or two, but you'll rarely find enough teammates (especially in smaller games) to organize a cohesive defense or mount a synchronized attack. There are certain moments of truly cooperative action; one particularly effective Capture the Flag play entailed one player parachuting out of another's plane behind enemy lines, grabbing the flag, and hopping onto my Jeep for a speedy getaway. Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between. For best results, you're probably best off joining a clan, if you're serious about the game, or at least setting up a Favorites list of servers that you frequent regularly so you can get to know the people there.

Battlefield 1942's graphics are somewhat sparse compared to ballbusters like the forthcoming Doom 3, but that's kind of to be expected; what BF1942 lacks in individual details, it makes up for in scope. There is nothing particularly remarkable about any given soldier animation, tank model, or gun emplacement. What is remarkable is how expansive the environments are. BF1942's levels are big and manage to look authentic without sacrificing playability. Whether you're duking it out in the wrecked cities of Berlin and Stalingrad, island hopping in the Pacific at Wake Island, Midway, the Philippines or Iwo Jima, bombing London or ravaging France's green hills, the level designers communicate one thing very clearly; this is no mere battle where you're bouncing around to get the Rocket Launcher, hit the Mega Health and time the spawn of the Red Armor. This is war. You've got to be using every tree, hill, sandbag, and bunker available to win because your opponents will be doing no less.

Unfortunately, Battlefield 1942's solid graphics bring me to my only complaint; this game is taxing on the hardware, and it drastically affects the way people can play this game. My 1GHz G4 12" PowerBook is slightly above the minimum requirements, and the game experience ranges from virtually unplayable to barely playable, depending on the crowding of the level. I can't hit the broad side of a barn in urban levels like Berlin or Stalingrad because there's just too much going on for my computer to handle. Wide open spaces, on the other hand, like the Pacific levels, tend to be okay as long as I can isolate a few players and deal with them rather than engaging in a pitched battle. Now, normally, I'm not a big whiner about turning the graphical whizbang down a notch or dealing with a few dropped frames here and there, but BF1942 is so demanding it severely encroaches on the game play. In order to make the game remotely playable on a lower-spec computer, you've got to kill your visibility range to about 25%, making most long-distance combat impossible; forget about using AA guns, most artillery, and ship turrets because you won't be able to see your target through the fog. Furthermore, playing offline on a slower computer alternates between boring and unplayable; since your computer needs to divert processing power toward populating and controlling the enemy bots, anyone who wants to get in a few practice matches against the computer is going to have to choose between a 4-on-4 botmatch in a ridiculously massive level or a decent-sized game running at approximately five frames per second. Lowering resolutions, reducing texture detail, that kind of stuff, is fine, but anyone on a lower-end G4 will most likely find Battlefield 1942 much too frustrating to bother with.

Battlefield 1942 is more than a good game, no doubt. Digital Illusions did a phenomenal job mixing elements of simulator games with a solid World War II action premise, and tailored everything toward designing one of the most immersive, entertaining multiplayer experiences out there. They then ensured that it stayed successful by balancing the game in favor of cooperative strategy rather than sheer individual skill. However, for many people, it will be more than a good game but less than a great game. Ultimately, Digital Illusions has designed a title that can only be fully enjoyed by those with the hardware to play it like it ought to be played and the will (and time) to play it like it ought to be played, instead. For the hardcore of the hardcore, Battlefield 1942: Deluxe Edition can't be passed up. Anyone who just wants a game they can pick up and play might want to look elsewhere.