Battlefield 1942 |Kidsshadow's Blog|

Developer(s)	Digital Illusions CE
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts (WIN), Aspyr Media, Inc. (Mac)
Series	Battlefield series
Engine	Refractor 2
Version	Windows: 1.6.19b (unknown date)
Platform(s)	Windows, Apple Macintosh
Release date(s)	WIN ^NA September 10, 2002 ^EU September 20, 2002 Mac OS ^NA June 28, 2004
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: T (Teen), PEGI: 16+
Media	CD-ROM (2)

Battlefield 1942' is a 3D World War II first-person shooter
(FPS) computer game developed by Swedish company Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows (2002) and Apple Macintosh (2004). The game can be played in singleplayer mode against computer game bots or in multiplayer mode against players on the Internet or in a Local Area Network. It is also a popular platform for mod developers, with a large number of released modifications that alter the gameplay and theme.

In-game, players assume the role of one of five classes of infantry: Scout, Assault, Anti-Tank, Medic, and Engineer. Players also have the ability to fly various World War II fighter aircraft and bombers, navigate capital ships, submarines and aircraft carriers, man coastal artillery defenses, drive tanks, APCs and jeeps, and take control of anti-aircraft guns and mounted machine guns.

Each battle takes place on one of several maps located in a variety of places and famous battlefields in all of the major theaters of World War II: the Pacific, European, North African, Eastern , and Italian Fronts. Combat is always fought between the Axis Powers and the Allies. The location determines which nation-specific armies are used (for example, on the Wake Island map, it is Japan versus the United States, while on the Battle of Britain map, it is Germany versus the United Kingdom). The maps in Battlefield 1942 are based on real battles and are somewhat realistically portrayed.

Game Play
The gameplay of Battlefield 1942 generally has a more cooperative focus than previous games of this nature, as it is not only important to kill the opposition but to also hold certain "control points" around the map. Capturing control points allow the team to reinforce themselves by enabling players and vehicles to spawn in the certain area. Consequently, capturing and controlling control points also would reduce enemy reinforcements. Battlefield 1942 was one of the first mainstream games to represent a dramatic shift in FPS game play mentality not only favoring individualism, but simultaneously encouraging teamwork and coordination.

The default game play mode, Conquest, centers on the capture and control of control points; once a team captures a control point, its members can respawn from it. When a team loses control of all their control points, they cannot respawn. And if no one is alive, the team with no "spawn" points loses.

Games are composed of rounds. A team wins the round when the other team runs out of tickets. A team loses tickets when its members are killed, but also when the other team holds a majority of the capture points on a map. Therefore, sometimes the winning team must hunt down straggling or hiding enemy forces at the end of a round.

Spawn tickets also play a vital role in the success of both teams. Every time a player on a team dies and respawns, his team loses one ticket. Every team starts each round with between 150 and 300 tickets, depending on the team's role (e.g., defense). Teams also gradually lose tickets depending on how many spawn points they control. As a general rule, the fewer spawn points controlled by a team, the more tickets they lose. For a team of 32 on a 64 player map, with 150 tickets, this means a little less than 5 re spawns or deaths on average for every player if they hold their starting spawn points.

Roles

The player can choose to play as either the Allied powers or the Axis powers. The Allies consists of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Canada, and the Free French Forces, while the Axis consists of Germany, Japan, and Italy. Regardless of which nation is chosen by the player, there are five different roles of infantry that the player can assume the role of: Scout, Assault, Medic, Anti-tank, and Engineer.

Each role has its own strength and weakness. For example, the scout role has long-range surveillance, high stopping power and the ability to provide spotting for artillery shelling against an enemy position (unlike other games with a similar feature, other player characters must also supply the artillery fire); however, the sniper rifle is not efficient in close-quarter combat and players frequently treat this role as just a plain sniper role by not providing spotting for artillery. Assault is the standard role, and provides both aggressive firepower and some ability to combat vehicles or aircraft. The Anti-tank role specializes against vehicles and tanks, but is almost useless against enemy infantry. The Medic role has the ability to heal (himself and other players), but his sub-machine gun has less stopping power than an assault rifle (though it is typically more accurate, and thus commonly used). The Engineer has the ability to repair damaged vehicles and stationary weapons, and they also have the ability to deploy explosives, which are moderately effective against both enemy infantry and vehicles, and land mines, which completely destroy enemy vehicles. Its bolt-action rifle is a balance between the slow firing sniper rifle and the submachine gun.

System Requirement

Minimum Requirements:

Windows® XP, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows 98, (Windows NT and 95 are not supported)
500 MHz Intel® Pentium® or AMD Athlon™ processor
128 MB RAM
4x CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive
1.2 GB free hard disk space plus space for saved games (additional space required for Windows swap-file and DirectX™ 8.1 installation)
32 MB video card which supports Transform & Lighting and with DirectX 8.1 compatible driver
DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
Keyboard, Mouse