Battlefield 2142-- any good?

[Lord of Nonsensical Crap]

Hi all.

I have a question regarding BF2142: is it any good? I've played BF1942 and Vietnam, and and curious about this one. As far as shooters/strategy games go, how would you rate it?

[Worst Comic Ever]

Its not a strategy game, its a complety copy of the other battlefields, just in the future, hell you'd think that the guns you use would actully be more accurate then they were in the 21st century

[Serik]

Based on the demo, I was not impressed. BF2142 plays like a semi-professional Battlefield 2 mod. Then again I think every BF following the original is total crap. Like most EA releases, 2142 runs like a mule. Patches might've addressed these performance issues though.

And BF2142 has in-game advertisements (despite the $50 price tag). How obstructive these are, I can't say. But I won't buy any game with advertisements, especially if they're still charging me full price. I wonder if private servers (whose bandwidth is not provided by EA) have ads.

[Xero Kaiser]

Haven't played it myself, but I haven't heard any good things about this game. I'd imagine there's a demo floating around somewhere, though.

But I won't buy any game with advertisements, especially if they're still charging me full price.

That's one of the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Do you refuse to buy magazines, read comics or watch movies/TV too?

What the hell do in-game ads have to do with the price tag anyway? You think a little extra money for development's gonna magically make the game cheap? Since when do ads do that? Ever?

[Serik]

I just don't want ads invading another medium. Besides, in EA's case, it's not as if the ads are productive. The company's design budgets grow ever larger, but the end products keep getting worse. Ya, I'll let EA screw the pooch just so they can release more half-baked sequels. If everyone boycotted just one ad-supported game, then they'd stop.

But that's not my biggest beef with in-game ads. Private server operators - who pay $30+/month on bandwidth - don't have control of the ads displayed on their servers. VALVe just announced CS 1.6 will get in-game ads. Screw that. The vast majority of CS servers are run by normal Joes who should either get a cut of the profit OR be able to disable the ads.

And magazines are usually sold at a loss; advertising revenue makes up the difference. Comics would probably be cheaper too, but they don't have a market as large as TIME, etc. and their ads go for less.

Once EA starts charging $30 for ad-supported games, then I'll listen. But $50 + ads + buggy release = ripoff

But as you can tell I'm very principled on this issue.

[Xero Kaiser]

But $50 + ads + buggy release = ripoff

No. Of those 3, ads are the only thing that has no effect on the game whatsoever. If you have a problem with anything it should be paying full price for a bug ridden game with crappy servers. If you're going to boycott a game, boycott it for that, not some billboard in the distance that you won't notice unless you go out of your way to be offended by it for no reason. A poorly made game is a ripoff with or without ads. But you're not gonna convince many people that GRAW is less of a game and needs to be boycotted because it has a few billboards for Axe bodyspray.

You still haven't explained how a few ads are going to slash development and licensing costs in half. You think a movie that has a little product placement in it can somehow get away with only charging you half-price for the tickets and DVDs? Then why would you expect that to happen with a game? You're not making any sense

[Serik]

I don't like ads. I feel they detract from a game. I have Adblock on my PC and a Tivo. And ads might not have an effect on your gaming experience, but they do on mine. When SOE put ads into PlanetSide, I felt the game lost some of its immersion.

And here's how ads should work.

Ads = extra money
That extra money could be passed on to the consumer in the form of a cheaper game
Cheaper game = more copies sold = more players = more ad views = more ad revenue

Google gives away stuff for free so millions of us can glance at ads.

Pretty simple.

And like I said, I think it's wrong to make users provide their own servers (Counterstrike) and then force server admins to show ads, even though these admins don't get a cut of the ad revenue.

[Xero Kaiser]

Ads = extra money
That extra money could be passed on to the consumer in the form of a cheaper game

Games cost what they do because of Development/Licensing costs. So unless that billboard's practically paying everybody's salary, which it isn't, you're making an unreasonable demand. It'd take a hell of a lot of ads to cover the cost of making a game, you're saying you want more of them?

[BlairH]

To answer the original poster's question: Yes, BF2142 is good. Indeed, I'm installing it on my newly built computer right now.

[Zelgadis]

I played the demo of bf 2142 and I honestly prefer bf 2.