Xbox Live Arcade has come a long way since launching and Battlefield 1943 is proof that it’s capable of offering so much more than the 2-D games that arrived in the early days.
At first glance, you would think BF 1943 was a retail game by the looks of things – the graphics are that sharp. The maps I played on are huge and beautifully rendered. You can really notice the detail in each one.
The sound quality in this game is also quite amazing. Gun fire sounds very close to the real thing and the background noises add a realistic factor to this game which makes you feel like you’re in each mission – you can even hear your character shuffling through the grassy fields as you traverse through the maps. Speaking of maps, the ones offered in this game are quite large. Luckily, there are enough vehicles available which will allow you to cover more ground quickly.
Coral Sea (complete with Air Superiority Mode) was recently unlocked due to the amount of people playing and racking up kills. The creators of BF 1943 wanted to keep this map sheltered until the community reached 43 million kills – this was achieved in just 5 days on Xbox Live. As Coral Sea is an airplanes-only map, all of the fighting takes place in the sky. If you’re the type that likes to fly a plane and partake in dogfights, then this map was made for you.
Verdict:
Overall, the gameplay is fantastic and Battlefield 1943 is definitely worth the $15 on the Xbox Live Marketplace and PSN Store. The only thing I would suggest is to make sure that some of your friends have this as well before buying. The times I jumped into a quick match, my team wasn’t communicating at all and in this game communication is the key to victory. On the other hand, if you can get 15 of your friends together for a private match, it would be like playing any other multiplayer retail game. The downside is if you can’t round up 15 other people to play a private game, you run the risk of having your party split up in a public match. The game won’t allow a private match to start unless you have a total of 16 people playing.
That point aside, if you’re looking for a good multiplayer-only game with enormous maps and tons of vehicles at a fair price, then you can’t go wrong with Battlefield 1943.